Reading Journal 2024: The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves

Author: Alexandra Hudson

“Politeness is easy. Civility requires effort.”
– Alexandra Hudson (The Soul of Civility)

In her book exploring the idea of civility as a healing practice, Hudson points out the problem of definitions. Words have origins, but definitions are not static. They change over time based on culture and context.

Such is the case with the words polite and civil, two distinct words that have become synonymous in western culture. Look them up in the dictionary, Hudson suggests, and you will notice that both words are caught in a circular force of meaning. Civil is defined as polite, and polite is defined as simple, a fact that says more about our present culture than the words themselves.

So what if one believes that civility is distinct from politeness, and that recovering this distinctiveness is crucial and necessary to growing as a society precisely because politeness is part of the problem? How does one navigate the act of trying to recover a words definition while simultaneously redefining it against its shared usage in our present context? You dedicate a whole book to establishing a fresh foundation to work from.

So where do we locate the differences between politeness:
1. Politeness is focused on externals and actions. Civility is based internally on the fundamental values underlying discourse and social function. The foundation of civility is the assumed dignity of the other.
2. Politeness is a functional tool which can be “weaponized to silence and suppress disagreement.” Civility cannot be weaponized because it puts the assumed dignity of the other at the center rather than the disagreement
3. Politeness is defined in its Latin origins as polishing or making smooth, which is all about diminishing disagreements. It adheres to the rules of a given social order. This is how politeness can be used to seek power and control over the other. Civility is defined in its Latin origin as the status, conduct, and character beffiting a citizen. It is about a “general attitude toward life WITH others.”
4. Politeness seeks validation, civility validates
5. Politeness ignores and diminishes, civility grapples with and respects
6. Politeness thrives on creating bubbles and avoiding discourse. Civility demands connectiveness, communication and discourse across differences, something we’ve lost the ability to do.
7. Politeness is about the immediate. Civility takes time and investment.
8. Politeness is about establishing status. Civility is about defining and locating our humanness.
9. Politeness is about law and order. Civility is about philosophy and ethics.

These differences matter precisely because “the human condition is a paradox defined by greatness and wretchedness.” As Hudson notes, “We each lead interdependent and multidimensional lives, but often deny it. We underestimate how much our negative actions can affect people for the worse, and how positive actions can affect people for the better.”

For as good and insightful and important as all of this is, it is on this last point that the book ends up falling a bit short when it comes to the force of its argumen and its aims. On the final page of the book she asserts that “we are more in control of our emotions- and of our responses to our emotions- than we realize. A romanticized notion to be sure, but it’s a claim that requires a foundation, a prior assumption about the nature of reality, life, self, the will, and humanity that is able to both assert and qualify this statement as one that is able to fairly assume both responsibility and obligation. The problem is that her attempts to establish a foundation aren’t very strong. Not coincidentally, these words belong to a final chapter called misplaced meaning and forgiveness, where the assumptions about responsibility and obligations towards civilly as a virtue are perhaps at their most loftiest. The words “we must” ring out in relationship to reclaiming “pursuits and values” that bring us joy and give our lives meaning. Why? Because, as it is outlined, “democracy, our freedom, and human flourishing depend on this.”  That’s a lot of assumptions to make without doing the necessary work to demonstrate the givenness of these things.

She says a few times over that civility is the basic respect we are owed “by virtue of our shared dignity and equal moral worth as human beings.” She also states that “community and relationship are the highest end of the human experience.” She talks about civility having a transcendent quality that gives it its authority over our lives (p306). Gives it its soul, it’s agency if you will, over us and for us to embody. Over and over again she anchors the problem using sharp binaries built from the basic notion that we are self driven beings, a fact which clash with our aocial natures. Self love, or love of self, exists as the driving nature of our existence and our survival, but when we exist together it creates a tension that then carries with it the natural embededness of chaos and order as states in contest. Civility seeks order within the chaos of our love of self by its nature, and yet nature sees chaos as necessary to order, a conundrum she leaves quietly to the side. All of the sharply drawn binaries fit into this basic function of reality-With such vigor in fact that it is percieved to be able to lay claim to the myriad of assumptions layed out above that are necessary to its premise without appealing to the demands of reason and rational argumentation. We can just say that humanity is owed something and that humanity’s inherent value is enough to obligate us towards civility, and let that be it’s own evidence.

At one point she says that “civility… requires us to make the sacrifices necessary for society and civilization.” Why though, and to what end? And what happens when history tells us this is not how rhe world works? How nature works? How order works? What happens when upholding this romanticized ideal forces us to ignore reason and logic? Ignore reality? What then brings in that stated responsibility and obligation?

