Powerful Scenes Save Epic 'Miracle at St. Anna'

My recent diet of films has ranged from the somewhat formulaic The Women to the derivative thrill ride Eagle Eye to tonight's Miracle at St. Anna. Of the three, the last will most likely stand the test of time as a film with more heart, reality and unique visual impact.

Unfortunately for Spike Lee, the director, if it doesn't win an Oscar or some other award, it will likely make very little money, since it is a serious film with a predominantly black cast which practically dooms it to almost can be classified as an art house film. Not to mention that it has a title with a religious theme -- the kiss of death among the general populace, unless some kind of hysteria or controversy has been whipped up about it.

We passed a nearly empty theater for the Saturday show, and the theater in the Tuesday night bargain movie showing was only slightly more populated. The good news, in a way, was that the audience was 100% white.

A World War II film with the emotional and visceral punch of Saving Private Ryan and the religious mystery of Agnes of God, St. Anna takes the viewer into the hell of war through the eyes of the Buffalo Soldiers. The all-black platoon was sacrificed to a great extent to the God of racism by white commanders who put them in harm's way without regard for their lives. As the survivors of a river crossing in Italy in which they are bombed by both the Germans and the Americans, four Buffalo soldiers struggle to survive on a mission in a mountain village. Their anger over their treatment at home, their warm treatment by the Italians and the tension that builds over the secrets known by a rescued child and a German prisoner lead to a shattering climax.

Though it's too long -- and its racism subplots are a bit overcooked -- the story drives the action and keeps you in suspense. At the end, the three-hour film moved almost all of the patrons in the theater to tears, including myself.

Dillard's 'Pilgrim' Book Stands as Timeless Reflection

The first time I heard about the book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was in 1984, 10 years after it was published and had earned the Pulitzer Prize as a nonfiction book. I was a 22-year-old journalist working for a daily newspaper in Dallas, and Bill Marvel, the art critic -- one of the most erudite and feisty writers I've had the pleasure of knowing -- recommended it to me to read as a meditation on life.

It only took another 20 years before I got around to buying a copy. Once I'd finally read it, I was glad that I had kept it on my list.

Annie Dillard's exceptional book weaves masterful descriptions of nature with spiritual insights, philosophical debates, historical biological discoveries and a broad smattering of Biblical and literary references. Her description allows the reader to mentally wander the remote woodlands of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains with Dillard as she considers plants, animals, insects, the heavens and the mysteries connected to them.

Some of her descriptions evoke the lyrical beauty and perfection of nature: Out of the dimming sky a speck appeared, then another and another. It was the starlings going to roost. They gathered deep in the distance, flocking sifting into flock, and strayed towards me, transparent and whirling, like smoke. They seemed to unravel as they flew, lengthening in curves, like a loosened skein....Over my head I heard a sound of beaten air, like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff. Into the woods they sifted without shifting a twig, right through the crowns of trees, intricate and rushing, like wind.

Others reveal nature to be stark, brutal and terrifying, more like Tennyson's version, "red in tooth and claw": Adult mantises eat more or less everything that breathes and is small enough to capture. They eat honeybees and butterflies, including monarch butterflies. People have actually seen them seize and devour garter snakes, mice, and even hummingbirds.

Our relationship with nature, both the symbiotic and destructive elements, are relayed primarily through anecdotes and narratives drawn from long-forgotten historical accounts written by explorers and early scientists. They relied primarily on their skills of observation to make sense of what they discovered, such as in this account of how the native people of Greenland were affected by the season's light:

"When too much light falls on everything, a special terror results. Peter Freuchen describes the notorious kayak sickness to which Greenland Eskimos are prone. 'The Greenland fjords are peculiar for the spells of completely quiet weather, when there is not enough wind to blow out a match and the water is like a sheet of glass. The kayak hunter must sit in his boat without stirring a finger so as not to scare the shy seals away...The sun, low in the sky, sends a glare into his eyes, and the landscape around moves into the realm of the unreal. The reflex from the mirror-like water hypnotizes him, he seems unable to move, and all of a sudden it is as if he were floating in a bottomless void, sinking, sinking and sinking.....Horror-stricken, he tries to stir, to cry out, but he cannot, he is completely paralyzed, he just falls and falls. Some hunters are especially cursed with this panic, and bring ruin and sometimes starvation to their families."

As changes in the environment become apparent in the melting of polar ice caps and the worsening storms, it's a book that remains as vital as ever as a meditation on our role in the natural world.

