The Shawshank Redemption, Part I: HOPE

The Shawshank Redemption, a movie that was released in 1994, is my wife’s all-time favorite movie -- and its way up there for me, as well. Interestingly enough, when it first came out the reviews were not good and the box office was worse. Then oddly, the video release became the top rental of the year. Due partly to my word of mouth, and perhaps partly because it was nominated for seven Academy Awards, it has remained a favorite of movie-watchers ever since.

Besides strong performances from Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman and yes, even Bob Gunton as the evil warden, what makes this movie so compelling is its universal themes of hope and redemption.

Let’s look at hope first. Andy Dufresne, a successful banker, is condemned to Shawshank prison for the murder of his wife and her lover. Shawshank is a terrible place, but worse than the corrupt warden and sadistic guards, its real power is the power to dehumanize.  Andy’s cynical friend, Red, describes it this way:

“Spend enough time in prison and it no longer matters why you’re there. Guilty or innocent, there comes a time when you no longer have an identity except as an inmate. You lose your autonomy, and by then, even release leaves nothing but the broken shell of a man. They send you here for life, and that’s exactly what they take.”

 Now there is a description of hopelessness.

There is only one thing that can keep an inmate in Shawshank alive -- hope. But what is hope? Is it just wishful thinking, a pipe dream, a refusal to accept reality? That’s what Red thinks; he’s stopped hoping. But Andy knows better. He knows that that whatever prison and its evil intent can do to beat down the body, they can never kill the soul. Referring specifically to music (one of the ways people throughout the centuries have nourished the soul and kept hope alive) he says, “there’s something inside that they can’t get to, they can’t touch.” Yet hope for Andy is not just an internal thing that one retreats into and ignores the situation one faces. Twice, he risks terrible punishment and his favored position as the Warden’s assistant to show his friends what hope means in real terms. For example, he accepts two weeks of solitary confinement for broadcasting Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro over the prison loudspeakers. When he came out, he told his fellow inmates, “easiest time I ever did.”

What Andy realizes and where the movie excels, is showing us that real hope is not about closing your eyes to the inhumanity around us or stopping up our ears (hear no evil) and dreaming. No, real hope is about embodying in one’s life a belief that life is worth living, no matter how bleak the external circumstances -- even at the risk of one’s own safety. “Get busy living or get busy dying,” Andy tells Red. From a Christian perspective, hope means a strong and confident expectation based on the promises of God. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God tells the people of Israel in the midst of their darkest moment, “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” In the Bible, hope is dynamic, active, and life-sustaining. It does not leave us drifting or rocking on the porch. It puts us in gear. That’s the kind of hope that Andy Dufresne exemplifies in Shawshank Redemption and why I think the movie connects with so many people.

Next time I will write about who and what is being redeemed in this wonderful movie. Stay tuned...
Jeff

Random Musings about Youth Formation....

While serving as an interim priest in a Church in Massachusetts a few years ago, the parish engaged in a year long study of how to deepen its youth ministries. We read an interesting book: Engaging The Soul of Youth Culture by Walt Mueller. In the book the author sites a series of studies comparing the changing influences on the values and behaviors of thirteen to nineteen year olds.

What stands out to me about these studies is: the decreased influence of the family unit on our teens, the rising influence of media, and the fact that the church is off the radar. Certainly it is easy to make “media” the bad guy -- especially with issues of bullying, texting and driving, addiction to games, etc.  But media (i.e. internet, email, texting, Tweeting, television, iPhones, computer games) aren’t bad in and of themselves. Technology is inanimate and therefore not capable of good or evil. It is how we use the media available to us that makes a difference. Having a cell phone at the scene of a bad accident can save a life. Modern communication devices can help parents keep tabs on the whereabouts of their children.

Anyway, the influence of the media on our students is not going to go away. Therefore I vote for the proper integration of more media, especially visual media in Sunday school curricula and youth ministry. Visual learning is in! It is used extensively in our schools today; used creatively, visual media can help expose our children to the Christian worldview. This probably means moving away from boring denominational-produced programs to more “locally generated” ministries to our students (which means more work for staff!)

I really don’t know what to say about the decline of families as an influence on our children and teens. Clearly the family is meant to be the most important, first-line influence. However, I also don’t think it does any good to point fingers in a negative way. Clearly, contemporary life is more complicated than “Leave-it-to-Beaver-land.” Today, it is often the case that both parents must work outside the home; and many children today are growing up in a one-parent or divided household. Organized sports and cultural activities are much more pervasive than they used to be.

In that regard, somewhere along the line the spiritual formation and nurture of our children came to be seen as the Church’s responsibility, and thus, another activity in an already busy, if not frenetic, schedule for our youth.

A positive step for families and the church would be for the Church to equip parents to be able to “tell the story” and be able inculcate Christian faith and life into the home, starting at an early age. Here is why I think Adult Formation ministries are the key to the church of tomorrow. That can mean learning more about the Bible, or sharing a book study; it can mean parents of similar-aged children gathering together to learn from each other, supporting and praying together. The sky is the limit really in this regard. Personally, I think our adults at CCE need to take steps to make Adult Christian Formation more of a priority here. I encourage you all to come to the Fall Kickoff on September 7 to learn about all the Christian Formation opportunities we’re offering this fall for children, youth and adults.

Norms and patterns of the 20th century are clearly changing; new paradigms need to emerge if we want our children to grow up in the Christian faith and life, and can engage that faith and life confidently and responsibly in today’s culture.

How exciting if CCE were to be on the cutting edge of strengthening the abilities of our families to be primary loci of Christian formation.
 
