• goodbadi

    Advent 2013 Drama 3: The Birth and Christening of John

    Exploited from Luke 1:57-80 (The Message)

    CHARACTERS
    Elizabeth, aged, largely pregnant and then holding a baby, wearing a covering
    Zachariah, aged, with a tablet
    Crowd member 1
    Crowd member 2
    Crowd member 3

    SCENE
    In and in front of Zachariah’s and Elizabeth’s house

    ELIZABETH: You know, Zachariah, you’ve been such a good husband all these years.

    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): I’ve tried.

    ELIZABETH: But I’ve got to say, these months of being pregnant–so many, many months–have been the best ever.

    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): GR8. Y?

    ELIZABETH: It seems that you have been much more attentive to the things I say or need. We haven’t argued at all! You listen so well. You don’t interrupt me when I tell you–

    ZACHARIAH (chuckling without sound, writing furiously on tablet): Knock knock.

    ELIZABETH (sighing): Who’s there?

    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): The interrupting cow.

    ELIZABETH (sighing): The interrupting co–

    ZACHARIAH (writing furiously on tablet): Moo!

    ELIZABETH (sighing): It’s been better, anyway. You know you’re not perfect, Zachie. But I love you anyway.

    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): (sigh)

    ELIZABETH: Oh my! Zachie, I think I just felt a contraction.

    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): Are you sure it wasn’t the extra pepper I put in this morning’s scrambled eggs?

    ELIZABETH: I’m sure–those eggs didn’t taste any different than all the others you’ve cooked for me every day for the last month. Oh no–here comes another contraction. Count seconds for me, Zachie, like we learned in the class we took called “Getting Ready for That Baby That Never Seems to Come.”

    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): One
    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): Two
    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): Three
    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): Four
    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): My hand’s getting tired.

    ELIZABETH (exasperated): You’re hand’s getting tired? Your hand’s getting tired? Oh, here’s another contraction.

    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet to audience): Excuse us, please.


    (Crowd members gather outside Zachariah and Elizabeth’s front door.)

    CROWD MEMBER 1: Wow! Elizabeth had her baby!

    CROWD MEMBER 2: How exciting! Can you believe it’s already been eight days since that little johnny cake popped out?

    CROWD MEMBER 3: It was about time! I thought it would never happen!

    CROWD MEMBER 1: God finally had mercy on her!

    CROWD MEMBER 2 (knocking on Z&E’s closed door and calling out): We’ve come to circumcise your baby.

    CROWD MEMBER 1: Let us in! I’ve got champagne and a hankering to have a christening. How about “Zachariah”?

    CROWD MEMBER 3: How original. Zachariah?

    (Zachariah opens the door and motions them inside.)

    ELIZABETH: We want to name him John.

    CROWD MEMBER 1: John? But that isn’t the name of his father, and wasn’t the name of his grandfather or great grandfather or great-great….you get the idea.

    CROWD MEMBER 2: I have an idea! Let’s ask Zachariah what he wants to name the baby.

    CROWD MEMBER 3: Great idea!

    CROWD MEMBER 1: But how are we going to ask him that? He’s dumb, remember?

    CROWD MEMBER 2: Oh. I’d forgotten. Don’t any of us know sign language?

    CROWD MEMBER 3: I only know the words to “The Rose.” (waving hands like a dove) “Some say love….”

    CROWD MEMBER 1: Okay. You try signing to him. Ask him what the baby’s name is to be.

    CROWD MEMBER 3: (elaborate hand motions)

    ZACHARIAH (writing on tablet): You’re signing gibberish. Maybe you should move to South Africa and sign for the president. His name is JOHN.

    CROWD MEMBER 1: Wow! He agrees with his wife!

    ZACHARIAH: Of course I do! Hey! I can talk! I have a loose tongue! Look! La-ba-la-ba-loo-loo-la-ba-LA!

    ELIZABETH (disappointed): You can talk.

    CROWD MEMBER 2: I feel a deep, reverential fear settling over our neighborhood.

    CROWD MEMBER 3: In all of our Judean hill country, nobody’s going to talk about anything else.

    CROWD MEMBER 1: What will become of this child? This is downright a little bit strange.

    CROWD MEMBER 2: I think God must have a hand in this.

    CROWD MEMBER 3: Clearly he’s going to be healthy and spirited, and he will live out in the desert until the day he makes his prophetic debut in Israel.

    CROWD MEMBER 1: How’d you know that?

