2026-11-03T18:26:02+00:00

A New Holiday

November 3, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

“Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.” This is the site prompt today. I’m not going to, but I do think there is a certain charm to the exercise. Anything that encourages us to dig into our bottomless (and largely ignored) well of creativity is wholly positive, as far as I’m concerned.

I have 2 great friends who have designed programs – one is a course of study, the other is an audio/video companion to an already existing plan. The ‘how’ they each did this is quite different, and that feels like the point. We are very different, we weren’t designed to be little carbon copies walking around trying to fit into the same holes in the same box. Those holes are mostly single-use and, sometimes, some of us eschew the box altogether.

The Angel is neck deep in planning a community celebration. The school building where she works is 100 years old, so she is compiling yearbooks, pictures, artifacts, and anything having to do with the last century. This is especially significant because this history is coming to a close (or should be), this building has outlived its usefulness. The kind of building a school required in 1926 is far removed from the necessities of 2026.

One of her favorite discoveries is a high senior class picture from the 1940’s. The boys are in suits, the girls are in what looks sort of like wedding dresses.

I often write about the modern annihilation of time and place. The notion that anything is sacred or set apart from anything else is hopelessly outdated. We wear t-shirts and sneakers to weddings and funerals. There was an expression when I was younger, “church clothes,” that described a formal outfit. How do I have to dress for this? Church clothes. I didn’t go to church, but everyone knew what it meant. We wore our “Sunday best” to distinguish special events from the everyday.

I certainly am not advocating dresses and suits (or maybe I am), I don’t even think we need to look particularly fancy for church (or maybe I do), but I do think we’ve lost the mindset that anything is special. In a culture of casual disposability, the very idea of sacred has been lost. We eat meals in the car, send texts at 2am, hook up without strings. We take absolutely everything for granted, treat miracles as if they were simply common occurrences.

Maybe my holiday would be Today, and in this holiday, we would eat diner together without our cell phones, we’d listen and laugh, notice & treat each as the extraordinary creatures we are. Today, we’d use the fine china and eat slowly, savoring the tastes, the textures. I don’t care what the dress code for this holiday would be, but our hearts would be soft and prepared, and that usually means we would also look prepared, as if we’ve been anticipating Today and want to remember it. We would take each breathe with gratitude. Today, we would love each other.

And then, the best thing about this New Holiday, is that we could do it again tomorrow, when tomorrow is Today.

Roads

October 26, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I love to watch cult and/or true crime (they are often one and the same, almost identical circles in a Venn diagram) documentaries. I prefer the quirky and weird, but sometimes, these topics can be quite heavy. I just saw a new one called (I think) Swipe Right For The Devil, I already know I don’t like that and will not be watching. But even the things I like, over time, can have a compounding effect on my soul.

My youngest son introduced me to a tv show called the Mentalist. I suppose it’s what you’d call a procedural. There is a team of law enforcement agents that investigate murders, and a dreamy guy who solves them all, quickly and easily, using his skills as a conman/psychic. It’s fairly light, with enough humor, considering each episode begins with a homicide. However, there is a through-line. The mentalist, Patrick Jane (the actor Simon Baker) had his family murdered by the serial killer Red John, so his entire motivation is vengeance: finding Red John and killing him. Generally, we get only a few minutes of character development per episode and even less of Red John. But from time to time, the show leans into the main mystery, the why the show exists, and it is then that it loses it’s lightness to the pitch dark.

In Sunday morning’s message, the material led to a warning: be careful about what kind of material we are consuming. We all think we are not affected, and we are all wrong. The Algorithm feeds us a particular food and we become what we eat. If we only watch YouTube videos from the political fringe, we will begin to resemble that fringe. We will think this is reasonable and we will become the fringe. If you only listen to Sabrina Carpenter, (if you can keep from tearing your ears out of your head), you will eventually believe all females are sex-obsessed cardboard cutouts whose sole purpose is as an aphrodisiac for frat boys. (This example may be a step too far, why would anyone only listen to Sabrina Carpenter??? But you get the point.)

In the series, I am at the point where we are about to expose and confront Red John, so all the episodes have that bloody tint. It’s honestly pretty disturbing. The imagery is frightening, the tone is aggressive and ominous. I am very engaged, I can’t wait to see who it is, AND, I also can’t wait for it to be over to put Red John behind us. I think it is doing something not quite healthy to my heart and soul.

