Streep QOTW

I read this article in the nytimes and and can’t help but comment. For a few years now, I have lamented the fact that the average joe can’t seem to differentiate a great actress from her cleavage. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Scott about the talented Ms Streep. By far, she is my favorite actress of all time and I couldn’t have said it better than he did. Think about it, unlike many of the other idolized ‘actresses’ of our time that seem to play the same role over and over, she has nothing left to prove.

QOTW:

“But real movie stars know no such limitations of context. They belong to everyone. The genius of Julia Child was to demystify her art, to insist that anyone could cook the way she did, and Ms. Streep does something similar. Not that any of us could act with such consummate skill, resourcefulness and dignity. We can’t be Meryl Streep. And yet, whoever she is pretending to be at the moment, however she is, with sublime calculation and faultless craft, being herself, we can’t help but feel that she is one of us.”

Papa

I’ve been on hiatus from blogging for the winter But now that I’m back I want to hit you with a big one. As I like to put it, “Go big or go home!”

Over the past month, I’ve had something on my mind and I’m going to try and put it in words. I want to write about God as a Father. I haven’t written much about religion on my blog – not because it’s not important to me but it’s sometimes fairly difficult to verbalize – especially to the impersonal, faceless land of bloggerdom. But I’m going to try and if anyone reads this, I hope they have a chance to pause and consider their own understanding of God (existence, attributes, character, role, etc.) as I have had the chance to do the last few weeks.

This all started one morning when I was listening to NPR on the radio (as I often do) on my way to work. Only this time, I was struggling to see the road as my eyes welled up with water. I was listening to a detailed report about the death toll in Haiti and the destitute survivors left to fight for food and shelter. I heard about tens of thousands of bodies piled in the streets and chaos everywhere. I asked myself – where is God in all this?

That night, WE and I went on a date to the DSO. As if my morning wasn’t enough, we then experienced Franz Schmidt’s Symphony No. 4, otherwise known as “A Requiem for my Daughter.” Schmidt, a widower, wrote this haunting piece shortly after the death of his only daughter – who died unexpectedly giving birth to a grandchild. Almost as a metaphor for life, the piece starts how it ends with the mourning cry of the trumpet. In between, there’s 40 minutes of beautiful orchestra – nonetheless heavy, including a more upbeat funeral march in the middle.

I don’t necessarily blame anyone who may at some time wonder if there is a God. And if so, why so much pain and suffering? What could be so great about life for the innocent child who just lost his mother and father? Surely, if God exists, what I’m experiencing now must be punishment because an all-powerful Being could have stopped this from happening, right? And if God loved me, wouldn’t He have made some way to stop this?

Last Saturday, I attended a baptism of a 16-year-old girl I know. She had decided that she wanted to enter the waters of baptism and thus, be associated with the name of Christ promising to her unseen God a life different that the one she had lead up until then. I asked myself – what made her want such a drastic change and commitment? Could this be one of the most proud and happy moments a Father in Heaven could have for his trusting child? After the ceremony as the guests waited for her to finish changing into dry clothes, we listened to an audio clip about Jesus Christ. It covered the ministry, final week, and resurrection. I found online a portion of the clip that seemed to be etched in my mind as I listened:

In that most burdensome moment of all human history, with blood appearing at every pore and an anguished cry upon His lips, Christ sought Him whom He had always sought–His Father. “Abba,” He cried, “Papa,” or from the lips of a younger child, “Daddy.”

This is such a personal moment it almost seems a sacrilege to cite it. A Son in unrelieved pain, a Father His only true source of strength, both of them staying the course, making it through the night–together.

I  remember my mission president kneeling in prayer with me and offering up to God his desires in Bulgarian. President Johnson rarely used the formal word for Father – rather he preferred to say  ’татко’ – meaning ‘Papa’ especially mid-sentence when he seemed to be pleading more than just asking.

I came to the conclusion that some children trust their parents and some parents trust their children. This trust allows for the relationship to withstand it’s fair share – and it’s trust, or faith, or hope, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it that allows us to make it through the night together.

QOTW and Memoirs

My Quote Of The Week this time is an extended comment on WE’s post. And since I’ve missed a QOTW once or twice, I’ll even throw in a bonus =)

Just recently I discovered a verse in the Old Testament that I hadn’t noticed before.

“The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”

Isaiah designed a striking image for the reader to understand guilt/shame and how difficult (and un-worth-it) it is to try and live a lie – always intending to cover up the dirt inside. But just one storm and suddenly, the litter on the beach is disgusting. To WE’s point – all choices have consequences and being free certainly isn’t about confining your every energy to hiding and/or justifying those natural consequences.

On a related but separate note, I am fascinated at the increasing number of ‘confession memoirs’ making the top-sellers list in recent years. It’s almost like the more dirty laundry you air, the more money you make.

Walls’ “The Glass Castle: A Memoir” is stunningly repulsive and yet captivating enough to make you strangely connect with a set of characters that you think surely must not be real, rational people making such incredibly irrational and poor choices.

This week Mary Karr, author of “The Liars’ Club”, has written and released her 3rd memoir – “Lit”.  Although I’ve not read this telling of her after-high-school life, this week I read the following excerpt from the book:

“Only an alcoholic can so discombobulate her insides that she might weigh in her hands two choices – (a) get drunk and drive into stuff with more molecular density than she has, and (b) be a present and loving mother to her son – and, on picking the latter, plunge into despair.”

I wonder if memoirs similar to these are such good sellers because readers are drawn to stories about others with similar problems to their own  – or if they just like to read them to feel better about their own lives. Either way, I’m sure that if you were to paint a picture of Karr’s new book – it would look just like the beach shot above. I guess the best we can hope is that readers (especially young ones!) are smart enough to learn from the mistakes of others and wisely choose good over bad. As Isaiah so poetically penned, it’s the good choices in life that give the soul ‘peace like a river!’

Faith and Reason

This will be the first of a new ‘Quote of the Week’ (QOTW) series on PTM. I’ll probably focus on current issues as well as those that I am more interested in exploring. You are welcome to guess who might have voiced these words. There will be no prize…only the satisfaction of knowing that you were right. =) And my hope is to promote learning something new and/or seeing something from a new perspective. Feel free to simply read or to read and comment to voice your own opinion of the quote.

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“I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. No matter how much we may want to fudge it – indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory – the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.

In this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. Stand as a lighthouse.