Once More Into the Breach

I am waiting...

Not patiently mind you, just waiting. It will be hours, days, but certainly not weeks before my wife and I have a second child. And it is hard to wait.

Partly to kill the time, aprtly to catch up to the Academy Awards, we have been watching movies. Over the past weekend we watched two; "The Departed" and "Stranger Than Fiction."

Now, I am one of those people who thought Pulp Fiction was a waste of celluloid. You should know that before we start - because I thought the Departed was one of the worst uses of two and half hours I have ever put my life to. First off, it is a movie about Boston Cops... do we need to know more about how everyone in Boston is angry and confused about their identity? And speaking of that - why do the people of Boston put up with this crap?

Secondly, this movie was simply Hamlet done poorly. Everyone dies, for no good reason - and that was done, and done to peprfection, by Willy the Bard himself. About the only thing about the Departed that was worth watching was the comment by a store owner when two rival gangs are beating the crap out of each other in his store: "Is everyone in this country crazy? Does everyone hate each other?" Well, apparently, yes.

So my real question is why didn't Stranger than Fiction win awards? Did they not pay enough bribes? Because even the simplist of things, like lighting when an apple falls to the street, are done to perfection. Let alone, brilliant acting, a clever script, and pathos galore.

Here is the plot as a sermon - faith in the outcome makes the difference.

Mark Twain once wrote: “In my life I’ve known many troubles, most of which never happened.”

And the truth is that it is our attitude towards those troubles that makes a difference. When confronted by people who wanted to kill him Jesus responded: "I will be right here, doing what is right and helping people today, tomorrow and the next day..."

The simplist messages are often the best - whether you are a liberal or a conservative, whether a Christian or a Buddhist... This is my advice to you - stay the course, do what is right, believe in the good - it WILL make a difference.