2024-09-27T14:10:52+00:00

Which One Is It?

September 27, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/2 Comments

What’s the trait I value most about myself? That is an interesting question the site is posting today… There are 2 kinds of people in the world, ones who see everything good about themselves and those who see nothing good about themselves. Of course, we all have some of both, which reminds me of an exchange in Kill Bill, vol 2 between Bud and Elle:

Budd: So, which “R” you filled with? Elle Driver: What? Budd: They say the number one killer of old people is retirement. People got a job to do, they tend to live a little bit longer so they can do it. I’ve always figured that warriors and their enemies share the same relationship. So, now that you’re not gonna have to face your enemy no more on the battlefield, which “R” you filled with? Relief … or regret? Elle Driver: A little bit of both. Budd: I’m sure you do feel a little bit of both. But I know that you feel one more than you feel the other. And the question was, which one is it?

Elle feels regret, but that’s not important. If you haven’t seen the film, you really should, it’s amazing. But I often think about these “2 kinds of people,” Beatles or Stones scenarios. Today it’s All good v. Nothing good? The site prompt wants to know which one I am. I happen to be considering something just like this – it’s actually the reason I opened this iPad this morning.

The working definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results, right? And it drives me crazy when others follow the same roads that are hurting them. It’s like re-watching a horror movie where we keep yelling at the screen, “don’t go in there!!!” But they always do. They don’t do anything different, keep swinging the same wrecking ball at their lives and reaping the consequences.

I have this theory (I have many theories) that most of us don’t want advice, we simply want you to say yes, we’re right. We don’t want to change, the pain of moving from this spot has to exceed the pain of staying, and no matter how much that pain is, it’s often less than the fear of new pain. So, I walk with them (I like that about me), kindly, hoping they choose another path before they catch on fire again and I am there to help put them out. I reason that, eventually, they will open their eyes and choose a new path. That’s why you want me walking next to you. I like that about me. I’m not judgy and I’ll let you crash, if that’s what you want, then I’ll get down next to you while we pick up the pieces. (It’s also why you don’t want me walking next to you, if you happen to be the ultra-rare kind of person who wants me to grab the wheel before impact.) This is frustrating to watch the people we love self-destruct.

There is a problem with my explanation…and my frustration. I have a poor physical self-image (getting better) and poor eating habits (not yet getting too much better). These 2 things are friends and feed each other. I eat the food that makes me feel like garbage and makes my body less than aesthetically pleasing (at least to me) and, because of this, sabotage myself by eating more of that trash. This has to stop, if I want to live the sort of life I deserve.

In most areas of my life, I’m very disciplined. I like that about me a lot. But in this area, I am completely insane. My explanation has a fatal flaw, and it’s that I use the word “they,” because it’s not they at all. It’s me, it’s us. I don’t like this mirror, because I don’t like this part of me.

Now, I’m going to get to work today digging into my soul and psyche, trying to use my imagination to shift my perspective. But first, which one am I? I don’t like some things about me, that is absolutely true. But I like many more, and that number keeps growing for the same reason I keep walking paths with others long after everybody else peels off: hope. I am a genuinely hopeful man, I believe in you and I now believe in me. Of course, this is rooted in my belief in Jesus, which requires me to love us enough to hope. That’s my favorite thing about me, the trait I value the most, but I guess the truth is that it’s Jesus that is that part of me. So, He’s my favorite part of me. And He’s my favorite part of you, too. That’s why we can keep messing up, living loops, I can keep eating like a manic 6 year old, and it doesn’t define us, we are still beautiful, we are still worthy, we are still lovable, and we are still loved. And these same still’s are also why I, why we, can be free to change.

The Oppenheimer Situation

August 16, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I hadn’t watched Oppenheimer until yesterday. I would’ve told you that I just hadn’t gotten around to it, but now I know it was probably on purpose. This is the same reason I don’t re-watch Inside Out and will never see Inside Out 2; they’re excellent, but simply too heavy for me.

