The Way: Movie Review

A couple of  nights ago, The Lovely Daughter and I went to see The Way.  Here's a brief promotional  summary from the film's website:

"The Way" is a powerful and inspirational story about family, friends, and the challenges we face while navigating this ever-changing and complicated world. Martin Sheen plays Tom, an American doctor who comes to St. Jean Pied de Port, France to collect the remains of his adult son (played by Emilio Estevez [Martin Sheen's son and the movie's director]), killed in the Pyrenees in a storm while walking the Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of Saint James. Rather than return home, Tom decides to embark on the historical pilgrimage to honor his son's desire to finish the journey. What Tom doesn't plan on is the profound impact the journey will have on him and his "California Bubble Life."

 I've always felt an attraction to Long Walks - the Appalachian Trail, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and yes, the Camino ~ and maybe someday I'll even make one of them ~ and so I was initially drawn to the film for that reason.  Also, I know Martin Sheen to be a devout Catholic (more on that here), so I thought that the religious dimension of the walk would be dealt with seriously.  Insofar as the son's death ~ I didn't know about that, that it was the basis for the plot line, until a couple of hours before we left the house, and it gave me pause.  "Oh, let's give it a try," I concluded.

As a mother who has carried and dispersed her son's ashes hither and yon, there were many scenes in the film that might have been taken from my own life.  The ordinary day.  The phone call.  The police officer.  The crematorium.  The container of remains.  The first time that my eyes welled up with tears came when the French police captain, telling Martin Sheen "Buen Camino" and sending him on his way, says "I too have lost a child."  That current of understanding between parents; that need to say no more.

I thought that the movie was a bit slow and that the four main characters, and some of the supporting characters as well, were somewhat one dimensional. (Although, now that I think about it, there's something Canterbury Tales-esque about the entire scencario.) But the landscapes were breathtaking and the travelogue aspect seems to have captured what I have read of the inconveniences and discomforts of the Camino pilgrimage.  And the scene of the mass in the Cathedral of St. James de Santiago - SPECTACULAR:

(The above is from youtube, not from the film.  You should turn off the sound after the first few moments of music; it captures much more in the way of tourista commentary than the sacredness of the scene.)

Interestingly, and unexpectedly, this film has stayed with me.  I have been mulling it over, trying to ascertain what was so powerful for me.  Not the storyline, not the characterizations, not even the remarkable spread of countryside.  

Two small scenes.

One is the first of many in which Tom removes some of his son's ashes from the plastic bag in which they are contained to scatter them near the spot at which his son died.  I have been thinking a great deal lately, for obvious reasons, about nursing my babies all those years ago, memories now blending with those of removing precious ashes from ordinary containers in order to make sacramental connections with land and water.  Last week, I put some ashes in a locket so that I could wear them next to my skin as I was ordained to ministry.

I suppose that the scene has stayed with me because I did not know, until three years ago, what it would be, to feel the ashes of your child in your hand.

In the other, the main characters are relaxing at a hostel.  The day is drenched in sunlight, and the only woman among them sits in a window, relaxing with her everpresent cigarette.

There is a part of me, even after all that has happened, that remains capable of sitting in a window frame in the sunlight, being and present.

The Lovely Daughter is ready to hop on a plane to Spain.  I guess maybe I am, too.

**********

(Here's another review, if you prefer something less personal.)

Resilience: Book Review

One of the books I've been reading is Elizabeth Edwards' Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life's Adversities.  You may recall that Mrs. Edwards was married to vice-presidential contender John Edwards, that they had lost a sixteen-year-old son to a car accident, and that she herself, having finally divorced her lout of a husband (and I describe him thus with regret, as I was excited about him during the 2004 election and even braved a long and cold night that fall to watch them both speak) before herself succumbing to breast cancer.

I was, of course, most interested in her twin burdens of dead son and breast cancer.  (I have been rather more fortunate than she in the husband department.)

