I just love Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet. I love the music, I adore the completlely believable delivery of Shakespeare's original dialogue in such a modern setting, and I find the imageryto be stunning. One particular aspect that always struck me was the use of neon crosses in the church scenes...
One of the things I love about my apartment is something that reminds me of this scene everytime I look at it, though I must've looked at it dozens and dozens of times by now... Looking out my bedroom window, (there's my purple car on the right! - I know, you can't tell it's purple, it just looks like a shadow here... but it is!) ...
and then to the left and up, across the alley,
there's my very own almost-neon cross - it's actually backlit, not neon, but just as bright it seems :)
It's even more impressive in the blackness of deep night here (arriving by 6 pm in the middle of winter, but considerably later now that we're over the hump and sliding down that delightful slope towards spring and summer) - it shines ever so much more brightly, and is like a beacon of hope reaching through the darkness.
When I see it, I don't think of the morbidity of that final funereal scene in the movie, but of the simple symbolism of it. I think of one of my four favorite things in life - signs. I just love how people make and leave signs for each other, even something as simple as "push" or "turn left"... it's like a little simple way that we're all looking out for each other, all leaving instructions to help each other navigate, operate, achieve, or just stay safe. And this sign, to me, is a sign of compassionate people, a sign of refuge, a sign of common goals, a sign of care and nuturing. For I choose to focus on the positive side of society's endeavours, so while I can understand how humanity's corrupt tendancies in every area of civilization, including organized faith, can have caused feelings of mistrust and resentment for some when seeing this particular symbol, and while I may feel some of these feelings myself, I've always thought the use of modern lighting (ie neon or backlit) in crosses creates a new message, one that screams out "I am reaching out for you, and let the old ways and old doctrine, the old masking of meaning with trappings and tradition, be damned, for all that matters is that you are safe, and you are loved".
I should note, my particular almost-neon-cross is atop the St Patricks Catholic church, a group quite indulgent in tradition and trappings, so the above statement is probably not what they were going for when choosing that particular adornment. But that's what it says to me, and in my version of faith/spirituality, that's all that matters.