Oppenheimer is the account of the creation of the atomic bomb, and might be the best film I’ve ever seen. This is not to say I liked it, I don’t think I did. It’s perfectly written, directed and acted, there is no imaginable way upon which it could be improved.

Every now and again, with truly great art, immediately after closing the book or the credits roll or the final notes fade into silence, I cry and cry. In most cases (like, say, “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,” by the Smiths, or My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, by Fredrik Backman), it’s just the overwhelming beauty that does it. A newborn baby or a sunset are much the same sensation – a gift perfectly created, like a hand that reaches through your chest and pries open your heart just a little to pour some new flavor of love, forcing it to expand and grow 2 sizes in an instant. You wonder if you’ll survive, if you can physically take this, but you can. In fact, you’re made for this, you just forgot for a minute. The impact leaves you different, in every good way, like a return to who you are.

…Obviously, words aren’t enough.

Oppenheimer is that sort of thing, but it’s also something else. It’s the account of man’s inhumanity to man. Progress, in this instance, is the ability to kill more and more in less and less time, most efficiently. In the last line of the film, Oppenheimer reminds Albert Einstein of a conversation on if the explosion would set off a chain reaction that would destroy the world, then says, “I believe we did.”

This movie is like the inverse of the climax of The Dark Knight. In that film, the Joker outfits 2 cruise ships (1 full of Gotham citizens, the other full of Gotham prisoners) with explosives and the detonator for the other. Then, he gives them 1 hour to act, to destroy the other before they could do the same to you. This is the principle motivation for Oppenheimer: kill them all before they can kill you.

Where the Dark Knight was Nolan’s hope for our good, for our redemption, Oppenheimer is much more cynical. One side actually pushes the detonator. The most disturbing thing is that the Dark Knight is a work of fiction, while Oppenheimer is horrifyingly real.

A University Tour

July 30, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

My youngest son is deciding on where he will spend the 4-ish years after this one. (First, that clumsy sentence refers to him being a HS senior, we know where he’ll be this year. And second, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN??? Yesterday, he was coming home from the hospital as a newborn and today we are visiting colleges. Sigh.) Anyway, we visited a small liberal arts university in northern New Jersey. To be honest, none of us had very high hopes, but our expectations were quickly demolished and this cool little campus in the woods became the front runner.

These “welcome” days are a bit like a timeshare presentation. For a few hours, a team of admissions counselors try to sell you on their wildly over-priced institution and give you some swag and lunch if you manage to make it through. The day begins in a room with a perfectly produced video and ends with a campus tour.

[Lunch was sort of horrible. We ate in a cafeteria filled with a million soccer-campers, sweaty, dirty & screaming, running amok like in a comedy movie about an overwhelmed substitute teacher who, by the end, discovers how to reach these hellions, teaching them about themselves, self-worth, cooperation, and learning about himself in the process, before running to the love interest he has overlooked for too long in the climax. We never got to the redeeming part, we only suffered through Act I.]

They split us up and assigned us to a leader. Our tour guide introduced herself. She was a lovely young woman, who was seemingly active in every club and activity they offered. And as we started, I realized how mistaken I was about the nature of this tour. She ran ahead, pointing and gesturing, possibly about the information she was maybe giving. It’s impossible to know for sure, no one could hear her. We could barely keep up. We flew into a couple of buildings and out the other side. I wasn’t aware of a time limit or a competition between the guides to finish first, but one clearly existed. Maybe she told us about it. Who knows? I stopped to use the bathroom at the end and came out to find my group gone. I retraced my steps and walked outside, hoping for a glimpse of someone/something I recognized. My son called to me from the porch of a building I had never seen (I still don’t know what the building was).

I’m thinking about it today and laughing. Especially as the school advisors hit such home runs as to make the silly, pointless tour race unimportant.

A few observations.

She would sometimes turn around and say, “Any questions?” And it was hilarious, reminding me of how the Angel will sometimes say, after compiling a list of some kind, out of the clear blue sky, “Anything else?” I have no idea what is on the list, making it impossible to know if there’s anything else. As for the tour, questions about what? How about, “what is this building?” “Where are we? What is this place?”

