All Shook Up

The Testament of Ann Lee a film by Mona Fastvold.  With Amanda Seyfried, Lewis Pullman.  **

“Why did she make that movie?” my wife asked as we walked out of the theater.

Ordinarily I would think that an irrelevant question.  You don’t choose the story, as writers will tell you, the story chooses you.  But in this case, I thought it quite apt.

“I have no idea,” I said.

I’ve been fascinated by Ann Lee and the Shakers ever since I read Guy Davenport’s essay “Shaker Light.”  Davenport has a way of selecting exactly the right details to make an impression.  He made the Shakers fascinating.

Not so this movie, I’m afraid.

There are good things about it.  Amanda Seyfriend’s performance as Ann is marvelous.  I was impressed with Fastvold’s creation of an 18^th century setting (though I thought it should have been dirtier, rat and vermin infested).  The set pieces depicting Shaker “movements,” though they hardly seemed authentic, were impressive as dance numbers (not since the June Taylor dancers have I seem these camera angles), and I thought Fastvold’s  recreation of the movements was at least interesting (no one knows what the Shakers actually did).  I did think that, as in many Hollywood productions, the whole cast was way too good looking.  Maybe Mike Leigh should have directed this movie.  Or at least done the casting.

All of these beautiful people portray a brutal, horrid story.  Ann Lee was abused first by her father, then by her husband (who had some weird SM thing going on in sex, which he claimed to be spiritual, but which involved flogging her before and as they did it), also by the act of childbirth (she lost four children in four different childbirths, and Mona Fastvold show us every one, in all its agony), to say nothing of the horrible abuse and beatings she endured from religious persecution in her later life (David French, in his tearful article in the Times, tells us that when she was exhumed years after her death, she was found to have a fractured skull).  We can understand how such a person might have extreme religious views.

But to think that sexual intercourse is the root of all evil, and to prohibit your congregants from indulging in it, limits the future of your religion (to say the least).  There are supposedly two Shakers alive today (I read that in a recent Times article), with one on the fringes of joining.  I assume these are all recent converts, not descendants of the original Shakers.  Because if they are, their ancestors are all heretics.

I understand how Ann Lee must have felt and can acknowledge that celibacy as a possible strategy in regard to sex, that it might allow for experiencing spiritual energy in other ways (as exemplified by the aerobic like exercises we see these people perform).  But I’m sorry: sex is not the root of all evil.  Quite the opposite.  It’s the source of life.  If any act is sacred, the sexual act is, however profane people make it.  So I have to say that the basis of this religion is foolhardy.  It makes no sense.

That gets us back to the original question: Was Mona Fastvold glorifying this view?  Did she agree with it?

I’m definitely interested in religious practices that acknowledge energies in the body; I have a friend who has practiced Tai Chi as a spiritual endeavor for many years, and know another who practices and teaches Chi Gong.  Followers of Gurdjieff have their own set of movements.  The key word here is Chi, or Ki, which refers in general to energy, not spiritual energy, sexual energy, intellectual energy, just the energy of life, which we must allow to flow.

I’ve always felt that way, but found it expressed beautifully in a commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra by Alistair Shearer.  He was talking about celibacy itself.

“Brahmacharya means literally ‘moving in the immensity’ or ‘living in reality,’ but from earliest times it has been understood to refer to the sublimation of the life force that is normally expressed as sexuality.  Thus brahmacharya has frequently been translated as ‘celibacy,’ by which sexual continence is meant.

“This has led to much confusion.  True yoga is a natural process, and has no place for repression, whether of the ego, sex, or anything else.  Such an attitude of forced control is against life, and can only result in strain and tension incurred in the name of some supposedly ‘higher’ ideal.  However, as we progress on the path of yoga, needs and desires become more refined.  Sexuality is one area of experience that typically tends to aberration, becoming narrowly confined to the habitual need for release of tension and dissatisfaction, rather than the magnification of an already existing happiness.  Nourished by yoga, a wider loving-awareness that is present at all times begins to develop.  Such all-inclusiveness is the natural state of awareness; it has its own economy, self-sufficient and unforced.  And if such a transformation is experienced, it will only be because the limited self, which is always more or less motivated by the need to overcome its chronic and anxious sense of separation through repetitive and unexamined behavior patterns, has been transcended.  Transcendence has nothing to do with suppression, and brahmacharya does not mean ‘self-control’ as normally understood.  It is a state of self sufficient wholeness, an innocence that is its own ecstasy.”

Easy for him to say, of course.  He didn’t go through the experiences Ann Lee did.  And yet I think he’s completely right.  We have to let that energy flow in all its manifestations.  And we don’t just feel it in movement.  We can also feel it in stillness, as Shodo Harada said in an interview.

“There are many ways of cultivating ki, such as yoga, qigong, and tai chi. However, the ideal way to cultivate the all-embracing ki that informs our entire being is through zazen. Zazen is a matter of physically experiencing our essential oneness with the very existence of the universe, and it is through this experience that our ki develops. What is most important is that we partake of ki in its universal expression.

“We can cultivate ki creatively as we go about our daily lives. Such cultivation-in-action is called dochu no kufu. However, a living practice depends on a thorough grounding in jochu no kufu, the quiet cultivation of seated meditation. There is no basic separation between “passive” and “active,” of course, but those who are unable to partake of universal essence in sitting will not be able to partake of it in action. The fundamental point in zazen is to experience oneself not as a separate, limited body but as the body of the entire universe.

“The body itself is central to zazen. When meditating we regulate the body, regulate the breath, and regulate the mind. Ki fills our physical being to overflowing and expands through the breath to an ever-widening circle of our surroundings until it permeates the universe itself. This activation of our universal mind is the true meaning of “regulating the mind” in zazen.”

So I honestly don’t know what point Mona Fastvold was trying make, approving of the Shaker religion or not.  If I had to guess, I would say that she was drawn to a religion whose primary prophet was a woman, who was, in fact, regarded as the second coming of Christ, a rather lofty claim.  I do know that, for me, the movie was an ordeal.  If I was weepy, as David French said he was, it was from exhaustion.  I was glad it was over.

And I remain puzzled by its intent.