The Economics and Budgeting of Faith

Financial issues have weighed heavily on my mind the past few weeks, as I'm sure they have for a lot of people. Wall Street insiders have been predicting the U.S. financial debacle for at least two years, but somehow nothing happened to stop it, so here we are. Perhaps it was inevitable, and the current Administration simply hoped that it would happen after the November elections.

Along with the entire American economic system hanging in the balance, there are issues related to the presidential campaign that have been thrust in my face by well-meaning friends who are predisposed to voting according to their pocketbooks. At least two who are Christians mentioned that they would vote according to who would cost them less in taxes, as though they could actually make a prediction as to whether this would be the case or not. I do not judge them, however, it makes me wonder with all of the myriad issues in play this year and for the future, whether mammon plays a greater role in their lives than they realize.

Last, but certainly not least, my church has had its own financial challenges in the past few years as members age, move South and ultimately leave us for their heavenly rewards. We've lost young members to sickness, too, and it creates a gap in our membership that takes time to heal. This weekend the vestry is having a special meeting to discuss financial planning for the future, and again personal philosophies on money, how to make it, how to spend it and how to protect it are major issues. Establishing policies for bequeaths and trusts are part of what we will be discussing, since one generous donation and life estate holdings from a departed parishioner has cost the church a considerable amount in legal bills due to the tax implications that may or may not apply -- we still don't have a clear answer after a year.

Although we have made major fiscal progress in tracking and zeroing in on our income versus expenses, thanks to a new treasurer and bookkeeper, some of our members believe that we should keep doing things the same way, in spite of the evidence that those methods are putting the financial health of the church in jeopardy.

I always like to look for answers to these thorny questions from the Bible -- especially the words of Jesus, but sometimes they are of limited utility. Jesus was an outsider to the church, and had a higher agenda. He didn't have involvement in the day-to-day running of things, nor did he vote on anything, as far as we know. He was the ultimate independent, only answering to God, even to the end.

My friend Maggie lent me her copy of Emmet Fox's The Sermon on the Mount, an oldie, but a goodie, to reread to think about the meaning of Jesus's advice for living. Fox explains Jesus' attitude about rules this way.

"Jesus, as we shall discover later on, made a special point of discouraging the laying of emphasis upon outer observances; and indeed, upon hard-and-fast rules and regulations of every kind. What he insisted upon was a certain spirit in one's conduct, and he was careful to teach principles only, knowing that when the spirit is right, details will take care of themselves; and that, in fact, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,' as was so obviously seen in the sad example of the Pharisees."

As I prepare for Saturday's meeting, which may involve a lot of conflict, I finding resonance in the explanation of this beatitude: "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

Fox explains, "The great essential for success in prayer -- for obtaining that sense of the Presence of God, which is the secret of healing oneself and others too; of obtaining inspiration, which is the breath of the soul; of acquiring spiritual development -- is that we first attain some degree of true peace of mind. This true, interior soul-peace was known to the mystics as serenity, and they are never tired of telling us that serenity is the grand passport to the Presence of God -- the sea as smooth as glass that is round about the Great White Throne."

He goes on to say that Jesus taught that as long as people do not put their faith in God, and have fear or resentment or trouble in their hearts, they are not able to achieve much.

The Bible has several other words of wisdom to draw from, so I turn to it and to my own counsel through prayer to try to come up with the answers, hoping to find them in the "right" spirit.

Energy as a Moral and Economic Issue

This week I received an email from WeCanSolveIt.org, signed by Al Gore, about how the mantra to drill for oil is once again overshadowing the real issue of drafting a viable energy policy for the future. It's simple, the email stated. But somehow people keep forgetting that. Here is what he wrote:

"Skyrocketing energy prices. The climate crisis. Unraveling financial markets. Wars that just happen to be in places with a lot of oil. These are all just different faces of exactly the same thing. As I've said in the past, we're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the future of human civilization. And every bit of that has to change.

We all know what we have to do. Ask anybody on the street and they'll tell you. We need to "Repower America" -- invest in ourselves, here at home, with clean, economical energy technologies that we know work. And be the global leader as these technologies take off around the world."

The group is asking for funding for a TV ad to explain this to the general public in the simplest of terms. Click here so you can see it for yourself.

Also this week, I read about an organization that's making a change in the present that may sound expensive, but in the long term, it's the right thing to do. Ultimately, too, switching to geothermal heating should be the most cost effective thing to do.

It's the Episcopal Seminary in Manhattan. Click here to watch a BusinessWeek video on their efforts. It made me proud to be an Episcopalian.