And that reminds me about life. If there is a guide, they seem to have a different objective. Where am I? What am I doing here? My son and I wandered off the path a few times to explore, I waited for a woman who stopped to fill her water bottle, we all connected over our shared circumstance. It’s confusing, but the people make it all worthwhile. Maybe the stated plot isn’t what we’re doing at all, and the side trails and parentheticals are where the learning takes place. Are we the kind of people who run through our responsibilities, chopping wood, getting the tour done at any cost, or are we open and available for others? What is this place? And why?

We were in one room, and as the Angel took her camera out to snap a photo of our son, the guide (maybe unaware of her intentions?) turned the light off and left. I wonder if our guide sits down to eat?

What are our expectations for things, people, activities? Are we able to see past them, to see the beauty in what is actually there, instead of the static notions/beliefs we have in our heads? (Those questions make me think of political debates and the new Deadpool movie.)

What are we doing here? Everywhere we go, every situation, is asking, isn’t it? But maybe, yesterday, my boy heard and will, ironically, end up finding out his answer there, in the very place where a lovely young woman posed the question to all of us during her ridiculous running tour.

What Bothers Me

July 15, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking, “what bothers me and why?”

There’s a song by the criminally underrated Kate Nash (if you don’t believe me, listen to “Foundations,” or “Later On,” and that’ll settle it) called “I Hate Seagulls.”

Here are the lyrics, “I hate seagulls and I hate being sick. I hate burning my finger on the toaster and I hate nits. I hate falling over, I hate grazing my knee. I hate picking off the scab a little bit too early. I hate getting toothache, I hate when it’s a piss-take. I hate all the mistakes I make. I hate rude, ignorant bastards and I hate snobbery. I hate anyone who, if I was serving chips, wouldn’t talk to me.”

That’s a pretty good list. I don’t like rude, ignorant bastards or those who don’t talk to those who they see as less than. I don’t like being sick, and don’t even bring up toothaches. I wouldn’t say I hate seagulls, but I see why she might. I am bothered by unkindness, injustice, and kids who hog gym equipment with no regard for the rest of us.

But I am not thrilled with the question. I now hear this song as a response to this site, who asked her the same question. And as we begin the list, it becomes clear to both of us that we aren’t really interested in answering it anymore. There’s a new list.

[Once, in college, a terrific professor gave us an assignment for an essay, and I wrote on a completely different topic. At the end, I wrote something like, “it’s true that this was not what you asked, but this is what I care a great deal about, and I think you’d rather read that than something I don’t.” I resigned myself to the F I probably deserved, and when he handed my paper back and stopped and called my name to the class, I knew he was right. My insubordination was perfect for him to make an example of. But he didn’t. He told everyone to remember my name, because I was an artist. My paper was an A+ and it’s impossible to understate the significance of a fresh word to a boy searching for himself and his place in the world. His actions meant more than I could ever have expressed. His name was John Synodinas, and he was the greatest.]

Anyway, we decide we don’t want to think about the things we don’t like, so we answer a new “site prompt.”

Ms Nash continues, “But…I have a friend With whom I like to spend Any time I can find with. I like sleeping in your bed. I like knowing what is going on inside your head. I like taking time and I like your mind. And I like when your hand is in mine. I like getting drunk on the dunes by the beach. I like picking strawberries. I like cream teas. And I like reading ghost stories. And my heart skips a beat every time that we meet. It’s been a while and now your smile is almost like a memory. But then you’re back and I am fine. ‘Cause you’re with me and I’m in love with you. And I can’t find the words to make it sound unique. But honestly you make me strong. I can’t believe I’ve found someone This kind, I hope we carry on ‘Cause you’re so nice and I’m in love with you.”

Right? That’s a muuuuch better list. I don’t like ghost stories, and I really really really hate drunk, but that doesn’t matter. This is her list and not mine, and one of the best thing about other people is that they are different than us. They’re weird and quirky and care about all sorts of things we don’t, and that is awesome. A monochromatic world is so dumb and boring. I love that she likes reading ghost stories. We all love when your hand is in mine.

