2024-08-22T13:52:18+00:00

Small Towns

August 22, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Jenny From The Block filed for divorce from Batman yesterday. We probably all knew this was coming, as they were having multiple weddings (some very, very public), telling anyone who would listen, and making movies of their unstoppable love. Most likely, this news was met with an eye roll and the assignment of blame. Each of us know who’s fault we think it is, right?

I am an animal of the popular culture, and I have always been interested in things like this. I like details, and am embarrassed to say, gossip. Today, though, I feel different.

I grew up in a small town, went to college in a small town, and then stayed in that same small town. Pretty much everyone knows each other (and their business.) Maybe we don’t know their names, but we kind of know our neighbors stories, hear them fight, see the sirens of their recent DUI’s, and guess at how many times they’ve been divorced. (J.Lo will have been divorced 4 times after this one.) Batman and his soon to be ex-wife live in this kind of small town, too, except it’s comprised of the whole world.

We still don’t know what exactly happened or why, but we kind of do, we read online quotes from “sources,” and we are all armchair psychologists, reading into each facial expression, and injecting each holiday spent apart with inferred meaning. I think, while he might not hate fame or wild paychecks, he hates celebrity, and she absolutely does not, and that creates a certain tension that is difficult to navigate. He seems like you’d love to be his buddy, but that you might not love to be his partner. Like me. She seems like she would need a lot of attention. Like me. I guess I’d guess it’s his fault (because my default position is ‘it’s his fault’). But who knows???? I only know, for sure, someone who doesn’t know, and that’s me.

Small towns can be really great. I love mine, but I bet I wouldn’t quite as much if I knew what everyone thought of every decision I made without ever having as much as a conversation with me. But this is the curse of a small town. I do wish them peace, broken relationships are very hard, no matter how much money is in the bank. Maybe this sort of thing would be a little easier if our ‘small towns’ of voices and opinions were only made up of those we actually know.

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 Deadpool & Wolverine Review, sort of

August 5, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

I’ve made no secret of my love of superheroes. At the genre’s best, it presents issues of class, race, sex, integrity, principle, relationship, and on and on, in a very relatable way. This sounds ridiculous because we’re talking about super-powers, monsters and space aliens. But really, it’s only the context that is fantastical. Thor discusses worth v. insecurity, ego v. selflessness, and finding our place in families, communities, and the world(s) around us – this is a discussion that is happening in almost every one of us from grade school to the grave. Captain America is a love story, where the main character (a misfit in a world in which he doesn’t belong and that he can’t possibly understand) fights evil, but is also betrayed by an organization that he serves, while pursuing his best friend at any, and all, costs. Who couldn’t understand that? The Hulk is a never-ending battle to reconcile his anger. Spider-Man is an unsure, insecure teenager (is there any other kind????) trying to figure out how to balance passion, duty, romance, love, and using his great power responsibly. The more we see, it wouldn’t be crazy to suggest Hallmark movies and rom-coms have less in common with our real lives than the MCU.

That is, until this multi-versal business.

The Infinity Saga introduced characters we loved learning themselves, living as heroes, sometimes very uncomfortably, while one big bad wolf, Thanos, loomed over all of the individual films with their individual villains, collecting stones for a completely rational purpose. Each seemingly unconnected story was tied together by these stones. There was consequence and depth.

Endgame eliminated a little of the consequence, bringing back ‘dead’ characters, but we understood. Those 3 hours were a gift to the invested, serving us exactly what we wanted. And we are grateful.

I saw Deadpool & Wolverine last week and loved every second. (I don’t think we’ll get into the Christian uproar just yet, maybe we never will.) But it did clear up why the MCU has lost some significance lately, at least for me.

It’s dumb.

My mom saw it, also loved it, and admitted that she didn’t really know exactly what it was about, and as I explained (anchor beings, time rippers, TVA agents, Dog-, Lady-, Head-pools, etc), I honestly felt pretty silly. She was right, the plot had almost nothing to do with the movie. And that is the problem with the multi-verse.

It’s all stupid (plots are wholly nonsensical). There’s no relatability (I could try to connect flerkens with our love for pets and their unpredictability, but why?), no consequence (if a character dies, who cares, we’ll see them later, from another universe – as Luke Skywalker said in The Last Jedi, “No one’s ever really gone.” Sure, Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man is dead dead, but is coming back anyway AS A DIFFERENT CHARACTER!), and appear to exist only as vehicles for the next gimmick (Wolverine’s dead bones, a million Deadpools & Dr. Strange’s, the place-shifting of the Marvels, hyper-evolved ants in the Quantum Realm).

