2026-07-07T16:20:22+00:00

Running

July 7, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Today is cardio day, so that meant that this morning at 6am, you would have found me on a treadmill at the gym. Lately, I’ve been doing some interval training, and I want you to know something: I really, really HATE running. I know some people like it, even love it, but they’re wrong. This relationship I have with running is complex. I hate to run, but I very much love that I ran this morning. Each step is overflowing with sadness (that this is happening), madness (that I’m making it happen), inspiration (that I would make it happen), and gratitude (that it can physically happen). At the end, I am soaked, as if I were swimming in my clothes instead of running.

I’m moving into some soul work on self-control, of which this is another part. I want to be a man who does very hard things because there is something bigger than comfort and ease that characterize my life.

But also, I think I have an equally complex relationship with my body that I’d like to recalibrate. I can run, sometimes fast, hike, climb many flights of stairs, row, swim. I played college baseball. I’m 50 and can still bench press 300 lbs and do as many pull-ups as I need to – I am an active, athletic person, and for that I am very grateful. I wear large shirts and have a 34 inch waist.

The BMI calculator on the internet says I am “morbidly obese,” and the voices in my head tell me I am a (lots of words I won’t type here) when I look in the mirror or my face in the Zoom screen you would see. The aggressively harsh and nasty narrative in my head for most of my life is that I am a (more words I won’t type here.) It is a million miles better than it used to be, but this monster still rears it’s face from time to time, and remains a thorn in my spirit that needs healing.

If our bodies are, like the Bible says, “the temples of the Holy Spirit, given by God,” I would not like Jesus to hear what I say about His temple. He’s given me this sacred, amazingly functional vessel as a supremely generous gift, and what is my response? If you were to give me a gift, and let’s say I hated it, I still would thank you and acknowledge your kindness. But as for this gift from God that has given and given in such fascinating ways, I can only seem to see imperfection.

But what is imperfection? Who says what perfect actually is? Is it abs you can see? Is it perfect hair and teeth? Is it performance? Is it tanned, taut skin? Is a temple defined by the fixtures and wallpaper, or is it more beautifully identified by Who or what is inside? Is it intellect, spirit, emotion? Or just veined biceps and defined quads? Why have I been so mean to this temple based on only one small aspect, that I perceive to be lacking? I am lacking nothing, and maybe running reminds me of that.

I think spiritual maturity is probably nothing more than moving into the space where we can see ourselves as we have been created, like a process of chipping away at the image the world has sold us since the day we’re born that we’ve sadly carried for too long. The voices in my head aren’t the Voice of God. They’re not even my own voice. They’re not true, and they’re not kind or helpful.

There’s a shirt in my closet that is SO cool, it’s my favorite shirt I’ve even owned. And I’ve never worn it. You see, I think it’s too tight in some places. I sometimes think of it while I run. When I lose some weight and feel better about how I look, I’ll be able to wear it. But what I’ve learned is that this perception I have of the temple has very little to do with what the temple actually looks like. When I lose some weight, I’ll still have this mistaken picture of me. When is enough? If it isn’t now, I’m beginning to think it never will be.

Maybe this post is the next step in this reclamation project, the journey to becoming all of me. Maybe I’ll wear that shirt.

Mean

June 29, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

So, someone in my life is being terribly mean to me. This might sound like I’m a child on a playground, but that doesn’t make it less true. Anytime I speak or ask any sort of question, he/she is condescending & disrespectful, as if I am the dumbest neanderthal that has ever walked the earth. This is not awesome. It also has very little to do with me.

Last week I watched a limited series on Peacock called The Resort. Cristin Milioti stars as Emma, 1/2 of a married couple on a vacation where they end up getting caught up in a weirdly supernatural mystery. She’s also a nightmare, distant, short & nasty to her husband & everyone else. Ms Milioti is a fantastic, magnetic actor (one of the best going, and if you don’t believe me, watch The Penguin series, especially episode 4), but wildly unlikeable as Emma. This can be an obstacle, when the lead actor is so unsympathetic to the audience, but it can also be the catalyst to our own transformation.