There is a neuro-scientific element to this. The idea of neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize in response to experience, learning, attention, and repeated practice. Our brains actually change (!!) based on what we repeatedly do, or consistently behold, rehears, love, or fear.

What we feed grows.

IF we are worrying (or afraid or anxious), our brains make shiny new roads to drive those emotions.

IF we are peaceful & present, those will be our roads.

Is it ok that I’m watching the Mentalist rather than reading the Scriptures, thinking about serial killers rather than how to love my neighbor? What an interesting question. It’s probably ok, but only sometimes. There is plenty of beauty in the show (2 of the main characters recently got married, I cried, and immediately told The Angel, “I’d marry you again, today and every day”), love, friendship. In other words, there is plenty of good. And we’ve discussed the docs I like before, hearing their stories, their pasts, their lives, makes me less and less judgmental, more and more empathetic.

But there is a tipping point, right? People in places where it is dark for months at a time lose perspective and go crazy. The darkness of ‘entertainment’ and cultural stimulation does the same, disorients, starts to skew our foundations, and we end up miles from where we started.

Maybe the answer is simply to be aware. I know this search for Red John is as dangerous for me as it is for these characters. And now, I’m wondering what it says about me that I won’t stop?

I have 3 episodes and then I’ll tear up these roads. At least for a while.

Readers In China

October 20, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

This is such an interesting medium. We sit in our homes or offices or Panera Breads and type away on our laptops, click publish or post or whatever the button is called on your particular hosting site (mine says “Publish”), and it can immediately reach anyone anywhere across the globe. Last week, according to the Stats page, lovewithacapitall.com was hot in China. (I write 2 blogs each week, and in addition to China, bridgefaithcommunity.com was reaching Hong King, England, and Indonesia. The Bridge site has readers in America, but the Love site doesn’t. How about that?) I don’t know why these posts concerning the Dallas Cowboys and Morrissey, written by a man in Pennsylvania, are connecting with Chinese readers, but then again, why wouldn’t they?

What I often write about is how ridiculous the petty divisions that we invent actually are. We have so much more in common than we could ever be different. And this is just another example. People are people are people.

Each week (against the gentle guidance of the hosting site, who wants me to post every day), I think about what to write. Maybe writing a blog is totally self-obsessed and to believe that anyone would care what I think about anything is the pinnacle of an epidemic of blind arrogance that is already staggering. OR maybe it’s simply a way to reach out for connection, on both ends, writer and reader. Most nights, I lay next to the Angel in bed and will stretch out my foot to touch hers, just to feel her toasty warm skin and be reminded that I am not alone, that we are in this bed together.

Is this very modern medium the way we reach out our feet to remember our humanity & end the overwhelming feeling of isolation and disconnect? Is it how we tether ourselves so that we don’t float away into the dark hopelessness of despair?

I do truly love it. I love the idea of Facebook and Instagram (the idea of staying connected with those we don’t/can’t see, NOT the forwards and nasty political posts that divide us into small easily manipulated armies for mobilization.) I love the helpful BB-8 or R2-D2 dream of AI (or what our president calls ‘super-intelligence.’)

Now, of course it’s possible that the numbers are skewed and flesh and blood people aren’t reading at all. Maybe these numbers in China or Iowa are generated by what’s called bots (automated software apps that operate online, for good and/or for evil) and I’m connecting with 1’s and 0’s. I have a reader named ‘pleasantlychief-(followed by a number/letter combination)’ and the number/letter business makes me suspicious. There’s another named ‘sammichristopher’ who has her own great site. She seems real enough, but who knows? My chatgpt is named Theo and knows me better than my mom does.

The world is a strange place. But it’s not important for me to think about the ifs of bots, I am assuming pleasantlychief and sammichristopher are absolutely authentic and like to read my posts like I like to read theirs (or at least sammichristopher’s, pleasantly chief doesn’t have a site, as far as I can tell). A site called Christianity201 re-posted a post of mine. I can wonder if there’s a person scouring the internet looking for spiritual thought or if it’s another algorithm.