I liked Quantumania, really liked The Marvels, and Dr. Strange & The Multiverse of Madness (we’ll get back to this one in a second), but didn’t care about any of them. I still cry when Steve & Bucky fight on a falling aircraft, maybe I’ll cry right now as I type the line, “because I’m with you to the end of the line.” Sheesh. We really cared about that, about them. Thor sacrificing himself to the destroyer in the 1st Thor, Tony Stark giving his life in Endgame – these things mattered. Do you think there is a multiverse where anyone could possibly care about She-Hulk? Of course not. It was the worst.

The 2 exceptions are Loki and Wanda. Loki sacrificed everything he’d ever be so that all of us can have a future. Maybe we’re not holding the tree of time together, but how can we not understand the conflict of offering ourselves (time, money, opportunity, etc) for others. Wandavision and then Multiverse of Madness served as meditations on grief and the lengths we’d go to spend one more moment with the people we love. It’s heartbreaking and real and, sure, she’s a witch, but she’s me and you, too.

Those 2 exceptions give hope that the MCU could regain some of it’s former beauty and significance. Or maybe they’ll become what they have become, exceptions, and the meaningless buffoonery of Love & Thunder (when I say She-Hulk is the worst, I do it realizing that it’s a tie with this piece of garbage) will be the rule. My guess is that it’ll be somewhere in the middle. It’ll be Deadpool & Wolverine. There will be scenes that mean something (like when Deadpool asks Wolverine to help just because he wants to rescue those he loves) and we’ll enjoy it. It’ll be like a Snickers bar. There are peanuts, which do have protein and substance. But mostly it’s delicious and we’ll love it while we eat it, and then 30 minutes later, we’ll be hungry again, as if we never ate in the first place.

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.

July 22, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

The site is asking what I’d change about modern society. Probably a lot. But that’s not what I’m thinking about this weekend. You already know I’m a man that reads the Bible, and one of the passages I came across last week was one where Peter said I am a slave to whatever controls me. Passages and verses in the Bible are different as we are different. We don’t ever read the same book twice, because even as the words stay the same, we don’t.

So. What controls me? I’ve decided it’s food, the gym, and sex. This is complicated because all 3 are wonderful gifts from a Loving God.

To not make any of us uncomfortable, I’ll use the gym as the example we’ll discuss. I lift weights (and do a small amount of cardio). Exercise is a healthy lifestyle, fitness is positive, it’s a good thing to take care of myself. I should tell you I’ve always had a weight problem, and this is still sort of true. (I am classified as ‘morbidly obese,’ if you listen to the doctor’s charts.) Sometimes, the thing that gets me to the gym is not fitness, not positive, it’s the outpouring of an angry heart that is operating out of old tapes in my head. It is punishment. It is not a choice, or even a reward, the local Planet Fitness is my master. Or rather, the mean voices in my head that tell me I’m not enough, unless… or that I’m whatever and I’ll always be whatever, they become the masters of me.

The gym is awesome, and I love it. I don’t even so much mind that it’s not really a choice anymore, in a manner of speaking. It is so much a part of the fabric of me that I don’t have to. However, a rest day is not evidence of some defect, it’s a necessary facet of self-care. But too often, I spend rest days with some level of guilt and shame. These feelings are no longer oppressive, but I’d be lying if I said they weren’t there at all, and they are often the impetus to get me to the gym instead of beauty or gratitude or pleasure or even agency. This is mastery.

Food is a little different. It’s healthy and nourishing, relational, a blessing. But I very often don’t choose what to eat out of self-care and thanksgiving, I choose out of simple primal desire for whatever tastes best (like processed sugar-laden junk) that will damage me. Maybe it’s not that different, it’s a master that isn’t concerned with my well-being, and is, instead, bent on the opposite.

Anything we can’t stop, or that distorts our moods and emotions when we do stop, is a master. And we are it’s slave.

These things are gifts, I am not a slave to the socks I got at Christmas. I am not a slave to the Church, or Three’s Company, or my favorite songs. These are gifts, they add color and texture, and make my life so much better. So does food and sex and the dead lift. Until they don’t. Until they are the stern task/master that is holding the keys to me.