You see, later in the show, we begin to learn that she has lost a newborn child and made an impossible decision that left her broken and miserable. This brokenness informs every relationship in her life, isolates, and creates this aggressively aloof person that we see.

I very much like the Marvel & Star Wars universes moving into series television. It gives us time to learn more, to add depth & nuance, leading us to connect on new levels with these characters. Instead of just 1 primary thread, they are able to slowly expand and show more of the full scope of their complicated humanity. (Andor is probably the best example.)

Emma has built walls that make her as unknowable as she is unlikeable. This is not uncommon in our world, and it’s usually here that our shared story ends. We don’t get to see the why. We don’t get the privilege of backstory. It’s up to us if we have the grace to give them mercy, even if only in our heads & hearts.

This person who is mean to me, he/she is clearly lashing out at the closest safe thing. Why? Who knows? It’s obviously based in fear and insecurity. I know this, and so do you. Bullies are never the most self-assured people in the room, and the meanest are never the happiest. Mostly they’re the opposite. But I don’t know, he/she also doesn’t (can’t?) communicate this terror, this inadequacy, this desperate striving to prove his/her worth. If he/she could, we could assure him/her that he/she is already much, much more than enough.

But nobody likes to be a punching bag for someone’s identity work. It makes me angry, and I want to fight. I want to lash back.

But Emma was just so sad that it made her awful. The people that were sharp with her wouldn’t see the broken pieces she was trying to hide behind miles of thick, thick skin. I wonder if we will. I wonder if I have the courage to extend unconditional kindness, caring for his/her currently jagged edges.

Mean people are never born in a vacuum, everyone has a story. The only question is IF we can give them a break and keep loving despite…well, despite their humanity. We’re all awful & mean sometimes, and this is because we’re all broken in ways we might not acknowledge or understand. Our lives aren’t tv, but what tv certainly teaches us is to reserve our judgment, at least for now, probably forever.

I Hated Barney

June 15, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Barney is/was a purpose dinosaur who became a phenomenon and then a pariah. Kids lost their minds to the cult of Barney, loving him more and more as they watched VHS tapes and shows on PBS on repeat. Everybody else lost their minds for a different reason. Everybody knew and would sing that dumb song, loudly, “I love you, you love me, we’re a happy family, with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won’t you say you love me too?” I hated him, too.

But you know, I can’t figure out why. I never saw the show, not once. That would be like me hating The Wizard of Oz or Orange Is The New Black. Why would I loathe something that didn’t affect me at all? I don’t hate Phish or Niall Horan’s new album, how could I?

But with Barney, all he was about was loving people, all he was doing was telling kids they’re awesome. That seems like a strange thing to hate. Maybe it was pandering and mind-numbingly boring (and I truly mean maybe…like I said, I haven’t ever seen an episode), it may have been very bad, but it was good.

I watched a great documentary on this interesting dichotomy. Barney was terrific until he wasn’t. We loved him until we didn’t, and then we HATED him. It was one of the first illustrations of the destructive power of the internet. There were incredibly mean blogs where people could connect and hate together, pages where gatherings of hate could be planned & advertised. The internet is a boundary-less space of infinite possibility, and we immediately use it for porn and hating each other (or giant purpose dinosaurs). Maybe nothing connects us like having a common enemy, but that’s so depressing, I simply have to believe otherwise.

Why did I hate him? Why did anyone hate him? Because there was no gray area in Barney. The ‘90’s were the time where antiheroes began to truly define us, where the bad guys were fascinating and compelling. Superman is good, Batman is complex – there are lots of great, super-successful Batman movies and franchises, very few for Superman. Han Solo is our favorite Star Wars character, he’s in the rebellion but is kind of a scoundrel. Luke Skywalker was just the hero, uncomplicated.

My favorite characters have always been Luke Skywalker and Superman. Of course, I also believe in the goodness of people. The world is gray and confusing enough. So why would I hate Barney? I think it’s easy (and embarrassing): because everyone else did. We were the alternative all together. We were supposed to be cynical (which we called realistic), Barney was too bland. Good didn’t sell newspapers then, and it doesn’t garner clicks now.

