Here’s a random thought about a film I love dearly that came to me while taking a shower a couple of days ago: the five Tenenbaums in the film The Royal Tenenbaums represent the five stages of grief. I won’t develop the thought very far, but I’ll show you the analogues I saw:

1. Denial—Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow)


2. Anger—Chas (Ben Stiller)


3. Bargaining—Royal (Gene Hackman)


4. Depression—Richie (Luke Wilson)


5. Acceptance—Etheline (Angelica Huston)

Granted, I have somewhat forced this framework onto the film since none of the characters fall entirely neatly into the stages. Etheline suspects that Chas is depressed and Margot admits that she is. Also, the line between Richie and Margot is a bit fuzzy since both could be in depression or denial—both ran away at some point in their lives—but it is Richie’s actions in the middle of the film that speak to me that he’s the more depressed of the two. When I first saw the film, I thought the three children were three portraits of depression (I think the interpretation still stands), but viewing the whole family in different stages of grief seems to offer more room to play with interpretation. I don’t want to argue that the Tenenbaums are merely allegories of the grief stages since they are some of the most three-dimensional characters I have seen on film and interact with other wonderfully well-rounded characters.

(Note: due to vacationing and moving, I took an unintentional hiatus from this series of posts. Sorry for the delay.)

In his speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination as their presidential candidate in 2004, President George W. Bush stated, “Another priority for a new term is to build an ownership society, because ownership brings security, and dignity, and independence.” Ownership, he argued, affords security in terms of health care, better access to good education, and retirement. At the time of his speech, the home ownership rate was 69%, the highest this country has seen since the US Census Bureau began to track the statistics in 1965. Even Jim Wallis could praise a good portion of the President’s vision for an “ownership society.” [1] In an earlier comment, James asked about the benefits of home ownership. I think the President is right on many of the benefits of ownership in general and home ownership in particular. In a 2001 study, researchers found that though home ownership isn’t perfect for everyone and everything, there are significant benefits for both the individuals and the communities. “Considerable evidence suggests…that homeowners are more likely to be satisfied with their homes and neighborhoods, more likely to participate in voluntary and political activities and more likely to stay in their homes longer periods of time.” [2] There is a pride that goes along with ownership that can be very healthy. If done wisely, home ownership can bring greater stability, financial and otherwise, both for the owner and the community around them.

Carey and I recently watched Agnieszka Holland’s film, The Third Miracle (1999). In it, Ed Harris plays Father Frank Shore who investigates miracles for the Catholic Church. His findings influence the diocese’s decision whether to recommend a certain person for beatification to Rome. Shore, however, finds himself in the midst of a crisis of faith. While the film isn’t perfect, it is very good, extremely thought-provoking, and I recommend it highly. The film doesn’t treat the subject of miracles and the divine in the traditional Hollywood ways—either as sensational special effects laden battles between good and evil, or as a debate between science and faith. Rather, The Third Miracle treats miracles as surprising moments of God’s action in the world. They are beyond our comprehension and so we really don’t have much ability to categorize them.

The opening paragraph of the reflection of the film on Hollywood Jesus offers perhaps the best description of the film. It is a paragraph that rings of great beauty and truth, even if one hasn’t seen The Third Miracle. May it help in your reflections during this season of Lent.

The film makes a very positive case for the other side of faith – doubt. Doubt has its work in all of our lives. It forces us to deal with our own inner struggles and face the brutal truths that lead us into a life of faith and hope beyond ourselves.

And she’s 97 years old.

Check out the site, Dylan Hears a Who, for a great Bob Dylan meets Dr. Suess mash. I’ve been listening to Dylan for over ten years and I was fooled by the quality of the impersonation and music. On closer listening, the music clearly mimics Highway 61 Revisited. But it’s fun, creative, and really enjoyable.

(HT: Rob)

In the March 2007 edition of Sojourners Rose Marie Berger writes in “Rocking the Boat,” about an ordination ceremony for female priests within the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) that took place in July 2006. Berger makes no bones about what the ceremony meant in terms of the RCC’s rules: “In doing so, the Catholics present aided in breaking canon law 1024, which states, ‘Only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination.’ This act of ecclesial disobedience was punishable by excommunication.” I want to be careful about commenting too much on a denomination of which I am not a member, so for my Catholic sisters and brothers, if I step too far, I apologize. For everyone, I know women in ministry is a heated topic, so let’s all agree to play nice.

In the previous post of this series, I offered a brief overview of the idea of home [1] found in the Bible. How do these views of home inform our views? At the basic level, we can say that the notion of home and having a home within a biblical understanding is good. God creates, gives, and brings people home. How the national and communal concept of land relates to the nuclear concept of private home ownership is a bit trickier. (The last post was rather long; I’ll try to keep them shorter by splitting up the topics into smaller pieces. Of course, many of these issues run together, so any division will be somewhat arbitrary.)

As we saw earlier, the home in biblical understandings is a place of safety and recreation. In our contemporary American setting, we continue in that tradition. We seek to make our homes safe from intrusions, physical and otherwise. In the home, we have the ability to control not only who but what comes into our lives (i.e., we can control the media we consume). We spend much of our time at home sleeping, which is a good thing. Sleep, other forms of rest, and other leisure activities afford us the ability to engage the God-ordained cycle of work and rest. [2] Our homes still act as places of hospitality, though our definition of hospitality is rather thin and is synonymous with entertaining guests. The biblical vision of hospitality is richer than merely entertaining, but at the least we can say that we haven’t given up on hospitality altogether. I believe where we see differences between a Christian vision of home and our dominant culture’s view of home is a matter of degree.