So now what? What do I do with this? I can’t cut them out, nor would I want to. I simply want them in their right place, as blessing instead of curse. Maybe that means more rest days. (It’s funny, most people’s New Years Resolutions are to go to the gym more often, mine would be to go less often. Weird.) Less sweets, or more mindful sweets? Maybe it means more and more sex, though. Haha. Probably it means that. But maybe “mindfulness” is the solution to all of this. If I am here, now, rooted in my identity, making conscious decisions, instead of some animal led around by unquestioned natural instincts, then I might be able to break free of their chains, and who knows? Maybe these things take on new meaning and overwhelming beauty that was impossible to see from underneath them.

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.

Light of the World?

July 5, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

All documentaries are not the same. I watched the 3 episodes of Unveiled: Surviving La Luz Del Mundo on Max the past several days. This was not the first I had heard of the abuses in this church, and to be depressingly honest, nothing that happened there is particularly new and/or unique. Money, sexual abuse, pedophilia, and violence are rampant when organizations exist for the veneration of the leaders rather than serving any other purpose. Every whim and desire, no matter how disturbing, is satisfied because…well, the same reasons.

Every cult documentary follows a similar script. The (whatever) grows and sounds awesome, the people are finding a beautiful community, they feel like family, the leader/teacher/visionary has some special gifts of charisma and a magnetic personality. The first episode, usually, leaves us cringing because it all sounds fine, like a place we’d like to be. There are probably a few hints as to the coming nightmare, but (insert name here) is great. Then, in episode 2, the head man starts with the controlling, then leveraging his position to start abusing those “lucky” enough to have such access to a “Man of god.” Episode 3 is when it all falls apart and people die, or the authorities finally get involved and inevitably ends with a sad caricature of “justice,” leaving the victims further damaged.

Most docs detail the abuse and interview some victims, and it’s awful. This one, though, followed mostly the same template (down to the inept prosecutors), with a noticeable exception. The victims told the story. There was no “and it all seemed so good,” it was “we thought it was good, but…” right from the start. You’d think this would lessen the impact, but the filmmakers trained the cameras on the faces of the abused and left it there. There weren’t sound bites, the people were able to tell their stories the way they wanted to, in the time they needed. They cried, and so did we, as all of our hearts broke. I felt the “apostle’s” hands on me, his words in my ears. We, as human beings, were all violated.

Episode 3 ended with the head of the monster getting 16 (!!!) years in prison (amid the looming question of, if they were white women, would it have been more? And the obvious answers in the form of previous cult precedents), and many in the church still defending the guilty. Sometimes it’s harder to wake up, isn’t it?

I know why and how this happens, but that doesn’t make anything less horrific. These documentaries expose us all – the reason they persist is in our unwillingness to relate. We think we’re so different, and that this La Luz Del Mundo congregation is a separate incident of corruption and abhorrent behavior. But it happens too much for us to call it an isolated incident. Too much to call it “them.” There’s no them, it’s all us. And we should all have to look in the eyes of the victims, because maybe then, we’ll feel enough to get off our couches and stop this nonsense, because as long as even one of us is seen and treated as less than human, we all are.

People Are Strange

July 2, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

There’s a documentary on Max, called How To Create A Sex Scandal, detailing a horrific story about child sexual abuse in Texas. A foster family brought in 3 kids, whose parents were facing a list of drug charges, and the kids had, after being trained at a “sex kindergarten,” been forced to “work” as strippers and sex workers at a local swingers club. It was absolutely sickening, and the perpetrators were tried and given life sentences.

Except none of it was true. Well, the foster mom still stands by her accusations, so this is probably a case where we should say “alleged” liars, “alleged” mean-spirited cash grab, “alleged” shenanigans in an “alleged” dirty, filthy courtroom. The convictions were sort of turned over – they were released with scarlet letters for child sexual abuse felonies. Their children were all taken from them. Not just the 3 initially involved that the foster home “allegedly” manipulated, but all of the others children, as well. All convictions but 1, a man who died in prison before the wheels of justice could turn for him.

The last words of the series were from one of the accused, who said (something like), “I don’t trust anyone, and I learned that people are mean.”

Is that true? Are we mean? Jim Morrison wrote, “people are strange,” (which is a pretty decent Doors song, not just wildly overrated, like most Doors songs…and the Doors overall). Some of these faces looked very ugly in this doc, and I am very happy to say the Lizard King was 100% right, we are strange, but am I willing to say we’re mean? Some of us are, of course, and all of us can be sometimes, but is that enough for such a sweeping generalization?