As I watched the documentary, I thought of how we are, our design. It all makes sense, we’re made for this kind of community. And hate is a fuel that burns hot and quick. Of course, if we’re not careful, we run towards anger and rage, division, us/them dichotomies. We like enemies. And then we lose interest and move on.

What if we decided to connect and share something more sustaining, something beautiful and bright? What if we decided that Barney was right, that we were lovable, that we did, in fact, love each other, and that we were awesome, that we could all be awesome together? What if the internet blogs were less about tearing everything apart and, instead, about the ka-jillions of ways we can rebuild ourselves and our world? What if we all decided to give a great big hug and a kiss from me to you? I don’t hate Barney anymore.

Yeah, I know, I’m hopeless…

Ratings and Scores

June 8, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The Last Word is a movie from 2017, starring Shirley MacLaine and Amanda Seyfried, that almost nobody saw or liked very much. It grossed $2.9 million (according to Wikipedia) and has a 40% approval (according to Rotten Tomatoes). It gets an average score of 4.9 out of 10. It is not widely considered a masterpiece of modern cinema.

But what does that mean, really? I wonder if those 40% absolutely LOVE it, if it’s their favorite movie? Or if it changed the lives of those who paid to see it in a theater? What if you watched it on Netflix, like I did, and it changed yours? Then, does it really matter how much money it makes or what kind of score it gets?

Episode 7 of the Star Wars saga (The Last Jedi) is often inexplicably considered the worst. Many, many Star Wars fans loudly hate it. And they’re all wrong. It’s fantastic and it would be impossible for me to care less what its Rotten Tomatoes score is (incidentally, critics give it a 91% while the audience rates it at 41%). These reviews can be interesting, but hopefully have no bearing on your own enjoyment. If it is meaningful to you, but not critics in Cleveland or college kids in Portland, it is still meaningful to you. You decide, not a legion of internet trolls. Or not even your friends.

Anyway. The movie is about an aging super-successful woman who hires a local obituary screenwriter to write her pre-death obituary. As it turns out, it’s not a great life to be remembered, so they start a journey to re-make her life into one better memorialized. As I write it, it sounds underwhelming, like one you’ve seen a thousand times. You know exactly what’s going to happen, there really isn’t anything new here. There were lots of Lifetime-esque tropes and eye-rolling dialogue.

BUT the journalist is writing a collection of essays that she lets no one read, afraid of any rejection. There’s a love interest (of course) that she keeps at arm’s length. She lives a safe unfulfilling life. The subject of the obit is a battle axe, terrible to everyone, ostracizing her family and everyone unlucky enough to have ever come across her path. Neither connects, truly, with anyone until they do with each other. One learns the joy of relationship while the other begins to find her own identity and is freed by that newfound authenticity.

Maybe we can relate, right? How many of us struggle to be ourselves, constantly choosing between vulnerable honesty and our carefully curated images? How about trust, and the fear of rejection & abandonment?

This movie was nothing special unless it was, to you. It would probably fit the description of a “guilty pleasure,” if you believe in that sort of nonsense. We’re all affected by different things at different times, sometimes it’s through a classic award-winning beloved film or a throwaway song on side 2 of a bad album. A commercial storyline or jingle can work as a sledgehammer, opening our hearts to truth. I think the best compliment any artist could ever receive is connection, that their work landed and moved even one person in the audience.

The “dumb” movie that bombed at the box office and in reviews, that I really loved, moved me and no critical score can diminish its beauty to me.

Of course, I think we’re all artists, too, and connection is the purpose of our greatest work, our lives. I also happen to think that anything we do that doesn’t move us closer to each other is opportunity squandered. We’re all looking for those sweet moments that help us feel less alone, even loved, and when we find them, they move us closer to our original divine design. That’s why they feel so right & natural, and anything else is so uncomfortable. It takes an overwhelming amount of courage to engage with our lives, and it’s possible that a movie with terrible reviews can give it to us.