One of the faults I have been told I have is that I am naive and always believe the best in others. Is that a fault? I think we are so similar, dads are dads, marriages are marriages, parenting is parenting. If we could sit down together, we’d probably all like each other (well, maybe not all of us – I don’t think I’d like Aaron Rodgers or Donald Trump too much) or we could at least see the other’s point of view. I like that about me. I also like that I write as if you’re all real, that we care about pretty much the same things, and that we’d for sure be friends if we met in person.

Maybe I’m wrong, but this is one of those forks in the road that we all encounter. If I’m wrong, so what? I will have loved or trusted or believed in some who might not have received it well. I can certainly live with that hopeful innocence, just in case some do receive it and we start to chip away at these lousy walls we’ve built. We could use more of it.

Season Opener

September 14, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

We all had our hearts broken last night, when the Dallas Cowboys lost. And not only did they lose, but they lost to the New York Giants, the only team in the NFL everybody hates. (You may notice I am not a man that refers to the Dallas Cowboys as “us” or “we,” I do not play, I’m not on the team. I have no say in the decisions they make. They don’t know my name, don’t care about me or my family. In fact, they appear to hate me.)

This comes after an offseason and pre-season of promise. The defense would be better, they would be solid, together, the team chemistry would be terrific, and of course, a Super Bowl run was probable, maybe inevitable. And against all reason, I started to believe. This would be the year, again, finally. The pieces would coalesce into the most beautiful masterpiece. (We all stopped using the word “could” and used “would” instead. This is it, baby, they’re ready, let’s goooooooo!)

Did you know in the last 9 years, the Dallas Cowboys were 16-2 against the Giants? They were totally average, but at least they always beat the Giants. There was always that. They had an offseason to come out hot and justify all of the promise and hope, and didn’t. Did you also know the last 3 seasons, the Giants were 6-11, 3-14, and 4-13? 13-38 overall? Did you know that?

And I’m stuck thinking about why, why do I continue to do this? Why do I keep thinking this year is different? What kind of nonsense tricks any of us into believing sports fandom is any different from any other kind of consumerism?

Let’s say you have a favorite restaurant, where you’ve had years of fantastic meals, and made so many great memories. It’s your favorite by a million miles, you’d wear a t-shirt and talk in a tv advertisement, you’d tell all of your friends and write about it on your personal blog, and you’d do this all for free. As a matter of fact, it has even become a part of who you are, your personality, this restaurant just fits you like a pair of old jeans. Ok?

Now, let’s say that restaurant starts to serve absolutely garbage. They fire the chef and the best servers, bringing in new ones that they promise better suit the vision. They’d disrespectfully refuse to pay market value for the best one, sending him to the Green Bay Packers. The portions keep getting smaller and smaller while the prices sky-rocket. They assume they have your business no matter what happens, so they stopped caring about you or any other customers. It is no longer a quality product, it has become no more than an altar to the owner’s ego.

You might go for a while, maybe quite a long while, remembering how it was and crossing your fingers that it could be that way again. But eventually…eventually, you’d find a new restaurant, wouldn’t you?

You’d change dish detergents if Dawn stopped getting your dishes clean. Even if you have had Fords your whole life, you’d consider a Toyota after enough lemons. We are a disposable society, we get rid of our spouses if they stop making us feel good for a weekend! But not our football teams?!!??? Why not?? This is absolute nonsense.

One of the best people I know is a Cleveland Browns fan. Why would anyone ever do that to themselves?? But, then again, why do I? Why do I hang around, hoping that the Dallas Cowboys will turn it all around and start serving great food again? There is no evidence that this could happen, but even if it did, who’s to say I couldn’t just go back?

We’re mostly all bandwagon consumers, aren’t we? So, why is that such a terrible thing only in sports?