For moral and rational reasons, I think it's time to back these alternative energy sources. Thank God we have the natural resources and the means to make the most of them to make it happen. Let's hope our leaders finally wake up and take advantage of them -- instead of letting the oil companies and Middle East keep us over a barrel.

Coincidences in the Nick of Time

Is life a random, chaotic series of events, or a predestined, predetermined timeline that we follow? Should we be Nihilists living for nothing or realists living for a greater reason? Do we have control over our lives or not? Nature or nurture?

There are no hard and fast answers to any of those questions, but to my way of thinking we are who we are partially because of the way God made us (DNA programming) and partially because of the way we were raised and partially because of the way that we believe. People who aren't really capable of synthesizing this information are the ones who struggle the most with these questions, I think. Or maybe they're not even capable of really phrasing the questions to themselves.

Sometimes simple stories, like parables, are the best answers of all.

In a very light, humorous way, the book When God Winks: How the Power of Coincidence Guides Your Life tackles those questions with anecdotes from the author's life and the lives of people around him, as well as historic figures, celebrities and executives.

The author, Squire Rushnell, believes that we are part of an ordered Universe and a grand plan created by God, and once we recognize our role we are able to recognize and celebrate God's place in our lives. The book is part storytelling and part self-help to guide people to see their gifts and the turning points in their lives and to recognize the coincidences that can and should guide them.

Rushnell's "winks" in his life begin when he was hitchhiking to an interview for his first job at a TV station and was picked up by his DJ idol. He got a boost of confidence from the meeting and got the job.

Many years later, Rushnell's broadcasting company was taken over by another one, and he had to interview to keep his job. That weekend before the interview, he went to his new home in Connecticut, and that weekend picked a church to go to at random. The church turned out to be where the late famous broadcaster Lowell Thomas had been a member. In his interview with the new CEO, he mentioned how he had gone to the church where the new company's founder was buried. The CEO then told him that he had interviewed for his job with Lowell Thomas at the house across the street where he used to live. Long story short, he kept his job.

Rushnell's stories range from the coincidences in the meeting of soul mates, including Barbra Streisand and James Brolin, to coincidences between John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln:

• They were elected exactly 100 years apart;
• They each had to bury a child who died during their occupancy of the White House;
• Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy and Kennedy's was named Lincoln;
• Both were assassinated by a gunshot in the back of the head in the presence of their wives;
• Both vice presidents who survived were former senators from the South;
• Both vice presidents were born exactly 100 years apart;
• Both assassins were born exactly 100 years apart.

Rushnell writes that artistic people, since they are right brain-oriented, and more intuitive, tend to recognize the God winks more readily. He relates the story of how cartoonist Mike Peters pondered moving to a warmer climate -- and when he put his house on the market, they got an immediate offer. While he was on a trip to a classic cartoon convention in Sarasota, he and his wife visited a house for sale in which one of the owners knew his wife from college. After they decided they wanted to buy the pond next to the house, they met with the owner who wasn't interested in selling. However, once they got to know him, they learned that they had a mutual friend in Bill Mauldin, a cartoonist that had recommended Peters to the Daily News in Dayton, OH. The pond owners had rented their Palm Springs home. So the pond was sold to them, as well, and the coincidences led them to a new happy chapter in their lives.

Squire says if we follow the signs, and listen to God, and then we have all of the answers we need. At 162 pages, God Winks is a short, fun read.

Enter Laughing, Exit with a Smile

Recently I had the pleasure of going to a preview of an Off-Broadway production of Enter Laughing at York Theatre at 54th and Lexington. The tickets were free -- a gift to writers in the Gotham Writers Workshop classes. Musicals are not my favorite stage event, since I'm much more partial to dramatic plays, but the songs in this comedy made it a delightful surprise.

In fact, I think the musical was probably ahead of its time, since its more in the modern vein of an Avenue Q -- with risque humor and vamping -- than it was part and parcel of the 60s era. Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Carl Reiner that was made into a film in 1967, it was turned into the musical in 1976, but only ran for 16 performances -- doomed by the casting of the 40-ish David Morse as the 17-year-old lead.

One of the most impressive aspects of this revival production is its stellar cast. The lead character, David Kolowitz, is played by a talented actor/singer named Josh Grisetti, who has the charm of a young Jerry Seinfeld. Two TV stars of yore, Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker of L.A. Law, play David's parents with convincing sincerity, and are very obviously having a wonderful time in the singing and dancing portions of the musical.

George S. Irving, an original cast member of So Long, 174th Street -- which bombed on Broadway -- appears in this apparently genius revival in his original role as an acting tutor named Marlowe. Irving, a Tony Award Winner, gives a deadpan, hilarious performance in the role. He is scheduled to be given the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre this December. Not too shabby.