Ego Was The Villain

June 1, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Guardians Of The Galaxy, vol 2, is a fine movie. It’s not that great, it’s not even the best of the Guardians trilogy (Vol 1 is). But it does have an interesting idea that I think about often. To summarize, we discover Peter Quill (the leader of the Guardians) is half human & half god, when he meets his father, Ego. Ego’s big plan is to plant pieces of himself on every planet in every galaxy, so that eventually, every planet will be an extension of him. He’ll be everything, everywhere. He wants to make Quill a part of that plan, Quill doesn’t want to be a part of that plan, so they have to fight.

When I watch it, Ego is the villain. I’ve taken it for granted that everyone sees it that way, that Ego is always the villain.

In my area, there’s a mega-church. A mega-church is just like it sounds: a gigantic church. I’m not certain what the qualifications are for organizations like this, but it’s so massive, it might be a SuperDuperMegaChurch or just a SuperMegaChurch. Maybe those who know use words like Colossal or Monstrous, or maybe have dropped the ‘church’ part altogether and just go by mega-behemoth or something. The one in my area used to be called an acronym of letters, the last 2 being Bible Church, but once they began to grow and grow, they kept the letters and changed what they meant, dropping Bible Church. I guess they outgrew the first group of words.

Like most mega-churches, they have a main campus and lots and lots of branch campuses (campi?) in surrounding towns. If you go to one of them, you can watch the preacher give the sermon live-streamed (or recorded) on movie screens. Like the Walmart effect on smaller stores, often times local churches suffer (and sometimes die), as their membership moves into the newer, fancier, bigger, trendier arms of the giant.

I wonder if the members of a mega-church think Ego is the villain? Maybe they think it’s nice to have a shared value system. McDonald’s exists on the same principle: Everyone having the same hamburger everywhere is comfortable and awesome. Maybe they like Ego, and think he’s very charismatic (he is played by Kurt Russell, who might be one of the most handsome men ever on earth) and buy into his vision for a universe united under him.

This isn’t too much of a stretch. We also try to whitewash cultures, too, trying to mash each textured, interesting area, people, history & practice into one bland piece of white bread that is for everyone and no one because it’s missing anything ethnic. If we eliminate all of the differences, then… then what?? Every store is a Target and restaurant is a Texas Roadhouse or Applebee’s, with the same fashion and corporate art on the same colored walls. The food is quite good at Texas Roadhouse, and Target has great stuff. Corporate art is pretty nice. Maybe we want to eliminate differences, and sand down every sharp edge. Amazon.

Maybe to the Roadhouse or mega-church CEO, GOTG 2 is a tragedy. Maybe he/she cries when Ego is defeated.

This might sound like I don’t think Amazon or McDonald’s has a place in our world, they certainly do, I just think it’s not a better place when they have ALL the places. I happen to like the pastor of the church on the corner near my house, he has a cool quirky delivery and is awfully likable. And, full disclosure, I might have a bias, I pastor a local church, and I love my job and our small community. Even if I don’t like the pastor on the corner, I do like the world that has space for him/her. I value places where we know and are known, where we can’t hide, where we can engage and connect. (YES, I KNOW that this can happen at mammoths, it’s just not the rule.) I prefer the record shop clerk who recommends a new album you’ve never heard “but will just love,” to the cashier who doesn’t remember your face or name, much less your favorite album. I love differences & new perspectives. I like opinions (even, maybe especially, if I don’t agree) – I want more than 2 political parties. I want to hear about your life & experiences, how you see the world around you. I don’t want to get on an airplane for 3 hours, get off, and not know I’m anywhere new. I love you and your story.

Ego was the villain to me.

Improvement

May 13, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site just asked me, what’s one small improvement you could make in your life? That feels like the beginning of a very long, detailed, vulnerable answer. Maybe that’s why it only asked for 1. So, I’ll think of one.

Should it be a physical improvement (like bigger arms), or an intellectual one (like learning what data centers are)? Maybe emotional? I should probably not overreact so much, probably shouldn’t hyper-focus and ruminate, either. A habitual improvement is the answer, right? I should not watch so much tv, should eat better, should build a deck and finish the wood floors in our dining room. Or maybe I should eliminate so many “should’s.”