The once (and probably future) President was shot yesterday, and there are a million things I could say about that (and at the end, you’d still not know who I vote for or what party is on my registration card). But what I’ll say is that the person who decided to go to that event and pull that trigger probably spent the last several weeks and months compiling lists of all the things he hates, unable to see the absolutely necessary second half. He had people who loved him, he loved macaroni & cheese (because everybody does), he’d love Kate Nash. And when you have a great 2nd half, the first gets very small very fast. Of course, there is always a first half, we all have things that get to us, but sheesh, it’s that wonderfully beautiful second half that makes everything worthwhile.

People who have great 2nd halves usually don’t shoot at somebody. Like John Synodinas, they’re too busy loving us and speaking life into our dark places to have any time or energy for tearing anything down.

Dinner

July 12, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site post is asking who I’d invite to a dinner party, and it’s too easy. I’d invite the same people with whom I spent the last week; the Angel and my 2 sons. We were on a family vacation. This year, we chose not to go to the beach (well, not exactly…the Angel and I went on a beach trip a few weeks ago, just the 2 of us) and to, instead, spend the week in the woods of Pennsylvania.

Last Sunday was the 12th anniversary of the faith community we started in our house, the Monday we set out for adventure (sort of). We stayed at an Airbnb, went to a waterpark, which was much better than I expected, and to a small tourist town, which was worse that I expected. We did other things, but mostly just were with each other. It’s such a blessing to actually like your family, 5 stars, highly recommended.

So, I’d like. To have dinner with them. I’d like to share bites of our meals, steal fries, laugh out loud, and discover brand new facets of the people we are becoming in every conversation and every precious moment.

The youngest will leave for college after this year, the oldest is now working at a terrific job he loves. Thankfully, they are both here now, but they will not always be. The youngest also has a fantastic girlfriend, so we seem to be 5, often. We have to love them, but as you are well aware, we don’t have to like them. They’re smart, hilarious, quick-witted and not as deep as they will be. They hide some things they don’t yet realize they don’t have to carry alone. They’re a little unsure of themselves in some situations, confident and purposeful in others. A nice metaphor for identity and comfort in who we are, is the struggle to find a place to put your hands. These 2 boys are amazing to watch find where they are going to put theirs.

And my feelings for the Angel have been well documented. In one of the shops in that little overrated town, I saw a crafted sign that said, “I’d rather fight with you than kiss anyone else.” That’s true, when the person you’re fighting with is the woman of your dreams. But that’s enough about her, you already know.

And now we’re home from vacation, and just finished one of these perfect dinner parties. And I am overwhelmed with gratitude.

My Favorite Thing

June 17, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking a fun question, “What is my favorite thing about myself?” Now, this is a space we don’t often like to explore, either because we can’t see the great in us, or because we can, but don’t want to seem arrogant or boastful.

Humility isn’t thinking less of ourselves, like one of those negative voices in our heads that lie like rugs and tell us we’re not enough, that we’re worthless. Humility is an accurate picture of ourselves, that’s all. It’s seeing, acknowledging the beauty in us, as well as the not so beautiful parts. It is knowing who we are, honestly, with all that entails.

I have believed those voices for many of my years, only relatively recently have I allowed some new programming in to recalibrate my self-image. And, baby, that’s a nice, new development.

I love how much I love music, how art touches me in the deepest reaches of my soul. I love that my heart responds in the way it does to Morrissey. Not everyone’s does; those people are wrong, and I’m sad for them. I love the color of my eyes, and the shape of my head (to make my shaved bald dome not look so odd.) I can catch and throw baseballs easily.

I wonder if tomorrow’s site prompt will be the things we like least about ourselves? I could/would answer that, too.

