The Grand Budapest Hotel

You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization in this barbaric slaughterhouse we know as humanity.

Needing Help

What wine-stained carpet can blot itself clean?
What contaminated water can purify itself of disease?
What broken bones can set themselves to dancing?
What lips sewn shut can tear their own sutures to rejoin the song?
What diseased heart can transplant itself?

David knows the gravity of the problem. This is not do better and try harder. This is a desperate cry for salvation, a salvation that can only come from outside himself.

have mercy on me
blot out my transgression
wash me thoroughly
cleanse me
purge me clean
wash me white
let me hear joy and gladness
let my broken bones rejoice
blot out all of my iniquities
give me a clean heart
renew a right spirit in me
cast me not away
restore the joy of your salvation
uphold me
deliver me from my guilt
open my lips

Psalm 51

Hiding

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
    and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
    through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
    my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 

I acknowledged my sin to you,
    and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
    and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. 

You are a hiding place for me;
    you preserve me from trouble;
    you surround me with shouts of deliverance. 

Psalm 32

As much as sin is woven into the fabric of our nature, so is hiding.

Man and Woman ate a fruit and all of a sudden felt this strange feeling inside of them, an inescapable impulse to run and hide. The One who made them and placed them in the garden comes looking and calling, and they're huddled in fear and shame behind a tree he had planted.

We hide. It's doesn't always look as pathetic as hiding behind a tree. Sometimes it's sophisticated. Sometimes it looks plain good. We avoid, we cover up, we dodge, we manipulate, we twist, we keep distance, we rationalize, we make excuses, we accentuate the positive, we busy ourselves. Whatever it is, we're hiding.

And all the while the weight pushes in, the pressure builds. Is it getting hot in here? Because we're exhausted from the heat. In place of rightful confession comes only uncontainable groans. Like the storm that just kept raging with Jonah in the boat, things only get worse and worse.

And there's only one way out.

As the psalmist says, I acknowledge my sin, I quit covering it up, I confess, and he forgives.

That's where a most wonderful thing happens. A weight is lifted, a relationships is restored, and the one we were hiding from all along becomes himself the safest place in which to hide. The one we ran from becomes the one we run to. When we run to him for hiding, he preserves and he delivers.

You are a hiding place for me.

Philomena

I knew very little of this film other than knowing it was showing in English, seeing good ratings, and watching the trailer. That was a good way to go into it; the less you know the better.

"Do you believe in God, Martin?" 
Not your typical ice-breaker, but not a bad place to start, no?
"I've always thought that was a difficult question to give a simple answer to. Do you?"
"Yes."

But I was quickly bracing myself for an agenda-pushing film where the Christians are the bad guys and the "progressive liberals" -- for lack of a better word and to avoid some possible spoiling -- are the good guys. This was thankfully escaped thanks to the genuine and heartfelt contrast between Philomena and Martin where, in the end, neither one is completely right or wrong, and the answer is found in the tension-filled both. They learn from one another, need one another.

What we see is that, if you've got an anger that is justified and righteous, there's no way to escape hate except to forgive, and there's no way to forgive without a simple faith in a God that forgives. Forgiveness, of course, sounds easy and feels free; those who really know it know that it is anything but.

And as for adoption. I as much as anyone am thankful for the attention adoption seems to be getting in Christian circles; we seem to be hearing more stories, seeing more videos, reading more articles, witnessing more families, and this is good. I am inclined to believe nothing else strikes more true to the very heart of the Gospel than adoption. But as Philomena's story serves to show us, in our rightful eagerness to adopt, and in the temptation to make our story Facebook-worthy, let us also be sober-minded. Let us be eager to unconditionally accept and love a child, but not too eager to be the admirable heroes saving a child from supposed squalor and neglect. Because first of all, that might not exactly be the case. And second of all, regardless of circumstances, where there is a biological mother left behind on the other side, most often she will continue to think of this child day after day, perhaps even secretly for fifty years. Her thoughts for him and the act of daily letting him go are a profound expression of love in their own right.

"What was his handshake like?"

Searching for Sugar Man

If it were a tale about anyone else in the music business, like say the Beatles showing up in America, it would be a tale of idolatry and egocentrism and making it big and success as the world defines it. But because it's a tale of Rodriguez, it's different. He's a modest man who doesn't necessarily want to make it big, he just wants to change the world. Even that's easier said than done, because when he 'fails' in music he tries his hand in politics, and that goes nowhere just as quickly.