Does answering that prompt somehow imply an unhappiness with who I am right now? Can we be both content AND driven to improve?

I just looked it up on the internet and the first result says, no, that we should not be content ever. The guy on reddit reasoned that contentment means we will not move forward. Others say yes, you can. We can be satisfied and ambitious.

Someone named Wong Sr Chin writes, “To attain contentment, you must change the CONTENT of your improvement [that’s clever, isn’t it??] so that it caters more for the needs of your inner being, besides satisfying your outer needs.” Sometimes, people write and talk in such a way that it gets pretty confusing. In short, Wong Sr Chin is advocating spirituality – that any contentment in materiality is ultimately empty. That’s true, despite what advertisements would have us believe – that new car or gambling addiction isn’t the missing piece to our wholeness.

What is the content of my contentment? More important than ‘what’ is ‘why’ I would want to improve. Why do I want to grow or evolve or become anyone other than who I am right now? First, DO I want to grow or evolve or become? And yes, I do. Now, why?

I think we are created to grow. It is our natural state. We are one thing, a seed, say, and we are given the task to become a tree or a vegetable or a bush. If we stay static, we get dull and uninspired, wasting away inside, until there’s just a dim light barely shining. Now the question is, what kind of tree do I want to grow into? Once I answer that, I will work backwards and create the framework. What does that tree do, what is it like, what does it like, what makes up that tree’s daily routine?

I’m very happy with me. I could not always say that, but I can now, and that does not mean that I am a finished product, or that who I am is who I will always be. So, what’s one small improvement I could make? Trees (of any kind) probably don’t grow so big and strong eating Oreos and blueberry muffins, so I could not eat as much sugar.

Another Cult Documentary

May 5, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I watched a cult documentary on Hulu last weekend: The Rise & Fall of the Jesus Army. I wouldn’t say I liked it, but maybe it was educational. But even in that, I don’t know if I learned anything truly new. These accounts use the same template. Part I is the beginning, a community forms and people find acceptance, belonging, and meaning. It’s uplifting, the music is buoyant and light. Of course, it doesn’t end after part I so the beauty is tempered by the promise of pain to come. Part II brings that pain, the leader starts to demand more from the members (some combination of money & sex, always money & sex), he (with very few exceptions, always a he) begins taking advantage of his position. People begin to notice, very quietly at first, then finally those people start talking to each other and the water begins to boil. Part III is the reckoning, where the authorities get involved – arrests and death usually follow – and the community dissolves. The end.

The Jesus Army piled up so many offenses (so many), most of which were hidden and eventually unprosecuted.

These docs leave us wondering how the teachings of Jesus lead to manipulation (sexual and otherwise) and violence. It just doesn’t make any sense at all. How do we take the actual Bible (not just the one we’ve been sold on tv), a book about love and life, and make it about hate and death?

Yes, I’ve heard that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but is it that simple? Do these people plant these beautiful spaces, and then turn monstrous when they are held up as superheroes? Do they mean well at the beginning, then lose their way? Do they just see an opportunity to satisfy their desires and leave Jesus behind? OR are they using the Gospel and Christianity as vehicles they can drive anywhere, even to hell?

I like to think there are no such things as monsters, just degrees of confusion and brokenness (which, of course, lead to monstrous behavior.) I think these people are very similar to everyone else, just wildly misguided at some particular significant point in their lives. Maybe that’s not true.

Morrissey asks in his great song “Sister, I’m A Poet,” “Is evil something you are? Or something you do?” And I believe the answer is that it’s something we do, not what we are. But is that just the optimistic naivety of a sucker? Are there people who are evil, through and through, who have corrupted their created nature?

Maybe more importantly, when are we all going to learn anything from this template? I never blame the followers, I know why and how they get tangled up in these cults. But the repetition of the leadership is maddening. That saying, those who don’t know the past are doomed to repeat it, is nonsense. We know it very well, and yet we keep running it on a loop, over and over again.