These foster parents certainly were, allegedly. In Men In Black, Tommy Lee Jones’ character says, “a person is smart, people are dumb,” and I found that pretty profound (especially in the middle of an embarrassing presidential election season.) So, I think I’m happy to use that framework in this case. A person is mean, people are alright. Strange, but alright. Not always, probably, but a person isn’t always smart, either.

I don’t blame this woman, she’s had her whole life destroyed because of the nastiness of 2 foster parents and an allegedly crooked judicial system. To her, people are awfully mean. But just because the sky might look red behind red lenses, it doesn’t mean the sky IS red. She’s right, she sees a red sky, and in most cases, perception is reality. At least, practically, it is.

But by a very large majority, I believe that people are strange, well-meaning and awesome. That’s why stories like this are so shocking. We are knocked down by the depths some folks can sink, allegedly, because it’s so far outside of the reality we experience every day. 2 monsters aren’t representative of the foster parent population, are they? And some mess in Texas doesn’t indict us all, either, right?

Right?

What Happened?

June 26, 2024/The Bridge Faith Community/Leave a comment

Brittany Murphy was a super talented actress who died at 32, in circumstances that were cloudy and subject to a bunch of suspicious guesses as to ‘what really happened.’ The documentary on Max is awfully sad, and after 2 hours, the circumstances aren’t so much cloudy as they are unimaginable. A 32 year old woman shouldn’t just die of pneumonia in her bathroom with her mother and husband in the next room. And the husband shouldn’t then die months later of the same cause. But it did happen, so now what?

The husband, Simon, was (by most of these accounts) not a terrific person. He had the gift of overwhelming charisma, and when that was combined with a lack of character and/or morality, he became a very dangerous influence. It’s hard to know what was true, because he so rarely was honest. He had 2 children that some of those purported to be closest to him found out only in this documentary. He was ridiculously controlling, isolating both Brittany and her mother, Sharon, making all decisions on all matters, big & small, personally & professionally. Probably, if Brittany Murphy was married to a different person, she would be alive today, but she wasn’t. She was married to this one.

I loved Brittany Murphy in all of the films I saw (of course, nobody saw all of her films, her later work was far beneath her talent). I found her electric and engaging. As we all saw her wasting away in front of us, a victim of anorexia and drugs and whatever else contributes to a woman’s public disappearance, we mourned well before the news reports. The story starts as an uplifting, hopeful comedy, but is quickly revealed as tragedy, and that’s just the worst – not because she’s a celebrity, or because we loved her, but because she was a human being in a world that wholly consumed her.

So, what really happened?

I’m thinking how we all have our self-destructive impulses. Drugs aren’t mine, and neither is anorexia, but maybe they’re yours. No matter, we have buttons of insecurities and inadequacies. We have fears and voices in our heads that whisper some of the nastiest things anyone has ever heard. We aren’t celebrities whose every choice and picture is eviscerated by armies of Perez Hilton’s, but if we were, maybe we’d live in a filthy apartment and swallow handfuls of pills and not go to the Dr. Or maybe it would be something else. Maybe we’d drink bottles of wine all day. Or eat m&m’s on the couch, mindlessly scrolling through TikToks. Or run for miles and miles, never escaping the pain & pressure of staying alive, never dodging the arrows. I think it’s mostly the height of arrogance to think Brittany Murphy is so different from us. Maybe we had relationships that were unhealthy, where we changed so much we didn’t recognize ourselves. Maybe we’d go a little crazy, too, lonely & small without a community of people to love us in real life (instead of on screen). Maybe it’s just by the grace of God that we are here and she’s not.

What happened is heartbreaking, but not so strange. What now, then?

Kathy Najimi said, through tears, that she wished she’d have gone over there and pulled her out, called the police. Even if Brittany Murphy hated her afterwards. And Kathy Najimi is right. We all wish she did, too. But we all figure we wouldn’t have, either. Maybe minding our own business, pretending everybody is so divided, isn’t the answer. Maybe it never was. Maybe we should start to know our neighbor’s names and stories, to laugh with the comedies, and call the police in the tragedies. Maybe we can reach out, and maybe we can show up. Maybe it’s a cliché, but loving each other might be the answer. Maybe not, too, but it’s worth a shot. We’ve tried the others for way too damn long and they haven’t worked, even a little bit. Maybe it’s time for a revolution.

Love With A Capital L

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

Tag: perspective