    ZACHARIAH: Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel;
    he came and set his people free.
    He set the power of salvation in the center of our lives,
    and in the very house of David his servant,
    Just as he promised long ago
    through the preaching of his holy prophets:
    Deliverance from our enemies
    and every hateful hand;
    Mercy to our fathers,
    as he remembers to do what he said he’d do,
    What he swore to our father Abraham—
    a clean rescue from the enemy camp,
    So we can worship him without a care in the world,
    made holy before him as long as we live.
    And you, my child, “Prophet of the Highest,”
    will go ahead of the Master to prepare his ways,
    Present the offer of salvation to his people,
    the forgiveness of their sins.
    Through the heartfelt mercies of our God,
    God’s Sunrise will break in upon us,
    Shining on those in the darkness,
    those sitting in the shadow of death,
    Then showing us the way, one foot at a time,
    down the path of peace.

  • goodbadi

    Advent 2013 Drama 2: Gabriel Arrives Late and Mary Scares the Bejesus Out of Elizabeth

    Exploited from Luke 1:26-56 (The Message)

    CHARACTERS
    Gabriel
    Mary, seven months pregnant, with imaginary donkey
    Elizabeth, aged, wearing a covering, and extremely pregnant

    SCENES
    Mary’s house
    Elizabeth’s house

    GABRIEL (exasperated): Here I go, and I’ll tell you, I can’t say I’m too happy about it. Humans can be so doggone whiny sometimes, and doubtful. I doubt they know how annoying it is for an ANGEL OF THE LORD to travel all the way to some far-out dung hill of a rustic town where they don’t even have electricity yet–and no smart phones. Imagine: No smart phones! Thank God!–just to tell people that they should stop down at the pharmacy and pick up a pregnancy test, since they’re such doubters and all.

    So it’s been six months since old Zechariah and Elizabeth got their so-to-speak “act” together, and now I’ve got to go and tell some other young woman who’s never had sex that she, too, is going to have a baby.

    I daresay I didn’t go through holiness training for this.

    (With some sarcasm)
    Oh look, there she is: Mary. How lovely.

    (Declaring)
    Good morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty, beautiful inside and out! God be with you.

    Now don’t get all shaky on me. I didn’t glue these wings on this morning. Nope–they’re gen-u-ine, A-grade alpaca lamb wool lovingly plucked from the heavenly flocks in sheepherders’ paradise.

    MARY (accusingly): Do you always go around telling women they’re beautiful? That’s so old-fashioned. My feminine beauty is not some commodity that I am wearing for your personal enjoyment. You like my hair color, and so you say, “God be with you”? What’s up with that?

    GABRIEL: I did say the part about “God’s beauty” and “beautiful inside and out,” didn’t I? Drat– Where’d I put my notes?

    MARY: You’re still carrying around note paper? Geesh, buster–that’s so yesterday. We’re more into touch screen scrolls around here.

    GABRIEL (pulling out his note paper): Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant–

    MARY: Uh, hello. I already am. Notice? This isn’t seven months of Cheetos, here.

    GABRIEL: Oh drat. I’m seven months late? Where’s my Rolex? (Sobbing) Why me, Lord?

    MARY: Is this some kind of joke? I’ve been wondering what kind of surprise (pointing at belly) this was ever since I started wanting kosher pickles for breakfast. I mean, Joseph’s a good guy: We didn’t even hold hands until we were engaged, and then we only did that when his dad was there to supervise.

    GABRIEL: Well, let me catch you up to speed: You will give birth to a son and call his name Jesus. He will be great, be called ‘Son of the Highest.’ The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David; He will rule Jacob’s house forever—no end, ever, to his kingdom.

    MARY: I’m so relieved. Here I’ve been promising Joseph I’ll diet after our wedding so I wouldn’t have to tell him I’m pregnant, which I don’t think he’d have taken kindly.

    GABRIEL: I’m not finished. The Holy Spirit will come upon you–errrrr, I think it means, it already has come upon you–and the power of the Highest hover over you. Therefore, the child you bring to birth will be called Holy, Son of God.

    MARY: Yeah, Holy sure is the right word, here. Holy cow!

    GABRIEL: Would you please let me finish? Did you know that your cousin Elizabeth conceived a son, old as she is? Everyone called her barren, and here she is six months…no, wait…thirteen months pregnant! Nothing, you see, is impossible with God.

    MARY: Thanks for the clarity, Angel.

    GABRIEL: You need to talk with Elizabeth ASAP. And Joseph, too, but I still need to read the manual on that one, so not quite yet. But Elizabeth has something to say to you that you really need to hear.