Now that I’m thinking, maybe all of this finding who we are from what we do is the thing that isn’t working. Maybe the real answer is to discover who we really are, and let that inform everything we do, instead.

…And maybe I’ll just stay a hopeful sucker forever. I hope so.

Puzzle Pieces

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

What is my favorite restaurant? That’s what the site wants to know, and I’m wondering if it’s part of a connected marketing attack, where the site asks me, shares that info with 1. the restaurant I deem my favorite, who can send me coupons and advertisements, and 2. all of the other restaurants & businesses in the world, who want to take that #1 position and my money. I’m not sure it’s worth it for the spam avalanche into my inbox… actually, I’m not even sure I have a favorite restaurant. I really like quite a few, but if you told me I had 1 meal that would be the last meal I would ever eat out, I have no idea where we would go.

Anyway. This post is a little late, I usually write on Mondays, but I was in the middle of a big, beautiful Star Wars puzzle. That shouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t be an obstacle to real life for a normal person. But I’m not a normal person. I have what’s called an addictive personality, so when I begin a puzzle, we can safely figure it will take nearly every second of my free (or writing/working) time. And that’s what it did, for a couple of days, and now it’s finished and glorious.

I love puzzles, and I often used to wonder why. Now, I know.

The world is more and more mixed up, confusing, frustrating, and I have little control over what happens on a macro level. Of course, I have lots and lots of control over how I treat my neighbors or what I buy at the grocery store, or how & when I brush my teeth. But I can’t stop any of the wars happening right now or make the sun come out. I can’t erase any of the President’s increasingly problematic posts on his personal social media site. I can’t bring gas prices down or help the Dallas Cowboys win the Super Bowl.

So, it feels like our cultural, political, emotional, and economic environments are just big snarling masses of individual pieces, disconnected and random. It’s a dining room table of chaos. But in this Star Wars puzzle’s case, I can find 2 pieces that fit, then a third, and it starts to take shape. You hold one piece and think, how can this possibly make sense? And it really doesn’t, by itself, but there is a meta-narrative that recontextualizes everything, making one central ordered picture that’s full of meaning.

Puzzles work as a metaphor, a soothing intellectual exercise, and they’re super fun. Now that it’s done, I can just appreciate the beauty of cohesion and unity, and that’s just what I’ll do.

Easter Sunday

April 6, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I recognize we are not the same. We all celebrate in different ways.

Yesterday was Easter Sunday, and I spent the morning sharing a sunrise message on the Bridge YouTube site at 7am. Then, I ate a delicious greek yogurt fruit parfait breakfast. At 9:30ish, the Angel and I loaded up the car and left for church. The car was packed because we would stay there most of the day. In my family, Easter is the holiday where we all come here and we host, and this year, there were so many of us (and it was raining and our house is fairly small), we had our Easter meal at the church, after service. The food was excellent, the people even more so. In addition to the usual crew, my youngest son brought home 3 young men from his college basketball team. They live all over the country and we got to be their family this year. I hope this is a new tradition. We ate and ate, then laughed like crazy as we played board games together. Then, we came home, gave all of the kids (ha, kids!) their Easter baskets, hugged them, told them we loved them and watched them pull away to make the journey back to school.

It was a long weekend. Friday was our Good Friday service, where we focused on the sadness of the crucifixion. Our mourning was deep and meaningful, perfectly preparing us for Sunday. On Saturday, I married an absolutely gorgeous couple. They would have reaffirmed your faith in the institution and people, in general.

So, yes, the weekend was long, but my heart was in such a soft, open space, it was so wonderful and I was overflowing with love. Easter is my favorite day of the year. Maybe you don’t see faith the same way I do, but you don’t really have to – we all understand being loved, often in spite of ourselves. Jesus asks us to love each other as He loves us, and it’s as real as it can possibly be on the morning we celebrate His resurrection. We have hope, anything seems possible, we sing “All You Need Is Love,” and (for at least this day) think that’s probably true.

We’re different, right? But for this day, our differences don’t seem quite so insurmountable. We can get along, or better yet, we can love each other.

I think about how others feel. I wonder how they, how you, celebrate. Do you celebrate at all?