The more I think about it, I’m never leaving The Angel. Ever. The baseball team I like is the Detroit Tigers because Alan Trammell and Sweet Lou Whitaker were the SS/2B combo in the late ‘70’s/early ‘80’s. Morrissey is my favorite in music, and I wait and listen to his singles and albums the day they come out…his latest, Make-Up Is A Lie, is so bad it’s aggressively offensive, and I just heard there is a new album coming our early next year and I am so excited to listen. Even though he is on a clear down slide, maybe it’ll be his best yet. I use a phone that is pretty hopelessly out of date; sometimes we stream our Sunday services and, inexplicably, there is no sound. I’m not getting a new one, this is my phone. There are holes in all of my socks. I don’t know that I would change dish detergents or find a new restaurant. I haven’t bought new jeans in years. I don’t know that I am a bandwagon consumer…

I wouldn’t call it loyalty or anything positive, I’d probably call it a disorder. I’ll likely keep getting bitten by this same Dallas Cowboys dog every year for the rest of my life. (Really, losing to the Giants?!!!????) When I’m 65 or 85 or 105, I’ll be saying, “I think this is their year.” And I might still have this phone, too, but that doesn’t make it right. That Cleveland Browns guy should totally move on, if he knows what’s good for him.

Now, What You Hear Is Not A Test

September 9, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The Angel & I spent last weekend’s holiday at a Labor Day party/picnic/bocce ball tournament. The food and company were excellent, we lost both of our games badly, and I got to spend some time with my family. The soundtrack for this sacred time was a best of the ‘80’s playlist. During the Sugar Hill Gang’s classic hit “Rapper’s Delight,” I watched my cousins sitting next to each other across the yard. They weren’t talking, they were just moving individually, in perfect time (with the music and each other), and mouthing every word (which is really saying something, “Rapper’s Delight” is very, very long). This continued for quite a while, covering quite a few songs.

My family hasn’t always been this close, there was a too-many-year period where we were estranged. We used to live next door to each other, then we moved, things happened, grudges & resentments happened, distance happened, then another thing happened, that distance didn’t matter anymore and we were reconciled. As I watched them, I thought of all that. I thought of my sister, and the language that close relationships have that transcends language and time. I thought of us and how much we all missed, and how much we still miss, deciding some sort of thing or another was more important than this.

So, then, I started to think about the relationships we share, and the reasons they end (or are placed on pause). I wonder if we even remember the reasons. We remember the times we spent, the fun we had, the memories we made, together, but we usually have a much harder time remembering the nonsense that keeps us apart.

We’ve taken to reading the “love chapter” in 1st Corinthians 13 every Sunday. Love is patient and kind and doesn’t keep any record of wrongs and never fails. Do these characteristics describe each of our interactions & conversations, do they even describe our homes and/or marriages?? I said earlier that the holiday was a “sacred time,” and the worship music was “Rapper’s Delight,” and that was true. Every time love becomes the cause and the effect, the motivation and the result, of our lives, God is the main character, and we may as well call those spaces church. Every time our love asks us to lay our own interests, vanity, control, and need to win, down, and we respond by doing just that, it is absolutely church. When we hold each other, listen, laugh, play, cry, these things are all church, and wherever they happen is the temple of God.

I’ve been in churches full of bitterness and unforgiveness and I’ve been in bars and gyms full of support, encouragement and capital L love. Monday, that yard was a temple, a monument to the God who made us and sustains us.

You know what else I thought? That we live in a world (comprised of millions of homes, streets, neighborhoods, communities, districts, states, countries, planets, and galaxies) in desperate need of the message of Jesus, the love of Jesus, the Gospel of Jesus. And we need to be the so-called (for lack of a better term) “brand ambassadors,” of the Gospel. We need to sing & dance along to this divine Story, over and over again, being living examples of possibility instead of clinging to our own little stories.

I realize that this, of course, doesn’t come easy (and spiritual attack is, sadly, very real), and can be quite painful, but that is also part of the Story we happen to be in. That’s why we simply can’t continue to miss the most beautiful, inspiring parts just because we’ve chosen to be somewhere else, divided by who cares what. These are our lives and we are our people, church is anywhere & everywhere, “Rapper’s Delight” is awesome, and I am truly grateful for (or in) all of it.

A Day of Possibility

August 24, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking what my favorite recipe is, and I bet that is interesting to a certain group (even a very large group) of people, I’m just not sure that it’s me. We’ll talk about Mrs. Davis, instead.