    MARY: Elizabeth? But she lives out in the hill country! I’m already starting to hate these late-term donkey rides. Okay, okay, I’m going.

    (Rides donkey; arrives outside Elizabeth’s house.)

    Halloooo, Elizabeth!

    ELIZABETH: Holy-Mother-of-God but you scared me, riding up all quiet like that and then letting out a “Hullaballooooo” so loud my little baby–well, he’s not so little now, at thirteen months–kicked my gall bladder again. Why are you here, o blessed woman, who believed what God said, believed every word would come true!

    MARY: To sing with you, Elizabeth! Strike up the band!

    I’m bursting with God-news;
    I’m dancing the song of my Savior God.
    God took one good look at me, and look what happened—
    I’m the most fortunate woman on earth!
    What God has done for me will never be forgotten,
    the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others.
    His mercy flows in wave after wave
    on those who are in awe before him.
    He bared his arm and showed his strength,
    scattered the bluffing braggarts.
    He knocked tyrants off their high horses,
    pulled victims out of the mud.
    The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
    the callous rich were left out in the cold.
    He embraced his chosen child, Israel;
    he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high.
    It’s exactly what he promised,
    beginning with Abraham and right up to now.

  • goodbadi

    Advent 2013 Drama 1: The Conception of John the Baptist

    Exploited
    from Luke 1:5-25 (
    The Message)



    CHARACTERS:
    Zachariah, aged, wearing an everyday shirt
    Elizabeth, aged, wearing a covering
    Angel Gabriel, carrying rolled up scroll
    Crowdmember 1
    Crowdmember 2
    Crowdmember 3

    SCENES:
    Home with two seats
    Temple inside, with incense
    Temple outside

    SCENE 1 (Elizabeth and Zechariah sitting at home):

    Zachariah: I’m an old man, Lizzie.

    Elizabeth: Oh, but you’re a good man.

    Zachariah: That’s what God thinks, too. Not to brag or anything.

    Elizabeth: And I’m an old woman, Zachy, sagging and bagging all over the place.

    Zachariah: Oh, but honey, you’re a good woman, sags and all.

    Elizabeth: That’s what God thinks, too. Not to brag or anything.

    Zachariah: But God’s always right, you know.

    Elizabeth: Yep. As the saying goes, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That does it.”

    Zachariah: Except we’ve not been truly tested–err, I mean blessed.

    Elizabeth: Right. (Sighing) No kids.

    Zachariah: Bummer. It’s all your fault, of course.

    Elizabeth: I know. It say so in the Bible.

    Zachariah: It does? Oh rats and mouse traps! I’m late for temple duty again. I’d better run. Where are my camel keys?

    Elizabeth: Don’t you want to put on a clean shirt?

    Zachariah: Nah. I’ll be burning incense. It’ll cover up a multitude of sins.

    SCENE 2 (In temple, crowds without):

    Zachariah burns incense.


    Gabriel appears. Zachariah, startled, slowly kneels onto his aging knees.

    Zachariah: Oh, my knees. Why do I have to do this “fear the angel” thing every single December?

    Gabriel: Don’t be afraid, dad.

    Zachariah: Dad?

    Gabriel: Yup. For your prayers have been heard and your wife Ellie–

    Zachariah: You mean Elizabeth

    Angel: Right. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a daughter–

    Zachariah: A daughter?

    Gabriel: Drat. Where’s my scroll? Let me just read this: Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

    Zachariah: Not to be a doubter, Angel, but I’m a bit skeptical. Rather dumbfounded, exactly. You see, I’m, uh, rather old, and my wife makes Methuselah look like a spring chicken. I mean, Lizzie’s so old her dentures have dentures.

    Gabriel (angry, pulling self up to full height): I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.

    SCENE 3 (Outside of the temple):

    Crowdmember 1: Where is he? What’s taking him so long?

    Crowdmember 2: Does burning incense release carbon monoxide?

    Crowdmember 3: Or was he burning the incense that shipped in special from San Francisco?

    Zachariah emerges, motioning with hands.

    Crowdmember 1: Oh look! Charades!

    Crowdmember 2: Chicken!

    Crowdmember 1: Turkey!

    Crowdmember 3: Some kind of bird…

    Zachariah (grabs a tablet and writes): I’m apparently not the only dumb one here.

    Crowdmember 1: Angel!