I have to say that I am deeply disappointed by the book, and ended up skimming  most of it.  It is, indeed, little more than a series of reflections, and fairly disjointed ones at that. 

I wasn't put off by her emphasis on the loss of her son, as some of her Amazon reviewers were ~ I completely understand that.  I suppose some of her thoughts about grief ~ and particularly her thoughts about how a bereaved mother comes to see death for herself ~ might be startling to a reader who does not live where we do.  But they seem normal enough to me.

I wasn't interested in the  salacious details of her former husband's adulterous misadventures, and to her credit and dignity, she does not provide them.  And I wasn't interested in the details of the progress of her cancer and its treatment ~ that kind of information is amply available elsewhere.

But what I am interested in ~ and did not find in the book ~ is a deeper understanding of that word resilience.I am fascinated by words, and often find contemplation of the etymology of significant words to be a form of prayer.

Here are two definitions of resilience, from dictionary.com:

1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

 

2. the ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy. 

It comes from Latin, from to rebound or to spring back.

Now that I've read those definitions, I wish more than ever that she had explored the word resilience  and what it meant to her.  Was it merely an editor's choice, slapped on book covers as a promotional gimmick?  Or did the word itself resonate with her?  Was it a personal matter of vigilance, of determination, of religious faith, of hope? Was it a word she pondered and prayed with, or was it a word she came to despise?

I've come to think of myself as a resilient person, you see, but now, with those definitions in hand, I'm not so sure.  

I think that the problem lies in the phrase "original form." 

I am about to lose my literal, physical, original from, but I have long before now lost my original emotional and spiritual form.  And I'm not sure that that's a bad thing.  A childhood without a mother, a motherhood without a child, a body without a breast ~ in the face of all that, would I desire to spring backward into the person I once was? Wouldn't that be a little, well, silly?

And that phrase, "recover readily" ~ that's problematic as well.  Believe me, Elizabeth Edwards did not recover readily from the death of her son.  That's not something we do.

But we do move forward, into these other, unexpected and, in many of their dimensions, unwanted, lives.  We make new lives as new people, as different people. 

 I wish that Elizabeth Edwards had shared something about how she did that.  I wish she had related some of the conversations she had, with the friends with whom she shared her life and with the wisdom figures from whom she sought counsel.  I wish she had ruminated on what it felt like to discover that she had breast cancer, of all things, when she had already lost a child.  (Me, personally ~ I will tell you that it's a particularly rough combination of fates.)  I wish she had reflected a bit on how she found her way forward when life must have seemed like little more than betrayal upon betrayal: her love for her children, her body, her marriage.

I hope that the book was a bit cathartic for her to write.  She seems to have been a gracious and generous woman, someone whose friendship I would have valued.

But the final word on resilience awaits another writer.

Breaking Bread with Online Friends

"How do you know all these people?" exclaimed a friend last night, when I stopped by her house to wish her a happy birthday.  "You had a rabbi from St. Louis and a photographer from Philadelphia at your ordination - how did that happen?"

A couple of years ago one of my seminary professors expressed great skepticism about internet interactions and friendships.

Let's see . . .

Carol isn't a rabbi, but she is a dear friend (unmet in real life until last Sunday!) as a consequence of fifteen years of emailing among a group of moms who met online.  Carol and I have enjoyed numerous discussions about Jewish-Christian matters over the years and she has been a rock in my life since Josh died.  Of course I wanted her to read Psalm 139, and to read at least the first few lines in Hebrew.

Michelle isn't a professional photographer, but she's a contemplative one, as well as a chemistry professor and essayist on the spiritual life.  We met online through our mutual passion for blogging and Ignatian spirituality, and we've met at Wernersville, a place of silence and prayer to which Michelle heads frequently and I, once a year.  We blogged our way through Into the Silent Land Together (see top of page), and we've shared many conversations, both intense and humorous. 

