Saturday, January 05, 2008

Lights, Camera, God


The post-Christmas season is great for clergy because no one wants to have evening meetings. So in our household we take the opportunity to go to the movie theatres. In the past few weeks we have seen Enchanted (enchanting), Charlie Wilson's War (great acting, interesting story), Atonement (sad and beautiful). Juno lives up to the mounds of positive reviews and Canadian star, Ellen Page, is brilliant. We are biased because our daughter, Emily, went to school with Page in Halifax.

The most thought-provoking was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It is the true story of a French journalist, J.D. Bauby, who has a massive stroke at the age of 42. He goes from being a celebrated writer and rake to total paralysis, except for one eyelid. He does not recover any function, but a speech therapist teaches him to communicate with that eyelid. He laboriously dictates a book with the assistance of an incredibly patient scribe who must go through the alphabet for every letter of every word.

The diving bell is the body which imprisons Bauby and the butterfly is his free-flying spirit and imagination. He died days after the publication of his book.

What makes any of us human? What does it mean to be created in God's image? While Bauby rejects God himself, his daughter, his therapist, and many others uphold him in prayer. This picture is playing only in Toronto right now but I encourage you to see it.

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