the-lundgaards.com

If you can stay awake…

Kris — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:38:20 +0000

Robert Duvall’s The Apostle is long. And at times it felt especially long, and my eyes grew as heavy as those of Eutychus (see Acts 20:9). Still, the movie is worth enduring for its portrait of believers. These Christians are not treated in any sentimental way—they are far from perfect; nor are they made a mockery of, in the typical Hollywood manner.

Someone might argue that they were shown to be fools. And, yes, they were. But I felt they were shown to be the kind of fools that we all are, struggling through life, longing to be better, frustrated with our failure, and ultimately, absolutely dependent on grace.

Dinner and a movie

Kris — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:43:08 +0000

I have no idea why, but for decades I have wanted to watch My Dinner with Andre. I finally got around to it—and still I really don’t know why I wanted to watch it for so long. I have to say that I’m glad no one else watched it with me, because for (at least) the first half of it they would have been razzing me for picking such a weird flick.

Wally is an out-of-work playwright in New York City who is picking up odd jobs (including acting) in order to make ends meet. He has been avoiding the experimental director Andre for a few years because Andre has become so weird. But Wally decides he can avoid him no more, so he agrees to dinner. Besides, Wally fancies himself a gifted interviewer, able to ask questions and listen to anyone talk about anything.

As dinner begins Wally feels awkward and is not sure how to respond to Andre. Andre talks on and on about his strange, mystical experiences in various exotic locations around the world. If this had gone on through the whole film I would have almost nothing good to say about it. Fortunately, Wally gains courage and begins to interact more with Andre’s ideas, even to challenge them. And what emerges becomes more like a conversation between real friends, where each seems to contribute something to the other. Many of the ideas remain esoteric, yet some of their observations about life are thought-provoking—not only to each other, but to me.

Why are you shouting?

Kris — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:30:14 +0000

For he who makes for himself a fragile truth (such as preferring freedom to strict discipline, or discipline to freedom), since he fails to master the vagaries of a language whose words rebuff each other—such a man boils with rage when someone ventures to contradict him. If you shout loudly, it is because, your own language being inadequate, you want to drown others’ voices.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands

Who do you love?

Kris — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 05:24:45 +0000

When I rescue you from the waves of the sea, I love you the better for this, being now responsible for your life. Or if I have watched over you and healed you when you were sick; or if it so happens that you were a trusty old servitor, helpful as a lamp; or even the herdsman of my flocks. Then I shall go and drink your goatsmilk in your house. I shall receive from you, and you shall give; you shall receive from me, and I shall give. But I have no truck with him who fiercely declares himself my equal and will neither depend on me in respect of anything or have me depend on him. Him alone I love whose death would wring my heart.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands

Still editing

Kris — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:32:40 +0000

“I have written my poem. All that remains to do is correct it.”

But my father waxed wroth.

“So you write your poem first, and then correct it! But what is writing but correcting? What is the sculptor doing, if not correcting? Have you watched him modelling the clay? Correction by correction the face emerges; nay, the very first thumb-stroke was a correction of the primal lump. When I found my city, I ‘correct’ the barren wilderness. Then in the making I ‘correct’ my city. And correction by correction I follow the path that leads to God.”

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands

Unfinished business

Kris — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:26:44 +0000

This is an unfortunate thing to confess, but I seem to identify a little too much with a few of the more pathetic aspects of some of Paul Giamatti’s characters. And perhaps it was unfortunate that that very flaw of mine tempted me to watch Cold Souls, in which the actor Paul Giamatti plays a character named Paul Giamatti who is an actor. [Not so clever.]

Things got off to a slow but solid start—I was drawn in, interested, even intrigued by the clever setup to the story. And there were some very funny parts—at least, they were funny to me, though I recognized that most people wouldn’t have laughed much. Anyway, things were going fine for the first half of the movie. Then it was obvious that the writer couldn’t figure out how to deal with the depth of questions he had raised, so his film degenerated into a painfully long “chase scene,” in which Giamatti tried to find his misplaced soul.

Thud.

A huddle of stones

Kris — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 05:56:31 +0000

And if each man chooses the site of the temple for himself, and places his stone wherever he thinks fit, you will never see a temple, only a huddle of stones.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands

Silence deep as the sea

Kris — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:42:09 +0000

For it is not the man we see, with his sorry husk of flesh and his farrago of ideas, who weighs in the scale of things; it is his soul, more or less vast as may be, with its climates and its mountain ranges, its oases of silence, its flowery slopes and melting snows and slumbrous pools—that territory unseen yet boundless wherein he proves his seigniory. From this secret source you draw your happiness, and once you know this there is no more turning from your course. For your navigation on a shallow river—even if you close your eyes and, letting its wavelets rock your boat, you picture vastness—is not the same as a voyage across the fathomless sea. Nor, though they may look alike, do you get the same pleasure from a false as from a real diamond. And the woman who merely holds her peace in your presence is not the same as she whose silence is deep as the sea. Nor can you fail to perceive this.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands

Accepting is not receiving

Kris — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 05:39:36 +0000

But, mark my words, the man who cannot see that receiving is very different from accepting is blind indeed. Receiving is, above all, a gift, the gift of oneself, and I could not call him a miser who refuses to ruin himself with presents; the miser is one who bestows not the light of his countenance in return for your largesse. And miserly is the soil which does not clothe itself in beauty when you have strewn your seed upon it.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands

Zero-sum love?

Kris — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:22:57 +0000

… to the mind of the majority, whatever is given in one place is stolen from elsewhere; it is their dealings in the marketplace and their forgetfulness of God that have thus shaped their minds. Yet, in reality, what you give does not lessen your store; far otherwise, it augments for you the riches you can distribute. Thus he who loves all men, by grace of his love of God, loves each man vastly more than he who, loving but one of them, extends merely to his partner the paltry field of himself.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands