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Thirty-one years, one wife…

The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.

As someone with a fear of heights, I found parts of the documentary Man on Wire hard to watch. Or rather, I found them hard to contemplate without a tightening in the chest. The movie is, as the advertisement promises, “exhilarating” – yet I was still ambivalent about it. The monomania of this man who pursued and fulfilled his dream of walking on a wire between the newly built towers of the World Trade Center is intriguing. It was hard not to admire his passion, dedication, perseverance, and especially his delight in his accomplishment. But I’m afraid I still think the question at the end of the movie, the one he left unanswered, is valid.

Why?

A few more nuggets from a helpful book:

All of us have allowed inconsequential actions and habits to get under our skin and argued for a personal preference as if it were a moral absolute. And each of us has tried to be the Holy Spirit in another person’s life, trying to work spiritual changes that only God can accomplish. [chapter 6]

… if I am seeking to get identity from you, I will watch you too closely, listen to you too intently, and need you too fundamentally. And because I am watching you too closely, I will become acutely aware of your weaknesses and failures. I will become overly critical, furstrated, disappointed, hopeless, angry. [chapter 6] (more…)

I was interested in Relationships: A Mess Worth Making, by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp, because of the title. Relationships, at least those with which I am most familiar, often become messy, and I for one am tempted to wonder whether they are worth the trouble. So far the book is promising – here are a few nuggets from the early chapters.

The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself. [chapter 2]

The most dangerous aspect of your relationships is not your weakness, but your delusions of strength. [chapter 2] (more…)

Last night Paula and I watched the French film Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long). I don’t want to tell you much about the content because part of the power of the film is the patient revelation of what happened. Let’s just say that a woman who has been in prison for 15 years is released and goes to live with her sister’s family. I’m not completely sure how I feel about the movie, but I know the acting was superb and it kept me interested for two hours. I’m also sure that you could have some lively discussion about the issues raised by the movie about love, life, forgiveness, and some ethical issues. So I recommend it.

I’ll be out of pocket for a while – at an English camp in the Biele Karpaty mountains. But I’ll try to think about something to say when I get back. Something profound…