    SCENE 4 (Elizabeth at home; Zechariah arrives):

    Zachariah (writing excitedly): You’re pregnant. Or going to be.

    Elizabeth: What?

    Zachariah: (waves arms)

    Elizabeth (loudly): WHAT? Have you been burning that California incense?

    Zachariah (writing): Baby, Lizzie-baby! Baby!

    Elizabeth: I’m almost pregnant? Yippee!

    Crowdmember 1: Curtain! Curtain! Somebody quick pull the curtain!

  • goodbadi

    Stereo Ethics

    I’ve written before about posting want ads to my school system’s county-wide classifieds service. Since then I’ve actually sold and bought a few things. It’s a great work perk even though it is immensely distracting: I check it every time the “new message” indicator flags, because good deals go fast.

    Recently I was too slow to grab the “make an offer, make a trade, or free” ceiling fan, but I was totally on the ball for the “free stereo.” I emailed the lady right away, and she responded promptly:

    I don’t think my daughter mentioned that this sound system does not play cds – just 78 records, cassettes and has a really good radio. It was a great system when my husband bought it, because he always bought high quality electronics.


    It has two free-standing speakers that are several feet tall and can blare through the house. The system, itself is in layers and on a special wooden stand that John has made for it. Due to retirement and dementia, John has not used the sound system for about six years. It is sitting in his office in our downstairs, but is in excellent condition.


    Would you like me to send pictures this evening?

    Pictures? Not necessary. For free, this sounded way too promising.

    A few days later M and I had an evening out, and we stopped by the lady’s house to pick up the stereo. By this time I’d convinced myself that it would be a piece-of-crap electronical setup that I’d test, dislike, and take to the landfill, and the idea of wasting precious date time on someone else’s trash was already annoying me.

    But then I saw the system: fancy-looking speakers of a brand I’d never heard of before, huge surround sound digital receiver with more ins-and-outs than you can shake a remoteless finger at, a 3-head cassette player and recorder with every bell and whistle I’ve ever imagined, an “automatic turntable system,” and….

    “Oh, it does have a CD player,” I said to the lady, who I’d learned works at the same university from which her husband retired. She’d gotten him to stay in their bedroom upstairs; occasionally I heard him call, “Honey, Is everything okay?”

    “Maybe we should hurry,” she said, “before he comes out. I don’t know how he’d take me getting rid of his stereo.”

    “I wasn’t expecting the CD player,” I said. “Do you want to keep it?”

    “I don’t know if it works,” she said. “If I’d have known that the system had a working CD player, I would have sold it. But you just take it all.”

    “Are you sure? This is a really nice system.”

    “Yes, it is. John always bought the best. We would blast Christmas music through the whole house from down here in his study.”

    I didn’t argue anymore about the CD player, of course–it was a six-disc changer–and we loaded it all up in our van and drove away.

    After setting it up the next day, I said to M, “This is the stereo system I’ve dreamed my whole life of having.” We blasted Handel’s Messiah through the house in honor of the lady’s Christmas memories, and I emailed her to thank her again.

    But I was in a bit of moral quandary: Did the lady really know what she was getting rid of, for free? Was I taking advantage of a semi-old lady with a dementia-inflicted husband? Should I offer her some money even though I wouldn’t have taken the system except for the fact it was free?

    And she really did seem happy that it was going to someone appreciative.

    And I may be able to return the favor, as she emailed a couple days later to see if I could help her set up her laptop when she gets one. I said I’d be happy to, of course, but what’s there to do in a laptop setup?

    Anyway, I just now got to some price checking on ebay, and it looks like this whole system used is worth about $225 for the components and as much for the speakers.

    Do I send her some money?

  • goodbadi

    Anniversary as Fiasco

    In some ways it was a fiasco–but in a one-on-one, relaxedly romantic sort of way.

    Our tenth-anniversary bash, a weekend away to the big-city suburbs and from everything but ourselves, started with a terrific concert by a terrific band we’d never heard of but M had researched: Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. The band’s songs were strikingly normal, with mostly unsurprising lyrics about love, rest, worries, love, and melodies to fit, but fresh and energizing (and the lead guitar player was inspiring):

    We’d brought along a borrowed GPS gadget, a lifesaver especially in the after-show rainy dark, but somehow it didn’t occur to us until we were leaving our hotel on Sunday to look at an actual map of the area around the hotel. If we would have, well, maybe we wouldn’t have had so many opportunities to throw up our hands and laugh at ourselves; our entire weekend’s adventures were actually modestly local to our hotel.