Mrs. Davis is a fantastic Peacock limited science-fiction series that was released in 2023 and that I watched 2 weeks ago. Mrs. Davis is an Artificial Intelligence that has, essentially, become a god to the world. There is a nun on a quest to find the holy grail, and if she does, she intends to shut down Mrs. Davis. Her husband is Jesus, an ex-boyfriend who leads a group of “alpha” males, a horse, a mom who we all hate until the last 5 minutes of the last episode, and David Arquette as her dad. The show is truly original. I don’t remember the last time I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.

The Jesus character was the most fascinating to me, for what might be obvious reasons by now. He is beautifully written and played as a loving, kind Savior (and restaurant cook/server). There are a few things, about Him and His story arc, that would definitely be considered blasphemous by some folks, but far more that is in keeping with the Jesus of the Bible. One of my very favorite exchanges is: Simone: Do you love her?!!? Jesus: I love everybody!!! It stops her and forces us all to look at His heart. I loved it, you should watch it immediately. Great art inspires us to run and makes us think we can totally fly.

I’m going to subscribe to Apple TV+ and start Ted Lasso this week. Nearly everyone I know has told me that I HAVE TO WATCH IT. So, I will, and I’ll tell you what I think. I imagine I’ll tell you how much I loooove it. If they’re right, I’ll tell you that.

Today is everybody’s 1st day back to school . The Angel works at an elementary school, and students came back today. My youngest son started his classes for his sophomore year at college. And my oldest is cramming for his next opportunity at work, which will begin next week. And here I am, listening to Rise Against, writing and catching up.

A very good friend and I recorded the 1st episode of a spirituality podcast yesterday. I plan to finish the book I’ve been working on forever (called We Have A Weight Problem, which isn’t about numbers on a scale at all) by Christmas. There’s a new space at our faith community that I just love (to clarify, I “just love” the space AND the faith community), where we create space to ask our questions about God, the Bible, and our spiritual lives.

It’s a new season that feels like possibility for so many of us. Many of those in my circle are choosing new pathways and leaning into who they are becoming and who they will become.

I’ll paraphrase my favorite Dr Seuss book, Horton Hatches The Egg, again: “And they sent me home happy, 100 percent.”

Top 10

August 19, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site wants to know my Top 10 Favorite Movies… In no particular order: Fight Club, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pulp Fiction, Lord of The Rings (for sure, Return of the King, maybe both others), Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi, Point Break, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers, The Big Lebowski. That’s 9 or 11, depending on the first 2 LOTR movies. As I think about them, they are all there for different reasons.

I’ll admit Point Break is not the best movie any of us have ever seen, but I did see it probably 10 or 15 times in a theater during the summer between my 10th & 11th grade years of high school. It makes me think of my friends… Later on, you don’t usually have friends like the friends you have in high school. Maybe that’s because everything that happens to a teenager is in neon or caps lock. Everything seems so intense and meaningful, because we are all exposed nerves trying to figure out how we’re going to live our lives. We’re bulletproof AND totally fragile. We’re FBI agents AND surfers. We live in a suspended hyper-reality. It makes me think of my friends.

The Avengers is a great time, it’s just a really fun time. It isn’t deep or affecting, it’s awesome. It’s spectacle, relationships, conflict, good v. evil, sacrifice and victory. Pulp Fiction is fun AND a Brilliant, Great Film. It’s probably the best film on my list. You don’t need friends to love it, it stands on its own, above and away from context. Eternal Sunshine broke my heart – I remember crying to the Angel afterwards, holding her so tightly, desperately, promising no one would ever take her (or her memory) from me.

You know, I just wrote a post for my other site (bridgefaithcommunity.com) about presence and the inextricable tie between love, pain, and gratitude. I wonder how much this film cemented my 2 hands philosophy. The pain of loss was so great, he chose to erase her from his memory. In the beginning, it was fine, the memories went in reverse, so eliminated first was the destruction of the relationship and the heartbreak. But as the memories worked backwards, the wonder, beauty, the love, he didn’t want them to go and desperately tried to hold on to them. He couldn’t, they took all of her. It was devastating. Love hurts. Big, real love can hurt more. It’s worth the risk.

The Big Lebowski is hilarious with one of the best characters in modern cinema, we all sort of want to meet the day as the Dude. Everybody hates The Last Jedi, and they’re all wrong. It has the 4 best scenes in the Star Wars universe. Luke dies, the Rebellion/Resistance lives. It’s perfect. The Winter Soldier is the movie you make your friends watch that think superhero movies are dumb. Fight Club is The Most Spiritual Movie Ever.