Another online and now in-person friend who appeared is Chris.  We met because an article appeared in the local paper a few weeks after Josh died, a year after her daughter died in Italy.  We've walked along Lake Erie together and we've shared many challenging and loving conversations with two other heartbroken mothers, all of whom met through our blogs andall of whom eventually spent months in an online retreat together, reading and writing about a Joyce Rupp bookr.

I'm realizing as I report on these friendships that perhaps they are not so much online friendships as writing friendships.  Carol mentioned that many of her friends at home expressed skepticism about her trip out here; many of my friends also roll their eyes at the mention of internet relationships. 

But the reality is that years of shared correspondence ~ whether high tech or via the old quill-and-ink method ~ produce deep reflection, intimate sharing, and lasting friendship. 

The image is Michelle's ~ My First Celebration of Communion.

Paris, Ignatius, Calvin, and Me

It's been a little more than five years since I wandered the streets of Paris, thinking about Ignatius of Loyola and John Calvin, who had both studied in the same neighborhood in which we were staying ~ wondering whether they ever met, and musing about the diverging paths the Catholic and Protestant churches were taking during those early years of the 16th century ~ paths that would converge in my own rather eclectic spiritual life. (All of those questions eventually led to an independent study in seminary!)

One afternoon that week, I sat in the Chapel of the Martyrs in Montmartre, imagining Ignatius and the first Jesuits there 450 years earlier, committing themselves to God and to one another.  I prayed the final prayers of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, and made my own commitment to following the path toward ordained ministry, if that were really what God had in mind.  A big IF, I might add.   I laughed and I shed a few tears, and I guessed that not too many paths toward ministry in the Presbyterian Church have begun in that particular setting.

I have most assuredly had many opportunities to wonder whether I had taken off down a road completely of my own making, one that perhaps had very little to do with God.   At the time, during those days of discernment five years ago,  it seemed that three years of seminary, requiring me to live in two cities, would be something of a challenge.  That it might be difficult to pursue both a certificate in spiritual direction and an M.Div., at the same time.  That I might be a little too old.

Those concerns seem so trivial now, in light of the death of my son and the new challenge of breast cancer ~ matters which have caused me to question everything I have ever done and to ponder whether I should simply pull the front door of my house closed and never venture out again.

But ~ here I am.  I have consecrated and served bread and drink.  I preach every Sunday now.  Yesterday I spent the waning hours of the afternoon riding in a tractor and then a truck as one of my parishoners gave me the grand tour of his farm.  In two more weeks I will have major surgery.  I am a minister of word and sacrament, and one of the many times and places in which that astonishing reality began to take shape was in the small chapel about which I at that time wrote the following:

While I had initially planned a trip to Paris in large part for the purpose of getting to Chartres, the Jesuits found their way into my objectives, too.

My quest eventually focused in on Montmartre and on the tiny church at the foot of the Basilica of Sacre'-Coeur known as the Chapel of the Martyrs. Sacre'-Coeur is a famous landmark in Paris if for no reason other than its singular appearance on a hillside to the north of the city.

Almost no one has heard of the Chapel of the Martyrs, and probably very few people stumble across it, located as it is on a side street slightly out of the way of the usual Montmartre walking routes. I was at something of a loss myself, until at the very last minute I stumbled across an article giving the address and indicating that it might be open on Friday afternoons.

"Okay," I announced, our first full day in Paris being also our only Friday there, "we are off on a quest for the first Jesuits," seven men who met in the Chapel of the Martyrs and made their first vows among themselves on August 15, 1534. The chapel itself was, like many of the sacred buildings in France, destroyed during the French Revolution and rebuilt during the next century.We found it nestled on a busy side street, almost hidden behind scaffolding, but with a sign indicating that it would open at 3:00.
 
The chapel itself is nestled partway underground and maintained with the simplest of decors -- whitewashed walls, clear windows, a plain altar, and a large oil painting on the wall of the Jesuits making their vows at that spot. I won't try to convey what it meant to me to sit there quietly for an hour, to pray and absorb the powerful event that had taken place there but, after nearly a year in the company of Ignatius, it was one of the most moving experiences of my life.