While the theatre space is rather small, downstairs from Saint Peter's Church in CitiGroup Centre, the show is all the better for it because the actors have no need to shout or use mikes, and its intimate scale makes it possible for the mugging actors to make eye contact with the audience.

The musical is about all of the wonderful struggles of life: youth, chasing your dreams, family, the opposite sex and the pursuit of happiness. The actors do a brilliant job in making you laugh at the foibles of the characters and making you hum the tunes with a smile as you exit the theatre.

How 9-11 Continues to Impact Lives

Photo by James Nachtwey for Time Magazine

The weather this morning in New York was gloomy and dreary, slightly cool with heavy gray clouds overhead as people gathered at the memorial service downtown. They were commemorating the seventh anniversary of the day when 2,751 people died in the World Trade Center towers with a roll call of the dead and speeches by politicians.

It made me think of a story in The Field about how the weather is always clear on graduation day at Princeton University in New Jersey. A researcher from the university pondered whether this was a coincidence and it occurred to him that the "collective wishing of the entire university community for a sunny day might actually have had an effect in chasing rain clouds away." He examined weather reports for 30 years before, during and after the graduation day, and the weather of six towns surrounding it. He found that 72% of graduation days had been dry, while only 67% of days in the nearby towns had been dry. However, even on a day when the town was flooded with 2.6 inches of rain, it didn't fall until after the ceremony.

Statistical fluke? I think not.

The day before 9-11 this year, the weather was also sunny and warm and the skies were crystal clear like it was in 2001. But today in the morning it was cloudy. This afternoon, the clouds began to blow away, as though now that the memorial service was over, the sun would be allowed to come out again by the millions who were thinking about that day.

In a global experiment that started before 9-11 and has continued since, researchers at Princeton University established a project that involves the use of Random Event Generator machines in various locations around the world that register the effects of mass emotion in how they generate numbers. It's a complicated system, which I won't go into here, but on 9-11, the machines began to spike with each plane impact and building collapse. While some skeptics note that the machines were spiking at those times as early as two days prior to the event, as numerous experiments detailed in the book The Field indicate, time can be a somewhat flimsy construct when the Zero Point Energy Field is involved.

The Global Consciousness Project tells us what most practicing Christians already know -- that our thoughts and prayers do have an impact in the world, and even when we do not try to magnify those feelings and intentions, the sheer force of simultaneous emotions from people around the world resonates within us.

So today is the perfect day to say a prayer for the 9-11 dead, for the surviving families of those victims and for hope and peace in the future. We should all realize, too, that there are still thousands of people who are both physically and emotionally hurting from the fall-out of the event. Many of them live here on Long Island. Almost every I know here knows someone whose family or friends were affected. Right here in tiny Northport, there's a memorial in the park for a dozen people, including firefighters and stockbrokers, who died that day.

Time may not heal all wounds, but love can go a long way in helping to deflect and neutralize the pain and hate that leads to such unspeakable acts.

Mental Exercises on the Universe, or God

My friend Maggie is the kind of person that people immediately like because of her caring and humorous nature. She's also a Christian who is on the far left on the meter, in tune with many New Age philosophies, an avid reader of ideas and someone who loves angel stories. My husband Andy has an extremely logical, rational mind that grasps extremely complex scientific concepts and which expands into theoretical territory easily. He is also a very caring, loving person who has only in recent years fully embraced Christianity.

What do the airy fairy believer and the laser-focused scientist have in common? Me. I'm the middle ground person who has a strong faith, an openness to all ideas and an ability to blend the religious and literary with the hard science. When we get together, we have interesting conversations about all manner of subjects, and our friendship grows stronger and deeper because of these discussions.

We planned a discussion yesterday and recorded it with the idea in mind that we would see where the talks go and maybe even do something with them -- whether it's a book or video or film. We all agree that film is a powerful medium. I think that Andy and I finally began to get in sync with our ideas about God or the Universe after watching What the Bleep Do We Know!?

It was a film that opened my eyes to the role of physics in showing that our universe is far more complex that we realize, and it made him realize that God can be found on a micro as well as a macro level. The book The Field reinforced this. And the follow-up book to The Field, called The Intention Experiment just made it that more obvious. The authors of that book are working on its follow-up, which will involve input from at least hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who have participated in the experiments.

