Faith, Grace, and Hope

Grief is a weird thing. Some people are able to push through and they think everyone can, if they want to. Some people are paralyzed and it's confusing to them how the world even thinks they can function. Most people manage to find their basic new level of functioning (because grief inaugurates a whole new era), but that functioning waxes and wanes. All of this is normal. There's a tiny moment of acknowledging what grief is like in Frozen 2 . It passes fairly quickly in a song, but it was true enough that I wanted to call out, "WAIT! Anna is telling us something real." Elsa (the blonde one) has gone off on a quest, which has unexpected results. The consequences of this (SPOILER) is that Olaf (the snowman) disappears. Kristof missed the women's departure and he is searching for them, lamenting that he hasn't fully expressed his feelings to Anna. Thus, Anna is alone and she can perceive that something not good has happened. Olaf's disappearance means...

I pay attention to what I see. A lot. In the past few years, I've paid additional attention to what I don't see. Today, I saw two interesting things. The first was brought to my attention by the professor and Biblical scholar, the Reverend Doctor Wil Gafney (to whose work I commend you). Dr. Gafney noted on Facebook that, regardless of one's actual race, if a person indicates interest or support in issues, authors, or topics at all related to Black Lives Matter, the Root , or any other item that indicates interest in being an accomplice to equality... Facebook assumes that person is African-American. At her urging, I checked and, sure enough, Facebook's #1 categorization of me is African American. While I would happily claim this designation if I could, it's not even close to correct. Ironically, despite the fact that I belong to multiple Jewish groups and an equal number of knitting groups, Facebook is more certain that I am black than it is regarding anythi...

I loved Wonder Woman . I loved it so much that I didn't want to leave the theater. When I got up, I didn't want to talk about the movie. I wanted to stay in the bubble where it was accepted that women are badasses and to be treated as equals (or even more powerful when they are!). I wanted to linger and wallow in the place where the presented and accepted truth is that women can kick butt AND love babies AND speak multiple languages AND be sexually interesting AND be warriors AND be leaders AND grieve AND can be funny AND can read maps AND can be gracious AND can silence detractors. There was a whole lot of AND in the movie. Not so much OR. The world is wide enough for AND. Mostly, though, I gripped the armrests and wanted to cling to the place where I had seen something that was new to me in film. There was a shape. A shape I see all the time. A shape that literally and metaphorically  defines my life. I saw this shape in Wonder Woman  and, for the first time...

Last Friday (3/18), I took my kids to see Zootopia . It was a little intense for them, but on the whole they liked it. It was the three-year-old's first movie. If I had known that it was quite that dark, I probably wouldn't have taken her, but she sat in my lap the whole time and thought it was pretty neat.  The theme of the movie, much touted elsewhere, is good enough for the very heavy-handed Disney presentation. The animals in Zootopia have all learned to get along. The movie deals with stereotyping and what happens to individuals when we stereotype groups. Granted, foxes, elephants, sheep, and bunnies have far less biologically in common than do all people, so should we need an animal film to show us how to get along?  Nevertheless, as I watched the movie, I was increasingly agitated. There was obviously a lot of biological and anatomical research that went into this movie. While there were some animals that appeared slightly unusually shaped for their species...

When rejecting an invitation, according to Amy Sedaris, one simply says, “I can’t come.” You don’t add a reason. “Anything after ‘because’ is bullshit,” according to Sedaris. That’s what I think of when I see the dearth of nominations for Selma in the Oscars. There weren’t more because the movie didn’t play the game, send out screeners, open earlier, deal with political backlash well. Frankly, my dear, anything after because is bullshit. I have already seen Selma twice and I’m trying to figure out when I will see it at least a third and maybe a fourth time. I am not much of a moviegoer. I think I saw three movies last year. Selma, though, is a big screen phenomenon. There is a nuance in the faces, in the looks, in the gritted teeth and the beads of sweat that will be missed on a small screen. Furthermore, there is a public sensitivity to the directing that is palpable when one is sitting in proximity to other bodies, hearing the gasps, sighs, cheers, and tears. David Oyelow...