The Unclad Soul

(Spoiler Alert: You may not want to read if you haven’t yet seen the movie.) I saw this past weekend the movie, “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” starring Shia LeBeouf as Tyler, Dakota Johnson as Eleanor, and new to the screen, an actor with Down Syndrome, Zack Gottsagen. His character, Zac, is a young man with Down Syndrome living in a nursing home where Eleanor, a kind and attractive staff person is assigned to him. Zac hates where he is and longs to leave. His roommate Carl, (longtime actor, Bruce Dern) is an elderly man who likes Zac and encourages him in his quest to leave. He knows he doesn’t belong there. Eleanor knows this, too, but she has no options for Zac since he has no parents or family to care or provide for him. Tyler (LeBeouf) is a failed crab fisherman, a sort of drifter and rebel who lives by his own rules. He wears the same dingy t-shirt, faded cap, stained shorts, and scruffy beard through the whole movie, and you begin to forget the actor and believe the c...

There is an insightful comment from the novelist Virginia Woolf in her search for purpose in life. She had often come to detours and dead ends. There were high moments of discovery and low times of nagging self-doubt. In a personal essay she concluded, “What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with the years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.” It is such a magnificent comment. Most of us at some point in our lives, often in mid-life or our later years, look back over it all and wonder what any of it meant. We see people we loved for the wrong reasons. Relationships that ended badly. Pathways we should have never taken. Choices we knew were questionable but made them anyway often with regret. We see good times, laughter and celebrations, deep love; that fun concert, the hila...

A fundamental truth in the teachings of Jesus was that the wicked are not as dangerous as those who pretend to be righteous. In fact, the only group that Jesus ever publically rebuked, and he did it more than once, was the Pharisees. Their self-righteousness and religious intolerance of anyone breaking their rules angered Jesus because he saw it as a mockery of the love God had sent him to live and share. The recent vote at the global United Methodist Church conference, which affirmed and tightened its ban on same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian clergy, is, in my opinion, a sad continuation of the Pharisees of old who used their faith to exclude and judge others. Let’s not forget that Roman emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity and hailed himself as bringing it to Rome, was a more than compromised leader. He had his own son killed and boiled his wife in hot water. And yet he remains in history an icon of Christianity. The Crusades, which lasted 200 years,...

The Sundance Now, BBC series, The Split, brilliantly captures the emotions, heartache, messiness, and collapse of relationships both in marriage and divorce. I recently subscribed to Sundance Now and while browsing the program selections found this gem. Marriage has got to be one of the most complicated of human relationships we will ever enter. Society, Church, and Hollywood, have too often created an illusion surrounding marriage that simply does not exist in reality. Marriage is hard work. Most relationships are. But marriage requires a stubborn love, a willingness to change and grow, an unconditional acceptance of the other in all of their character flaws, irritating habits, stubbornness, sensitivity to criticism, and well, just being a human being. The idea that we can be married a lifetime is a lovely concept, but life has a way of interrupting things, and staying together to the end is not for everyone. I have often suggested to friends there ought to be ter...

There is a beautiful line from poet and author Wendell Berry, “We hurt, and are hurt, and we have each other for the healing. It is always healing. It is never whole." That sums up quite nicely a large part of our purpose on earth. After the passing of time and the living of life, we know too well that we hurt others and they hurt us. Life is an ongoing process of learning how to navigate this uneven path we are all on. And in the midst of our hurting and being hurt there are those who are there for our healing. This is a fundamental part of parenting. Our children, if they are to be themselves fully alive, emotionally healthy, and self-directed, must never doubt they are loved by their parents. And that whenever they fail, or get in trouble, or suffer illness, there will be healing at home. This, too, is the core work of marriage, of spending life with a partner, of committing oneself to another person in a relationship of trust, intimacy, and love. Being a s...

I suppose nearly everyone has now heard of Keaton Jones, the Tennessee middle school boy whose mom’s video of him went viral. Keaton apparently has had surgery for a cleft pallet that sometimes interferes with his speech and his appearance, although he’s a handsome boy with bright eyes. After kids at school made fun of his nose, called him ugly, and said he didn’t have any friends, they then poured milk on him in the lunchroom. Broken hearted and ashamed, his mom came to school to pick him up. Thankfully, celebrities and others have covered him with affirmation and offers of friendship. He knows now he’s not stupid or ugly. And what child doesn’t need to know that, always? As parents, we have the moral and human responsibility to teach our children to treat all children with respect and care. I don’t know where the teachers or monitors were when this boy was being so mistreated, but the real responsibility for bullying others lies directly at the feet of those of us wh...

Mary Oliver has a beautiful little poem in which she asks: “Is the soul solid, like iron? or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?” It is both. The soul, we are told by philosophers, theologians, and mystics, is our essence, the permanence of our true self. It is that part of us that lives beyond death. Or so we are taught by religion. Where exactly the soul exists beyond that, has of course, been long debated. There are times in life when something deep within us is, as Mary Oliver says, solid as iron and we operate out of some sense of aliveness, confidence, and inner strength. It may be fleeting, but there when needed; or it may carry us through long periods of endurance when we build a sturdy self, confident and capable of our abilities and talents. This is the work of the soul. This is a part of our spiritual development. This is what enables us to believe there are forces in life, loving and generous and mystical, that nurture an...

The movie, “Annie,” has been remade and the cast includes a young black girl as the star. Quvenzhané Wallis , a ten-year old black actress is Annie. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Hushpuppy in the 2012 movie, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” when she was only 8 years old. If you have never seen that movie please watch it. Wallis’s performance is brilliant, moving and powerful, as a child living in poverty and chaos with her hot tempered and ill father. The new Annie brings a fresh approach to the original movie and Broadway musical. I celebrate the choice of Quvenzhané Wallis for the leading role. She will be wonderful. Not everyone is happy about this, however, and rude critics have shown up on social media channels like Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere. Some really vicious things have been said about this child actor. Racism still exists in this country and, sadly, always will, I suppose. It is expressed in people who are terrified of change and ...

We live in a divided and divisive country. In spite of the many advances that minorities have gained in America, racism is still a vicious and unyielding presence among us. Our political system wobbles feebly almost uselessly from the influences of corruption, bullheadedness, favoritism, malaise, haughtiness and indifference. Churches and the religious community once such a force for good and spiritual guidance are now often caught up in partisan political campaigning, serving politicians and clearly ignoring Jesus, not to mention the dispossessed, the sick, the young and the old, the hurting, the addicted, and the lonely. All across the country there hovers in the air a spirit of nastiness, wrangling, antagonism, and bitter discord and discourse. The story is told of a father and son sitting outside their house one summer evening talking and sipping iced tea. The night sky was a bit hazy but brilliant with stars and the son suddenly commented how beautiful the moons were abo...