I guess it took.

Ordination: Reflections

 I keep thinking that I must have something profound to say.  I guess that what I would say is this:  

My favorite professor preached something that we all needed to hear, and a couple of people actually did.  I welcomed everyone to communion, because in the stories of centuries of religious exclusion and inclusion there is not a doubt in my mind about where the sacrament fits.  Tears mingled as I served people whose losses have become mine as mine have become theirs, and those with whom I have worked to learn and minister for the past several years.

But really, one of my friends, who is always far more eloquent than almost anyone else I know, says it best.  I hope that it doesn't seem self-serving to post it (with her permission).

I attended the ordination of a friend today. Someone who has worked years and years to become a minister of word and sacrament.  There were so many beautiful moments throughout the worship service: the litany of ministers in their formal black robes and red stoles, the songs sweeping into descant, the promises we had to make to help Robin live into her calling.  I loved watching Clover's proud face. The pews filled with family.  I loved watching the stream of people come up to take the bread of life from Robin.  How some paused for a hug, how some leaned into Robin's cheek to deliver a kiss, how Chris Henry touched Robin's chest -- put a palm to her heart.  There was a moment when the western setting sun came through the window and lighted upon Robin's face -- just her face.  Like a kiss, or a distant blessing.  There was definitely a presence of something larger there in that moment. No, something larger was there most of the afternoon.

It made me want to start an ordination movement.  Ordaining my neighbors, especially Sheridan who cut her pumpkin naked today.  Ordain the teenagers walking past the library.  Ordain my colleagues tomorrow at work.  Ordain the crossing guards, the Starbucks baristas, the nursery school teachers, the public defenders.  Ordain the dying and those who care for them.  Ordain the nurses in the ER, the doctors telling the bad news.  I wanted to ordain everyone.  Let everyone know that they are filled with resurrecting power and light.  I wanted everyone to know that they are loved by many, that they are important people called to do important work. It was a beautiful day, one that made us all want to stretch out farther and more lovingly.  For that, and for Robin, I give great thanks. 

Communion Music:

The Working Life

No one liked my stoles?  Hrrrrmmmmmph.

Well, how about the following, which Someone I Know received from a co-worker (You need to know that the aforesaid Someone has been working 60-70 ~ quite literally ~ hour weeks for months on a project that ~ well ~ no comment! ):

Gifts

 

Stoles, top to bottom:

Ordination/Pentecost stole, a gift from my home church Session and Pastors.

Stole for Ordinary Time, Lent, and Advent, a gift from the women who have been my friends for 24 years this month.  Visible: the gannet, my particular bird, the bird I think of when I read the last lines of Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem, "God's Grandeur": "the Holy Ghost over the bent/World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."  On the other side, an oystercatcher: the bird associated with St. Brigid, a woman known as a healer and teacher, a model for any woman in ministry.  The stole as a whole is filled with Trinitarian symbolism:  colors of sea and sky for the Creator, the cross for the Son, and the birds for the Holy Spirit. And finally, the artist is married to Josh's favorite high school teacher, so there is to me a great connection to him, in knowing that it was crafted in the same house in which his earliest high school papers were read and graded.

Guatemalan stole, a gift from the Lovely Daughter, who says she stood in a store in Guatemala last spring and said to herself, "The perfect gift for mom!" (who at the time had no hint of a call) ~ "but what color?  How do you choose?"

And the stole made for me by a pastor and blogging friend, for ordinary time and for Christmas and Easter (white on the other side).  This is the stole that I took down to the hospital and put on to bless the room and people when biopsy number one took place.

Across the top: A beaded chain and cross, an ordination gift from my best friend from seminary.  I think sometimes that we became glued at the hip sometime in the fall of our first year.  She'll be ordained in the United Church of Christ in two more weeks!

Of course, all of these gifts represent the three much greater ones: family, friendship, and call.