    But we’re modest locals, at heart, all the way to our aspendthrift fear that the hotel amenities weren’t complimentary. The check-in man had, after all, asked for our credit card for any “additional fees.” Was the in-room coffee free? (It was.) If I turned on my beautiful Nexus 7 and accessed the internet would we be charged? (Not for the slower speed, which was okay for checking email.) Were the sleeping potions for the taking without fiscal recourse? (Now, in hindsight and with a clean credit card statement, I see that such worries were for nought.)

    Since this was our tenth anniversary celebration, M had planned the weekend’s activities in part to mirror things we’d done on our honeymoon and with an ear toward flexibility; we were at our leisure. But it didn’t take us long to figure out that suburbia requires a certain–in our case lacking–common sense.

    For lunch on Saturday we opted for Chinese buffet. We’d been hiking at a national park to see some roaring falls; General Tsao’s chicken and high fructose syrup-glazed broccoli couldn’t have sounded better. We pulled up outside a Starbucks to use the wifi, and found that none of the Chinese restaurants nearby were buffets.

    “But you want buffet? We have buffet at other location,” one place finally said when M called.

    We quickly memorized the address and headed off to…nothing. Even if we rearranged the address street numbers, no dice. After an hour-long-plus quest for Chinese, we ended up instead at a “next generation” silver diner that served locally grown food, great fries, and, for M, a cracked glass that leaked water all over the table.

    M, frustrated, decided to use the bathroom–but was back in a moment. “There was a man in it,” she said, “cleaning.”

    Instead we played Michael Jackson and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” from the “authentic” jukebox that we later saw was spinning CDs.

    Saturday night we decided we wanted pizza. On our honeymoon we’d had it delivered to our hotel in the middle of a nighttime snowstorm, but the websites for the Domino’s and Papa John’s near us this time only said “carryout.”

    “What’s with that?” we wondered, and decided that since we had to go out anyway, we would call in a takeout order from a nearby kabobs place.

    As we walked out of the hotel to pick up our food, we passed a parked Domino’s pizza delivery car.

    After an extra round of the confusing nighttime block thanks to my split-second decision to take the wrong road, which earlier in the day had been the right road (which I had also missed), we pulled up to a hookah lounge run by impolite and tired-looking people who gave us containers of splendid-smelling food.

    A sign on the wall proudly declared, “Free delivery.”

    M grabbed some napkins and we headed back to the hotel, where we realized we hadn’t gotten forks for our salad, rice, spinach goop, and chicken.

    We used the little lids from the dressing containers as scoops instead.

    Sunday morning we decided to set out looking for donuts and coffee.

    “There’s a gas station over there,” M said.

    “Yeah, but let’s go back to near the music club–there’s got to be a coffee shop or something around there.”

    We checked the map and set out, our stomachs grumbling.

    “Nope, nothing in that plaza there. I don’t see…Hey, there’s a Giant–let’s go there. Maybe it has a cafe.”

    It didn’t, so we just bought donuts and quart of milk and headed back out to the parking lot, where we sat on the curb next to our car in the warm sun of the cool morning and then looked across the street and saw a coffee shop.

    Oh well.

    And then, when we’d finished, M said, “I’ll throw the trash away.”

    “There’s a trash can?”

    “Yep, over there–by that bench.”

    “A bench? We could have been sitting on a bench?”

    What bumpkins we are!

  • goodbadi

    Ball

    So maybe it is cool that Michelle Obama can dance like a mom, maybe because she is one:

    But it’s also way cool that the other night, while awaiting our family ball that never really got off the ground (N was going to be Bella and had named H Cinders), I spiffed up and proved that I can dance as good as any parent trying to make his daughters’ evening:

  • goodbadi

    Flattery…?

    Back in the early days of my adolescence, which hasn’t yet quite dissipated, I listened to a weekly Christian rock radio show called the Saturday Night Express. The DJ rocked the house, man, and I even won two cassettes from him in a drawing, one a compilation of a bunch of non prominent thrash-metal Christian punk bands, and the other a demo from the Rage of Angels which sported an interview with the band and one of my favorite glam songs, “Do You Still Believe in Love?” And I got saved, too, several times.


    I also took to attending the Christian rock concerts in the local college’s auditorium. The Newsboys came a few times, before they were really famous. The first time they were amazing: the guitarist ran all over the stage with his tongue hanging out, playing mesmerization itself. By the third time I saw them, though, I was less charmed even in spite of the drummer’s hydraulics setup that turned him upside down, partly since in one song the guitar player–a different guy than before and much more mellow–even ripped into his solo in the wrong key, and I saw the lead singer give him a dirty look.