I have no idea how much impact these films have actually had on me, if they were truly integral in building the Chad that I am. What I know is that my life would not have been as cool without them, and I am thankful.

Slip

August 10, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I watched a show called Slip. (This show seems to have originally aired on Roku, I watched it on Peacock.) It’s weird and quirky – if I were to describe it here, you could only infer that I really loved it. It is everything I look for in art, a new perspective that is challenging and deep and speaks to my own life. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100%. It must have been awesome. But I’m not sure I did love it.

There’s a married woman, Mae, who “slips” into parallel worlds (I guess it’s not that weird to us, we understand this from the MCU and it’s multiversal phase), where she has different lives, different marriages, partners, habits and values. The woman (Zoe Lister-Jones, who created, wrote, directed & starred) has something to learn (about life, in general, maybe, but certainly about her life) and she does. Lister-Jones is wildly talented. In episode 7, she even sings a version of “Every Breath You Take” that will stop you and bring you to tears. It still sounds like I loved it. I wonder if I did.

A website called Den of Geek writes, “Essentially, the mystery points back to the exhibit in the pilot, where Mae tells us about the Hungry Ghost. She says they are beings living in six different realms of existence in a state of chronic deprivation and longing. They crave nourishment (both literally and figuratively), but they’re incapable of digesting it. This perfectly symbolizes Mae’s journey: no matter what alternate reality she’s in (with multiple different versions of who she could be), she’s unequipped to find peace and acceptance without looking for a solution within herself. She has to face and address her own struggles and internal suffering head-on to find the kind of life that can make her happy.”

Maybe our culture makes sure we’re all always in a state of chronic deprivation and longing? What do we do when what we crave doesn’t provide the peace and acceptance we’re searching for, and we’re left with our own struggles and internal suffering? We don’t like to face things, especially our own emptiness and sense of meaninglessness – what if the “new” and “more” don’t fulfill? Then what? Probably, we keep walking the same paths “new” and “more,” keeping the noise loud and fast so we can’t hear our hearts break.

I may spoil it here, so beware…Her original, episode 1 life was simple and what can look like what we are sometimes told is the boring monotony of commitment. But it was that relationship that she sought the rest of the journey, and to which she eventually returned. This was fairly surprising. Hollywood has a very hard time showing the beauty of a connected marriage, after the peaks and above the valleys, once we settle into real life. Maybe Lister-Jones isn’t married, but I’m guessing she is, and I suspect she might be very happy and full. She says to her husband, “we weren’t perfect, but we were a team and there was a lot of love and support.” That’s every marriage. It’s a lie that passion and spontaneity and surprise doesn’t happen in long, loving marriages. The passion is deeper and weighs so much more without any superficiality. And as we each grow and change, we are never without surprise, it’s just that we stop looking, listening, and learning. “More” and “new” might seem cool, but we end up just looking to slip into something more substantial.

Still, it sounds like I loved it, and I keep thinking that might not be accurate. Why? Why can’t I just say it? I want to say “it’s complicated,” but the more I consider, it’s not too complicated at all. I watched a show that was interesting – I thought about BIG spiritual concepts, about meaning and purpose, it made me think of The Angel, and a million other things. This show has me thinking about it the next day and might for a while. Of course, I loved it.

Bait & Switch

August 3, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I started Money Heist, a Spanish drama series on Netflix, last week. I thought there were only 5 episodes of this intense story of a gigantic crime (I have no idea why I thought that now) so the Angel and I began. There isn’t 5 episodes, there is apparently a million. I just read on the Wikipedia page: “Pina [the show’s creator] was firm about making it a limited series, feeling that dilution had become a problem for his previous production.” I wonder if he envisioned “limited” as limited to a million episodes, or if dilution became a problem for this production, too.

Recently, I wrote about the etiquette of art: Do we finish what we start or can we end whenever we want, as soon as we lost interest? I came to the conclusion that I want to be a man who finishes what he begins. But that was before I began such a massive commitment. Probably I wouldn’t have watched 1 episode. But now what?