But my favorite thing about me is… Well, there are 2. First, you know that friend who is enthusiastic about everything? This ride, this movie, this song, this moment is his/her favorite EVER. That’s me. I’m like a golden retriever. I’m pretty present. I leave my phone in the car so that you are the only one on earth for me right now. I get excited for new releases, lose sleep over your wedding, because these are the moments of my life (our lives) and they are real and awesome. Built into this is immense, overwhelming gratitude.

And the second is how sensitive & empathetic I am. I feel everything (for me and for you) soooo deeply.

Of course, as it usually works, the best thing is also the worst thing. I do have to be careful of being what’s called a ‘prisoner of the moment.’ I am an “always” and “never” person, because this is happening now, which means it’s the only thing happening.

AND, my soft mushy heart makes my life significantly harder and infinitely more painful. It’s wonderful, and it’s horrible.

But these things are me, how I was created, the gifts I’ve been given, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

23

May 29, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Last time, we talked about “having it all” or living a “best life.” This week was my 23rd wedding anniversary, so maybe I should have mentioned that.

I’m a simple man, and that’s a very good thing, because my life and ministry is primarily to climb into complicated, chaotic situations. Work, for me, is connection/relationships and doing the best I can to bring peace and hope into anxious, hopeless, sometimes wildly unstable spaces. This is work, but the thing about having identical personal & vocational missions is there’s no division between on and off. I don’t really have days off. But I don’t want them, either. To me, this is purpose, and it’s heavy and keeps me up lots of nights, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.

However, the truth is, I couldn’t do it at all if my home & marriage wasn’t a place of physical, emotional, spiritual rest. It’s very difficult to step into the drama of others when your life is dramatic. There’s simply not enough left to fully engage with the storms others are facing when we’re exhausted with our own raging storms. If I’m being punched in the face, it’s harder to notice your fight, much less come to your aid.

This brings me to the Angel. She’s calm and easy. It’s 23 years but sometimes feels like 100, but, at other times, feels like I met her yesterday. I don’t know what 23 years feels like, or should feel like, but what I know is that I am completely, totally open with her (as the Bible says, “naked and unashamed”), but I also get butterflies when I kiss her, just like the first time.

I told her last night, that I very often focus (at least out loud) on the ‘lover’ aspect of our relationship. I very often tell her how foxy she is, and how 23 years of marriage has done nothing to dull my attraction to her. So, on a public pie chart, that’s the biggest piece. But on the pie chart of my heart, it’s probably a smaller piece than the rest. She’s my best friend, my partner, an inspiration and model for living a life of faith. She gives strength by simply being who she is in a world that isn’t always kind to the beautiful ones. Kind, merciful, the best mother to her sons and mentor to the rest of the people lucky enough to be in her orbit. She’s creative and confident, capable, talented, driven, brilliant, gifted hand over fist by her Creator. Did I mention knock-down gorgeous? How staggering is it that when thinking/speaking about the best looking woman in the world, her looks aren’t anywhere close to the best thing about her? We’ve built a calm life from the ground up, so that we can walk anywhere, enter into any circumstance, because this soft, loving home is waiting to refill all we’ve lost outside.

We make choices, right? The best choices feel easy & obvious in retrospect, but upon further inspection, require days and years of building. The path to our particular marriage and home is marked with uncomfortability and perseverance (only Heaven knows how many arguments and sleepless nights this path has contained, so far), where it might have been easier to check out (in whatever form “checking out” takes) than to keep building. “Having it all” certainly isn’t easy, and it has lots and lots of exit ramps, but those obstacles don’t make it less of a blessing. Maybe they make it more. More significant, more valuable, more our own.

I have no idea why she’d marry someone like me, but that’s her problem, not mine. My responsibility in all of this is to remain grateful, with wide open eyes to this amazing life I’ve been given.

One Small Step

May 13, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life? That’s the site prompt today, and probably deserves an answer.

I watched 2 documentaries and a movie this weekend. I’m still recovering from a cold that I am getting more and more resigned to carrying for the rest of my life. And it was raining, so it was a perfect weekend to climb under a blanket and watch something other than the NBA playoffs.