Jeff

Laughing at Ourselves

"A cheerful heart is good medicine but a crushed spirit dries up the bones."
- Proverbs 17:22

The ability to be able to laugh at yourself is a strong trait in a spiritually healthy person. Take the case of one of my all time favorite baseball characters, “Vinegar Bend” Mizell, nicknamed for the Alabama town he grew up in. Describing living conditions in his home growing up, Mizell once said, “One day a fire started in the bathroom, but we were able to put it out before it reached the house.”

A left-hander with a blazing fast ball, Mizell was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals after graduating from high school. After spending time in the minors, notably at the ace of the 1951 Houston Buffs Texas League championship team, he was called up to the big league team. He spent seven years with the Cardinals before being traded to the Pirates in the middle of the 1960 season and went 13-5 down the stretch for a team that defeated the Yankees in one of the most dramatic World Series ever. Mizell finished up his career with the New York Mets in 1962 (one of the worst teams in the history of baseball by the way). Later Mizell was elected to the House of Representatives, serving three terms. A dedicated Christian on and off the field, he championed the cause of Christ, and had a special heart for high school and college students.

Mizell once humorously spoke of his effort as the doomed starter in game three of the 1960 World Series. In front of 70,000 fans at Yankee Stadium, he retired only one batter and gave up 5 runs. “If people tuned into the game late on the radio or TV, they missed me completely!” he once said self-deprecatingly. But he still wore his World Series ring with pride, having pitched well during the regular season for Pittsburg.

His delivery was definitely old school. With a slow, arching windup,“Vinegar Bend” would rear back with his leg kicked high and his pitching hand close to the mound. Then he would bring the ball over the top and blow it by a hitter. When asked about his delivery, Mizell would reply with a twinkle in his eye, “Not only did I occasionally touch the mound with my pitching hand, sometimes I would actually knock the ball out of my hand before I could deliver it to the plate!”

One might think a Christian, a Congressman, and a competitive person would be very serious minded and have little reason to laugh, but that’s not the case. Vinegar Bend (his real name, by the way, was Wilmer), realized what many others fail to grasp. A cheerful heart is good medicine. Christians can really laugh with a security -- we know the end of history’s story! We know how it all turns out. Jesus wins in the end. Our enemy is defeated once and for all. Our sins are forgiven, our tears are wiped dry and our future is glorious.

So go ahead and laugh. Snicker at yourself when you drop the ball. Smile when you trip over a crack in the sidewalk. Guffaw with glee when you get the date wrong or forget something. Tell a joke on yourself in a crowd. Those around you will appreciate that you don’t take yourself too seriously. Your ability to laugh might just also help raise someone’s spirits who needs it, and may give them a right perspective the next time they knock the ball out of their own hand.
 
Your number #1 fan,
Jeff

Going Home Justified

The 1962 film Ride the High Country is a study in Christian character.  Click here to read a great review of this film, and I encourage you to see the movie if you can.

-- Jeff

Hurry Sickness

Do you find yourself “busy” all the time? Even in down times are you harried and trying to multi-task? The place and time in which we live make us very susceptible to what author and Presbyterian minister John Ortberg calls “hurry sickness.”

He identifies the following symptoms of this rampant condition.

1. Speeding Up

You are haunted by the fear that you don’t have enough time to do what needs to be done. When listening, you nod more often to encourage the other person to get on with it. You chafe whenever you have to wait. At a stoplight, if there are two lanes and each contains one car, you read the year, make and model of each car to guess which will pull away most quickly.

2. Multi-tasking

You find yourself doing or thinking more than one thing at a time. Psychologists call this polyphasic activity. The car is a favorite place for this. Hurry-sick people may eat, drink coffee, listen to a podcast for ideas, direct business on the cell phone, and drive all at the same time.

3. Clutter

One researcher noted that the average desk-worker has 36 hours worth of work on the desk and spends three hours a week just sorting through it. The hurry-sick lack simplicity. They often carry around a time organizer the size of Montana.

4. Sunset Fatigue

We come home after work, and those who need our love the most, those to whom we are most committed, end up getting the leftovers. Some of the symptoms of “sunset fatigue” are:

a. you rush around at home even when there’s no reason to.

b. you speak sharp words to your spouse and children, even when they’ve done nothing to deserve them.

c. you tell your family that everything will be okay “in just a week or two.” So many of us look forward to the day when things will lighten up, at least for a few days. Alas the day never seems to come.

d. you indulge in self-destructive escapes: such as, watching too much TV, scanning the internet too much, looking forward to the cocktail hour.

e. you flop into bed with no sense of gratitude and wonder for the day, just fatigue.

5. Love impaired

The most serious sign of hurry sickness is a diminished capacity to love, for love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time and time is the one thing hurried people don’t have. Though it doesn’t readily occur to us in the midst of our hurried lives, it is clear that hurry sickness and its symptoms are a huge SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE for us. We need to address it as such. The remedy is not just a matter of slowing down and finding relaxation, but deep rest – it’s not a matter of getting “peace of mind” but of “the peace of God which passes all understanding.” It’s not relieved by entertainment, but by delight. This summer, as the rhythms of suburban life slow down, each of us have an opportunity to reflect on the quality of our lives, to let go of so called pressing priorities, to “vacate” and create some place in our harried lives, for time to rest with God and our families.

We can lay our deadly “doing” down and take time just to be, to listen, be aware, appreciate, pray. May this summer be for each of us a “spiritual time” that restores us to the peace, joy, intimacy and productivity God intends for us.

Peace to all,

Jeff