Social media can be cool to see others cultures and practices, right? We look at pictures and read perspectives. We get to see inside of each other’s homes & hearts.

Our President celebrated this deeply holy day (the day where Jesus was resurrected, ushering an entirely new creation, one not based on power, status, money, or violence, but on love) by posting – and I am choosing to censor 2 words in this post by using asterisks, I like to keep this space clean-ish: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*****’ Strait, you crazy b******s, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Yep. Easter sure looks different to different people. It’s my favorite day, but that doesn’t mean it’s yours.

2 Movies

March 30, 2026/The Bridge Faith Community/1 Comment

Last night, the Angel and I decided we’d watch a movie. She likes romantic comedies, love stories, and I like her, so that’s what we watch. (She also doesn’t want to watch too often, so I always get to choose what’s on tv.) But what to watch that’s not vapid and awful??? It’s a process, as you probably know, and we scroll and scroll.

We landed on It’s Complicated, with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin as exes…I guess that’s about all I know for sure. In the first 15 minutes, Baldwin cheats on his new wife with Streep (whom he first cheated on to destroy the marriage.) I am not the mayor of Prude City. However, as I get older, there are plot devices that are too heartbreaking to be effective as plot devices for me. Sexual assault in any form is a deal breaker. I can’t even watch 300 again (and that’s a very quality super-stylish and super-violent epic that I once liked) because there’s a scene that I simply can’t stomach. No sexual violence, non-negotiable. Adultery, it seems, is now another one that is proving hard to take, certainly in a comedy, as if it’s just another pratfall or punch line. Maybe I’ve seen too much wreckage and cried too many tears.

I don’t know if they end up together, if he leaves his current trophy wife and goes back, or what, because we turned it off to get a snack and never went back. Instead, we watched something called Look Both Ways. This was about a woman in a Sliding Doors-esque situation, where her life hung on one moment in which she took a pregnancy test: In one future, it is negative. In another, positive.

I found Sweet Home Alabama an interesting surprise, for only one reason. The man Reese Witherspoon was engaged to that she ultimately left, was McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey), a good man, totally respectful and kind to her at every turn. The love interest was a huge jerk, and she made the wrong choice, 100%.

This Look Both Ways was surprising in the same kind of way. The 2 romantic leads were the new Superman, David Corenswet, and the new MCU Falcon, Danny Ramirez. The main character has a best friend, parents, and a boss. The dad was Luke Wilson. I mention all of the men because they were so exceptional, as characters. None of them are no-integrity cads. None of them behave in the abysmal way in which boys are too often depicted.

It’s become pretty common to watch and listen to really negative depictions of human beings, and the lives we make, and sometimes fall into, and call it real life. Breaking Bad is supposed to be real life. Antiheroes are the rage. We think villains are more layered and interesting, but as it turns out, they’re not.

Look Both Ways carries conflict, hurt, confusion, and there are bad decisions, but the people remain…well, I guess there’s no other word to use than good. The people remain good. They don’t always do the good or right thing, and some of the things they do drive me crazy, some are self-destructive, some are immature, but we understand why they did them. They’re not mean spirited or immoral or violent or even particularly selfish.

They’re just real. They are all of the people I know. They’re trying to move forward, to make themselves happy, proud, satisfied, trying to find their purpose and someone to love. They’re trying to take the next best step, and sometimes they fail at that, but they keep trying. They’re actually the real ones, the slice of life we find far more often. They’re the ones we trust, that sometimes hurt us, but never because they decide to hurt us, but just because we sometimes do. They’re the ones trying to help, trying to take care of their neighbors, opening themselves and loving themselves and others despite the possibility (inevitability) of pain.

Sometimes we find treasure in the strangest places. Superhero movies can be more honest than documentaries. And sometimes, a silly rom-coms is the most accurate portrayer of truth going.

I don’t know what happened with Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep (2 of the finest actors ever on screen), and their excellent director and great cast and pedigree of a fantastic film, and I don’t care at all. It’s the other one, with its positivity and hope for us, that matters. I really, really loved it.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: perspective