Finding Andrea is a 3 episode series following the disappearance of a woman in Kentucky who, incidentally, belonged to an organization that searched for (and was instrumental in finding) missing persons. She was complex, hiding the many facets of her life to the point that very few would claim to have actually known her. She died having lived a mostly dishonest, inauthentic life with lots & lots of secret compartments. She was probably killed by her sister and her boyfriend (at least that’s the implication I took from the doc). I don’t imagine we’ll ever know, because Andrea wasn’t the only one in the family who wasn’t interested in honesty. Her own dad would rather protect the possibly guilty daughter/boyfriend (who didn’t participate in the film) than be further torn apart by the truth. I guess I can’t blame him, who knows what I’d do in his place??

Max Joseph was a co-host of the Catfish TV show, and created a documentary called 15 Minutes of Shame with Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky knows of what she speaks, as her life was torn apart by a series of very public poor decisions and behavior. This film looked at a guy who tried to sell and sanitizer at a ridiculous price during COVID, a woman who sent an ugly joke on Facebook and became the object of national scorn, and a man who was “cancelled” over a mistaken hand gesture in a company van. We think we know these people based on 1 small aspect of their personalities or an isolated incident, sometimes misunderstood, always without any shred of context. I don’t know Andrea’s dad, and to assume I know his motivations based on 2 or 3 clips is the height of arrogant condescension. Of course, he seems like something, the hand sanitizer guy seems like a scumbag, the woman seems heartlessly callous (as do the political pundits who condemned her). The hand gesture guy is obviously pretty silly, and the product of a culture gone power-crazy. But how do we actually know? I bet I seem all kinds of ways, based on extracted phrases in any one of these posts, or in overheard conversations at my dinner table.

The movie was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and was absolutely as great as I remembered. It’s funny and feels good. But what’s notable is that no one is played as only a fool. Everyone acts like a fool at times, everyone is embarrassing in moments, but they all just seemed like “normal people.” Sort of. Admittedly, most are caricatures, but the caricatures leaned towards a positive, good nature rather than the mean, minimizing, debasing cartoons we are usually fed. I would guess that Ms. Vardalos sees the rest of us, sees “normal people,” through beautiful lenses that believe the best. I would guess that she likes us. That her idea of “abnormal” is abuse, betrayal, and violence. I believe the same.

We are made to walk together, to hold hands, and to love each other, and I’ll never be convinced otherwise. Maybe the shamed examples in 15 Minutes weren’t sorry they were caught as much as they were heartbroken they were led down a path so antithetical to their design. I thought the fiction of the movie was far closer to truth than the documentaries, because it showed the world in which I live, where the overwhelming majority are like you, trustworthy and awesome. Monsters exist, but in such small numbers, they stand out like neon signs at midnight. We’ve just bought lies for too long, choosing to acknowledge the missteps and failures as complete pictures, that we stopped seeing the beauty in each other.

I don’t know who Monica Lewinsky is, no matter how many pages I can read on the internet about her. And I’ll say the improvement I can make is to stop pretending I do.

You Just Are.

April 29, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Here’s the first thing I read today (from Morning Brew): “In unsurprising news, middle school kids in Norway have been feeling mentally healthier and performing better academically since a public health initiative banned smartphones in schools, according to a new study. After three years of the policy, girls’ GPAs increased, while visits to mental health professionals decreased by 60%—and girls from lower-income families benefited the most. There wasn’t much effect on boys’ academic standings, but both boys and girls experienced 43%–46% less bullying after putting their phones away.”

And here’s the second (from Mark Manson’s newsletter): “We are often drawn to chaotic romantic partners because their chaos guarantees that we will feel needed…We can become insecure around stable romantic partners because we worry that they’ll never fully need us. And that’s because: they won’t.”

The first one is something we would call fairly obvious, right? Social media and screen time are behind any number of concerning effects. So, why will we not follow in Norway’s footsteps? And further, why do we need studies to make decisions to eliminate our phones in schools? Why wouldn’t we just choose to ban our own phones for hours, during the day? Why don’t we turn them off from time to time? We won’t, but studies like this make me ask why not.