So when shows up in South Africa, this isn't typical music industry hype, this is a man who helped shape a generation. It's as though they don't want to worship him, they want to thank him. They appreciate him, and he's learning for the first time that he did somehow change the world. It's a story that, read on paper, is already pretty incredible, but to try and put yourself in all the strange mix of emotions at that first concert is absolutely astounding. It can't be put to words.

For them, a revolutionary leader is resurrected. For him, a hope is resurrected.

"To go from being the outcast to being who he really was, because it was as though it was him, and that was who he was."

But it's also a testimony to not only the power of art but the necessity of it, the mindset and outlook that comes with it for every corner of life.

"He approached the work from a different place than most people do, he took it very very seriously, sort of like a sacrament, he was going to do this dirty dirty work for 8 or 10 hours but he was dressed in a tuxedo. He had this kind of magical quality that all genuine poets and artists have to elevate things, to get above the mundane and the mediocrity that's everywhere. Even when his musical hopes were dashed, the spirit remained...he knew that there was something more..."

"So we're working class people, blue collar, hard labor...but just because people are poor doesn't mean their dreams aren't big and their soul isn't rich. My dad gave us a lot of exposure to the arts; he would let us go into the libraries and the museums and the science centers, and that was our day care, touring the halls of the museum -- Diego Rivera, Picasso, Delacroix -- and we began to learn of life outside of the city, in books and paintings and music." 

 

The Cat's Agenda

Dinner conversation turned towards the events of tomorrow.

"You're gonna eat at the cafeteria tomorrow" we told the kid.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I'm in a meeting all day and Mama has a doctor's appointment."
"And my brother?" he asked.
"He's going to school too."
"And our friend?" he asked, referring to the friend who's been staying with us.
"She'll be helping, mama."
The other kid, eagerly wanting to be a part of the conversation, continued the interrogation, "And Banjo?" wondering about the cat.

We all turned to look at him in his permanent position, sleeping on his favorite chair.

"You want to know what Banjo's going to be doing tomorrow?" I confirmed.
"Sitting there," the two year old intelligently concluded on his own.

It's not a bad gig.

Mix Tape: News Year's Eve

According to my ongoing mix tape, it's been nearly a full year since a song has truly captivated me. For the record, that's primarily what this mix tape thing is supposed to be: songs that go on repeat.

I made a New Year's Eve playlist for our party with the help of my brothers-in-law. It was a pretty nice collection of songs, commendable for being such a last-minute affair, but I would have been OK if we had just put Arcade Fire's "Afterlife" on repeat the whole night.

I'm close to saying it's the only song that captivated me all year, so it makes sense to listen to it at the year's end. And it makes for a great year-end party song; like Coldplay on that closing night in 2011, it's the song that's become the dance-the-year-away hit.

But more than that, it feels like New Year's Eve.

Another year gone. Was it a good one, one you want to celebrate? Or a bad one, one you want to forget? Most likely it was a mix of both. Most likely it left you wanting more. Because isn't life just that? A strange mix of celebrations and regrets that leave you hoping for more?

It makes you wonder why we celebrate a new year anyway. Is it to celebrate all that happened or to celebrate that it's all finally over? Aren't we just yearning for another fresh start? But the fact that we do it all over again 365 years later, doesn't that show us we're really longing for a much bigger Fresh Start?

After all the bad advice
Had nothing at all to do with life

In the end, isn't life just a lot of screaming, shouting, and working it all out? Can't year after year of the human existence be summed up in shouting, "I gotta know!"?  Because what's the point? And what's next? And will it all be worth it?

What we will be has not yet been made known.

Like most songs that captivate me, there's a melancholic regret and a tired hope mixed up in every aspect of this song. That sounds like New Year's Eve, and that sounds like life, because both are waiting for the Fresh Start. Might as well dance.

This is Arcade Fire's "Afterlife" from Reflektor

post rock's not dead

it's been strange, i received two post rock cds for christmas, both of which i wanted, but it made it feel like the christmas of my dreams in 2003, ten whole years ago.

i don't like post rock as much as i used to, but i do still like it.

this song is one reason why. and i'm not sure i can think of a more appropriate soundtrack to this post, for which it is presumably titled, or also for the end of another year and all the strange feelings that come with it.

Inside Llewyn Davis

A man with a guitar in one hand and a cat in the other.

In one hand, pleasure, identity, livelihood, talent, escape, release, the ideals of life itself.

In the other hand, an unpredictable series of mistakes and mishaps and not always the best of responses to either one.

Taking care of one seems to mean letting go of the other, neither of which is really an option. The rest is an endless, complicated, seemingly impossible balancing act. 

It's the strongest image I've seen in a movie for a long time. And the performances were great, too.