    It was not as dirty, though, as the looks M gives me sometimes when I introduce our band’s songs by telling all the details all wrong, like the time I said the song we were about to sing, which she’d written just after falling in love with me, was about another guy.


    I don’t know if it was at that Newsboys performance or maybe the second that I bought one of their tapes and after the show waded through all the other adolescent misfits gathered in the lobby to get all of the band members’ signatures on the tape jacket. One of guys, when I handed him the cover to sign, looked at me a bit quizzically, then scrawled his name. Later I noticed that two of the signatures I’d gotten were identical.


    I have since given that album to a boy at my church. I’m pretty sure his family still has a tape player.


    When it comes to flattery, though–and it all does have to come to that, since this post is titled as much–one solitary incident at one of those small-town Christian concerts has always stood out to me. In the pitch dark between songs, as I recall, the lead singer had to ask the lights man to give him a little light so he could see what song was next.


    “I’m saying that to show you that we’re human, too,” he told the audience, as if… As if I’d thought him otherwise?


    I was reminded of this just a couple weekends ago when I took N to a planetarium show. In her presentation, the college student guide–who did an excellent job, really–couldn’t remember the name of a star or constellation or something I can’t remember and had to ask her fellow student for it.


    “See, I don’t know everything,” she told the gathered throng, as if…. As if we’d thought her omniscient? As if the predominantly early elementary school aged crowd was hanging on her every word and idolizing her and were now crushed?


    Maybe they were; N was in a state of constant marveling at the experience. “Are we actually moving?” she asked me at one point during the afternoon’s short dome film about molecules; later she crawled into my lap.


    Of course, neither of these As if… stories is to say I don’t flatter myself, too, mostly by writing about myself on my blog, but whenever else possible, too.


    For example, at the planetarium we were seated in front of two people with a child. During a film simulation of the Mars rover landing, one of the adults asked the other, “Is that an animal?”


    Is that an animal? I didn’t turn around to flatter myself by thinking out loud, “Umm, it’s a digitally rendered space capsule with fire coming out of its rocket boosters and so it is a piece of technology and not an animal.”


    Now, there is a fine line between flattering oneself by fully enjoying one’s excellence and just being critical of others. The previous paragraph makes a fuzzy blur of that line. That part which of it is critical I blame on my college education, which has enabled me to use words like “that part,” “which” and “of it” and during which one of my professors talked a lot about teaching critical thinking. That fall I wrote in a student-newspaper editorial, “I’m afraid I’m becoming a critical person.”


    And I have become as much, certainly.

    Just think of all I leave unspoken! Such as:


    At the doctor’s office last week N was asked three times by the same person in the space of ten extremely patronizing minutes what she did this morning.


    In response I didn’t smile sweetly and say, “You asked her this already. Do you have amnesia?”


    Then, after N had received four shots she’d heartily resisted, the same person kept saying, “You did great! Now you’re all ready for kindey-garten!”


    I again didn’t say out loud, “Actually, she cooperated about as well a chainsaw pinched by the tree it’s cutting down–she made a racket and got stuck anyway. And we’re going to have our schooling at home.” 



    And after a colleague denounced Obama’s inauguration as “taking away from” MLK Day, I didn’t say, “What? What? Did you really just say that?”


    “Actually,” I also didn’t say, “I think MLK in some ways would have been … flattered. No, honored. (Perhaps.)”

  • goodbadi

    Les Miserables: A Film of Grace

    The powerful film Les Miserables is not only wrenching in its portrayal of human squalor and immensely hopeful; it also is an expansive summary of the meaning of Christianity.

    The premise of the story is simple: a man shown grace lives a life of showing grace, while another man shown grace rejects it and in its face self destructs. That grace shown cuts each man to his core and causes an agony answerable only by reinvention. The inspiring protagonist works out his redeeming salvation by exercising that grace; the other man refuses to accept or show grace, sticks to rightful insistence, and can face living no more.

    Love versus law, giving dignity to the ashamed versus meting out just desserts, persistent hope versus historical grievance: the cinematic dichotomies are the material of a New Testament treatise, without the baggage of conditional theology. Les Miserables is but a story about people accepting (or not) the only possible enduring response to our human fallibility: grace.

    To accept that grace is to receive welcome permission to live graciously; to reject that grace advances one’s own meaningless destruction.