These books make The Secret look like kid stuff. As a matter of fact, anyone who really knows the Bible well can see that The Secret is a watered down, generized version of Christianity that substitutes the word Universe for God. What's really fascinating is that the people who believe the same principles and who are Christians are often belittled for the same ideas. It will be interesting to see how our little experiment evolves, and I'm sure I will be writing about some of it as we go along.

Two-Legged Dog Story Spreads 'Faith'

An email from a friend contained a story that, as a dog lover, delighted me as much for its inclusion of a dog as it did for its inspiring message.

Here's the story of a dog named Faith, who was born with only three legs -- two normal ones in the back and one deformed one in the front that had to be amputated. The owner wanted to put her down, but she was adopted by someone who, with her family's help, painstakingly taught Faith to walk on her hind legs. Since then, she has become a bit of a celebrity, traveling around to meet people as her owner, teacher Jude Stringfellow, speaks about overcoming challenges in life. Stringfellow, a Christian, has written about how Faith has affected the lives of her family members, as well as others.

Faith has met with kids, soldiers, and disabled groups as a therapy dog. She's been on TV shows, such as Oprah, and has been featured in newspaper articles. Online, she was featured in a video on DarynKagan.com. Stringfellow wrote a book about her called called Faith Alone: Story of an Amazing Dog. Another book about her experiences with people since her adoption of Faith, called With a Little Faith, is in its second edition.

The Sunday School Origins of Public Education

This week I watched as a mother videotaped her son's walk to the bus stop for his first day of school, wearing a spanking new backpack, his blonde hair perfectly combed, his face fresh scrubbed. It's a ritual that's repeated all over the country this time of year.

It wasn't always so. In our early agrarian society, children didn't have public schools to attend -- their only education in reading and writing was given at home or at Sunday School, since they were not required to work on the seventh day. Only wealthy families could afford private schools (Harvard started as a secondary boarding school) or tutors to educate their children.

According to a story in Christian History magazine, Britain's churches started the tradition of Sunday School in the 1780s, and the trend spread to America around the same time. In the middle 1800s, almost all poor children attended Sunday School for education. The Bible was their primer. They were taught reading and religion at the same time. It was their only access to poetry and lyrical prose. Perhaps some of its wisdom sunk in as well.

While the mandatory public education was established in the 1870s, the Sunday School tradition continued for many, all the way up to the 1960s. A movement toward eliminating any discussion of religion in schools, a change in national attitudes toward religion and a secularization of life in general has made Sunday School little more than a token element of most church programs. But as I wrote in an earlier blog entry, a recent Gallup Poll shows that Biblical ignorance is rampant, and it wouldn't be a bad idea for families to support their children in attending Sunday School.

It's a challenge to get kids involved in church and to keep them there when they are teenagers. This year we're using a new educational curriculum in our Sunday School, and it's an exciting program that combines activities, issues of relevance for Middle School age kids (peer pressure, stealing, drug use) with Bible-based teachings.

My earliest religious education came from summer camp at a church, where we sang the books of the Bible to remember them and learned songs that stick with me to this day. Our church also had a summer camp this year, and it was a fun blend of crafts, painting, singing and lessons. Its rain forest theme in the art and program ended with a visit from an animal expert who brought a snake, an iguana and a toad for the kids to look at and touch. It gave a glimmer of the garden of Eden for kids who are just starting to learn about it.

Change Comes from Perspective

A lot of people are talking about change these days -- saying that they agree with Barak Obama's message or McCain's nomination of a conservative female running mate to change the public's perception of him, for instance.

People have reached a tipping point in both their view of the environment and of energy policy -- and that change will come whether or not some try to outrun it in their supercharged SUVs. Exactly what kind of change and how it will be accomplished are the real questions. Who will pay the price? No one can wave a magic wand and make it happen presto-chango. Some tough decisions, even sacrifices will need to be made.

When it comes to change, the Rector of our church wisely pointed out last week, Jesus was way ahead of the game. Father Weaver noted that Jesus Christ was the biggest agent of change in history. Here was a man who in his first miracle changed water into wine. He changed the blind into people who could see; the lame into people who could walk; a couple of loaves of bread and a few fish into enough to feed thousands. He taught people how to change guilt and judgment into forgiveness, and through his utimate sacrifice, how to change death into eternal life.

In the centures since Jesus rose from the dead, he changed the world and history. Some may argue that some of the change was not for the better, but that's only because people perverted his teachings and distorted his message for their own purposes, changing it into one of hate instead of love.

Although many people fear change, those who embrace it live life fully. Without change, we are stagnant, paralyzed and afraid of the future. By changing the way we treat each other and the environment, we are moving toward a life-saving and life-affirming future.