The second is less apparent, maybe. I’ve often wondered why we stay in overly dramatic relationships, is it really as simple as our own insecurity? We’re not actually needed, chaos doesn’t require us, just more chaos. Drama doesn’t care what the drama is, or who is involved, as long as there is drama.

Now, is it possible they’re connected? If our phones are the new most important relationship in our lives, our de facto romantic partners, do we allow the chaos and damage they inflict, because they make us feel needed? We quickly, instinctually, reach when it beckons. Silence is evidence of loneliness, a lack of “likes” shows our irrelevance or unworthiness. I only exist if others see and comment. The internet is chaotic by nature, it doesn’t neeeed us, wouldn’t miss us if we unplugged, the ocean doesn’t care of we drown. Mental health is of no consequence to the machines in our hands. But that doesn’t mean we don’t believe we’re necessary, important, and valuable to their survival, especially the quality of their lives.

Your value isn’t tied to followers or subscribers. Or to your girlfriend or boyfriend, for that matter. All of this is based on lies that our performance is the most important thing about us, bringing us back to the first question we ask (and keep asking ever after): Am I good enough?

That answer is yes, no matter how crazy your life is or how many messages are in your inbox. You just are.

Weirdos

April 17, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I watched Asteroid City and Red, White, & Wasted last weekend. They’re quite different, but they share some characteristics. Or, at least I thought they shared some characteristics.

Asteroid City is a film made by Wes Anderson, the famously quirky creator of gems like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. He’s totally unique, his movies look like no one filmmaker’s. Not only did no one else make them, no one else could possibly have made them As a matter of fact, he’s a pretty big exception.

Every genre, begins with a true innovation (inasmuch as anything is true innovation), and is immediately followed by a B group that drives roads recently paved, then C, D, E, & F groups, that simply copy a commercial blueprint. When this happens, the genre is “Dead,” and we all mourn the A’s and move on. Take grunge music, for example. Nirvana, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, and others were the A set, cutting paths into landscape where none exist. Then, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, et al, came along, who were sometimes great, followed by a few averages, then by absolute trash like Puddle of Mudd and Ugly Kid Joe, who looked the part and sometimes sounded the part but lacked the soul of the A’s and B’s, for whom the music wasn’t a moneymaking enterprise, and was dna.

Wes Anderson has no B’s. No one even tries to be as idiosyncratic as he is.

I liked Asteroid City very much, but I love weird things. I love cultures, people and ideas that are different from my own. This is an odd movie. I don’t pretend to know what it means, or really even exactly what happened, but my understanding isn’t always necessary to an experience.

Now, Red, White & Wasted is a documentary that, on the surface, seems up my alley. I appreciate weirdos doing their weird things, freaks who are freaks – in other words, people being just who they are, who are different and embrace that other-ness. They’re weirdos, just like you and certainly like me and probably all of our favorite people. The caveat to my love of these films is that the filmmakers cannot judge the subjects. If the people behind the camera are making fun of the people in front of it, it’s mean, smug and condescending, and I can’t stand mean, smug, and condescending. Different people aren’t lesser people, obviously, they’re just different. Wes Anderson knows this.

ANNND, the documentary has to have an arc; a beginning and an end. That’s the genius of documentary filmmakers, they find the narratives in our real life clusters. Maybe Red, White, & Wasted didn’t laugh at it’s people, but they didn’t celebrate them, didn’t appreciate them, and didn’t show any sort of movement. Now, it’s entirely possible there was no movement among all of the gross -isms and the horrific degradation of human beings, especially the women. But I have trouble believing that. There is always movement, always understanding. (Ok, maybe not always.)

So, Asteroid City was beautiful and weird, and it didn’t matter too much that I didn’t perfectly understand what in the world was going on. That sounds just like life, and I sure love that, so maybe that explains my perspective.

Red, White & Wasted, on the other hand, was weird and ugly, and I knew very well what was happening. I just love people too much to like it.

Love With A Capital L

A journey towards living an inspired life of love in the modern world

Tag: beauty