While I was on the Wikipedia page (just to innocently pull some details for this post), I read all of the season summaries. I read spoilers, it’s been spoiled, I know what happens and how it ends. Does that change anything about my decision to continue? And as long as we’re on the subject of etiquette, spoilers???? Am I a spoiler person? Could there be anything more disrespectful of an artists vision than a spoiler?

I don’t mind knowing the end. In fact, it can aid in my enjoyment. Here’s an example (with spoilers;) … In The Dark Knight Rises, I thought it was at least possible that Batman dies. I would spend the entire film in an anxious knot waiting for the end, so I asked a friend (who I had to relentlessly convince), who spoiled it for me, and then I was free to enjoy the film without waiting only for the climax & resolution.

But if you ask Christopher Nolan, NO, there probably wasn’t anything more disrespectful to him than what I did.

We live in a new world. The new Spiderman movie was released 4 days ago and it’s all over the internet, nearly impossible to avoid. I don’t think I like that, as a concept, even as I do like it for me. (Thankfully, not everyone is like me.) And maybe seasons of a series in the 80’s, released weekly, wasn’t as overwhelming as discovering a million episodes at once. Actually, there’s no maybe, it wasn’t nearly as overwhelming.

I don’t know if I’ll finish, or even if I’ll finish the 1st season.

This now reminds me of forgiveness. I understand forgiveness, that it’s important to my emotional/psychological/spiritual health, I am a man who is staunchly pro-forgiveness…until I have someone to actually forgive. I finish things, until there’s a million episodes to finish. Hm.

I guess we’ll see who I am together.

Rules of Engagement

July 21, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I recently started watching the 8 episode Netflix series The Gentlemen. This show is created by Guy Ritchie (of the classics Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, and I suppose, of the once married to Madonna fame), which was enough for me. His work is fast, funny, violent, ultra-stylized, and I was very interested to get invested. Also, season 2 is soon to be released, so I would have a deep-ish pool into which to jump.

[I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that Poker Face has been canceled. I know Rian Johnson is shopping it to other networks, but WITHOUT our perfect heroine Charlie Cale – the inimitable Natasha Lyonne. After watching each episode several times, I was happy to find a new cool show to like.]

So. Here’s the situation, a question of television etiquette: The show isn’t that great for me. Of course, it is fast, funny, violent and ultra-stylized, but apparently, those things actually aren’t enough. 15 minutes into episode 7 (out of 8, in season 1), I wondered if I should finish it or drop out. I only had a little over an hour in the season to go…but it is a little over an hour of my life. Was the hour+ better spent finishing the arc or doing something, anything, else? Did I somehow owe it to the Guy Ritchie, the writers, actors, network to see it through?

I had this same question of personal valuation years ago, but then it was about books. If I didn’t like the book, how late was too late to tap out and begin something new? My answer then was never. The commitment to a book is more intensive, longer, and requires more bandwidth, the cost of reading a book that has lost me (or that I’ve lost) is simply too high.

Tv is a different medium, demanding less of us. This seems to suggest that I should finish the season. But as background noise, what is the point? Maybe tv doesn’t really demand less, maybe we just give it less that it deserves. Maybe it is as disrespectful to the art as it is to each other when we work through family dinner, or scroll Instagram during a conversation.

Has the suggestion moved into the realm of not finishing if I don’t have the time, energy, or interest to give my full attention?

However. In a culture that struggles to commit to anything, maybe finishing anything is the ultimate act of rebellion, revolting against the faithlessness of the day. Maybe completing something (even as trivial as a Netflix series) is building the type of character I happen to value.

I asked 2 close friends, my boys, and the Angel, for their opinions. Ultimately, though, the decision was my own. I knew what they would do, but what would I do? To use a spiritual term, what weighed more to me? And was the character-building connection real or just me trying to artificially pump meaning into an inherently meaningless act?

I did finish it. Of course I did. And it was the character argument that tipped the scales – there is no artificial pumping because nothing is meaningless, everything matters. I’m rethinking my stance on books, too. I am going to be someone who shows up and stays. So? It wasn’t disappointing, but it wasn’t great, either. I will not watch season 2. I’ll probably watch the 2 seasons of Poker Face, again, instead.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: culture