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In the past week we’ve watched two powerful movies in our home.  Hotel Rwanda deals with the genocide that took place in 1994 in Rwanda, telling a story from the point of view of a man who managed a four star hotel which became, by necessity, a refuge for over a thousand people who otherwise would have been slaughtered.  It is a story of courage in the face of the worst in human nature, and raises difficult and timely questions regarding when it is appropriate to use military might to intervene in another country’s life for humanitarian reasons.  (Western nations, such as the US refused to get involved; eventually a million people were murdered.)  The other movie was the classic, Ghandhi, telling the story of this extraordinary man — perhaps the most Christ-like political leader of all time.  It makes a compelling witness to a life of non-violence, standing up to injustice with a willingness to suffer for what is right.

The two movies got me thinking about the power of art at its best to both inform the mind, raise important questions, and to ennoble the spirit.   To a large extent, the images that fill our imagination define in what direction our lives move. 

When I wander the aisles at Blockbuster I am struck by how the great majority of the popular movies that are available fall short in this regard.  It’s just entertainment, we might say, and we all need something to relax into; some good laughs, perhaps, or a good escapist, fanciful adventure, and I am drawn to this as much as anybody.  On the shelves there will be 30 copies of the latest release, and all 30 copies are out, being watched somewhere this weekend in a home in Parsippany.  There seems to be a great need to escape; I know the need well myself.  But oftentimes these escapist movies embody the damaging values that are eroding life:  violence for the sake of amusement, rampant materialism and the lust for power, sex that dehumanizes. 

It doesn’t have to be this way.  Movies such as the two I watched this week are engrossing, providing in their own way that much needed “escape” from the mundane pressures of our stressful lives, but they also inspire at the same time, and provoke significant reflections that go on in one’s mind long after the movie is over.   

Curiously, walking about Blockbuster, the movies that seem to have this capacity often have only a single copy.  (The people making money by producing movies figure they can make their most reliable profit by sticking with the dumb down movies.)

Over the long haul, I suspect that the choices we make regarding the kinds of movies we watch (and perhaps especially our children watch) is not an insignficant issue.  Who, in the end, are we seeking to emulate in life?  Gandhi… the hotel manager who rose to the great moral and humanitarian challenge of his age… or one of the shallow icons of popular culture peddling greed, lust, domination, and deceit?

I’ve been thinking about the fact that Lent begins in 24 days.

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Hey, it was heartening to write a post yesterday, meager though it was, and have three of you write responses within two hours.  Thanks, guys!

There is a great deal of discussion in medical science as to precisely when life is over, but I’d like to come at the subject from a somewhat different angle. 

My son Bobby is a sixth grader, which means that he has left elementary school behind and is five months into the whole middle school experience.   Oftentimes he hates it, but sometimes he likes it, and it all comes down to his interaction with his peer group.  (Does anyone remember junior high school as a happy time?)

A big part of the middle school experience is a preoccupation with appearance that seems to have suddenly taken possession of my son.  The kid who had to be harrassed by his parents to give some thought to how he looked in the morning when he walked out the door now is thinking about this very thing in great detail before he goes to bed at night. 

Evidently “geekdom” is a fate worse than death.   Given a choice, my son will choose freezing over appearing geekish every time.  For much of this strange winter, the possibility of freezing hasn’t been much of a concern, but recently the weather has remembered what winter is supposed to feel like. 

The winter coats lying around our house apparently are all made from 100% geek material, so up until now a sweat shirt was all we could get on Bobby before he left the house.  Presently there are three sweatshirts sitting in his locker at school helping his locker stay warm. 

So with the recent plummeting of temperature I figured it was time to take a fatherly stand: “You’re not going anywhere without a winter coat on.”  This, of course, brought weeping and wailing regarding the incredible injustice of my decree.  And then came the clincher, to which this whole blog post has been leading up to:  “Dad, just because your life is over doesn’t mean mine has to be!  Please, don’t force me to look like a geek!”

I guess its all a matter of perspective.  I like to think that I’m living the best years of my life, and that my son’s middle school bondage is cause for sympathy.  But from his point of view, if you don’t have a shot left at being considered cool in middle school, your life is pretty much over. 

This leads me to hypothesize someone farther down the road of life than myself, (someone older, wiser, closer to full sanctification), looking at some of my present preoccupations with a similar sort of bewilderment as I look at my son’s preoccupations. 

After his soccer practice last night, I took Bobby to Marshall’s where he picked out a winter coat that he actually thought looked cool and promised he would actually wear.  (The price was greatly reduced, since the winter coat marketers probably think that most people who were going to buy their products would have done so well before now.)  Bobby actually thanked me for it.  It felt like a minor parenting victory, the sort of thing that leads me to feel like maybe my life isn’t over — that there are some achievable satisfactions yet worth living for. 

 

 

(This one is cheating, sort of.   I wrote it not for this blog but  rather for the sermon I gave on January 14th.  It puts forth some my reflections arising from my good vacation.) 

The story is familiar: Jesus is a guest at a wedding in Cana in Galilee.   Way too early, the wine runs out. Jesus turns six huge jars of water into the very best tasting wine.

Now, if you are like me, perhaps one of your reactions to this story is, Hey, this seems a somewhat inappropriate use of Jesus’ divine power. Elsewhere in the Gospels we are accustomed to hearing about Jesus using his miraculous power to relieve human suffering: he heals the sick, the lame, cleanses the lepers, feeds the hungry — that sort of thing.  These seem ppropriate usages of divine power. Here, however, the power is being used simply to allow the party to go on, indeed, to enhance the quality of the intoxicating refreshments. In contrast to what we’re accustomed to, this use of divine power seems almost frivolous. Then again, maybe celebration isn’t frivolous at all. Maybe there is something absolutely essential about savoring the times for rejoicing.Allow me to be a bit autobiographical. I was an overly serious young person. I came of age during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, which impressed upon me the notion that the world was a pretty serious place, full of great suffering, and that human beings needed to get focused on the work of relieving suffering.  My own family broke apart as I was entering adolescence, which heightened this reaction to the world.

A month has passed since last I wrote something on this blog.  I have my excuses.  I went away for two weeks for vacation (which was really quite good) and then there was a stomach virus and then a cold.  But mostly it was the fact that I got out of the habit.   

When I haven’t written something in a while, I am held back by the question, do I have something worth writing at this particular moment?  And since clarity about this is missing, I put it off another day.   

So here I am simply putting fingers to the keyboard to get past this block.  I realize that the notion that I have to have something worthwhile to write gets in the way of my actually writing something, and creating the possibility that I might actually write something worthwhile. 

I also realize that at this point I’ve probably lost the handful of faithful readers I had checking in on a regular basis, so it may take a while for anybody to actually read this, and by the time they do, maybe I will have gotten past this and be back in the rhythm of this thing. 

In the meantime, prayer is a good place to fall back to. 

God who created me and all living things, help us to open up to the blessed intentions of your holy spirit.  Help us to trust you — that we really are in your hands, and that you have wondrous things in store for us.  Grant us courage, and willingness to persevere through the dead of winter.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.