She does a curious thing anchoring this book in the first chapter in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Not only because she attempts to ignore its claims to the transcendent realities operating in the background of its story in favor of reducing it fo metaphorical and purely functional readings (as to say hey, look at what’s written into our evolutionary history ), but also because she appeals equally and in the same way to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. What happens when you sit these stories side by side and you are forced fo attend for their differences? She just pretends like this doesn’t exist, reappropriating the meaning of both stories in service of her own appeal to different transcendent virtues and aims. She treats the story of Jesus similarly, trying to use his life, absent of its own narrative context, as an example of moral obligation to be civil in action. Why? She doesn’t qualify any of it. By saying that politeness is a function and civility is a value that gives meaning to our actions, she leaves herself beholden to navigating the functionality of civility, which is what this book actually does, by freely imposing a transcendent quality on to something that by its essence is not this. There is no good reason why civility should have more authority than politeness, it is just assumed to be so. This gets reinforced by stripping her view of reality of its ability to appeal to actual transcendent qualities.

This all becomes a muddled mess of an argument, even though there is lots of good to take away from it in parts and sections, especially if you have a worldview that is able to make room for it. Civility, within her worldview, isn’t any less self concerned than politeness when you actually look at what it is. Civility cannot manage and adhere to progress without abandoning and subverting its own premises when it needs to. Things like equality and the assumed dignity of all humans are illusions at best. They are things that demand sacrificing m these very values in order to be achieved in the first place. A thriving society does not need an obligation to globalization, and in fact arguably thrives better without it. The quakitative harshness of entropy is ordered nature by law, and to arrive at the assumptions Hudson wants to make about civility she must appeal to a higher order in order to subvert it. To make this about something other than matters of survival and thriving, both of which are self serving aims by their nature, she needs to do the work of building an actual foundation that can allow civility to actually gain its agency over our lives. Otherwise it’s just nature doing its thing, and we function within that according to our illusions of meaning. It all sounds nice, and it might even make me feel and function better according to the natural order of things to be more civil to a degree, but it’s far from making any rational claims about reality or given values. Just talk to someone who feels like revolution and resistance is needed, the primary markers of that thing we call democracy, and you’ll see how fleeting civility as a value can be. Just look at the nature of the systems and structures that define our civilizations and you’ll see how inconsistent civility as a value can be. Look at the construct of the self and you’ll see how shaky civility as a value can be. It might sound nice and quaint to give it a transcendent quality, but life will have its way of exposing that pretty quickly if we are resting everythung in a materialist viewpoint 

In his book Paul and the Resurrection of Israel, scholar Jason Staples points out a deeply entrenched tendency to fly over Romans 1 and 2 on our way to Romans 3. The “our” in this picture is much of the theological traditions of the west. Why do we do this? Because we convinced ourselves that the Scriptures prop up the Law as a way to get to grace. The Law is what we thought saved us, while grace is what does save us. But Romans 1 and 2 pose a real problem to this way of thinking, thus we have trained ourselves to do a fly over so as to avoid the imposition of its claims about the Law.

A couple years back I did an extensive deep dive/study of Paul’s letter to the Roman churches. So many theological issues/disagreements stem from this letter, and it is the most widely read, discussed, debated, studied letter in the NT for the ways we have come to see it as central to our understanding of salvation. In that process I came to recognize how much of the debate also hinges on our understanding of who the audience of the letter is. Is it written to Jews judging gentile inclusion or the gentile world? Gentile converts to Judaism judging the uncircumcised converts? Is it a letter to humanity in general?

Not coincidentally, one of the reasons for the flyover of Romans 1 and 2 seems to be because those chapters tend to make it much more difficult to uphold our theories regarding the audience. The virtual whiplash that occurs when trying to make sense of the harsh nature of Romans 1 and 2, especially when the audience seems to shift multiple times, can be disconcerting to say the least. That’s at least one reason why professor Scott McKnight wrote an entire book about reading Romans backwards rather than forwards, as it seems far easier to at least approach those first two chapters if we have the seemingly far clearer context of its final chapters in tow (ironically chapters that tend to get bypassed and ignored altogether in our rush to prop up Romans 3-9, or even 3-11.

One of the aims of Staples book is to take the progressions of the new perspective relating to our understanding of Law and Grace, stemming from Sanders and well beyond, and point out how, for as much as that has been on the right track, even those necessary reformulations have a tendency to ignore or keep a distance from the real implications of their own conclusions. Staples thesis has been that this is largely because of an unwillingness to really dial down on the terms Israel and Jew as having distinct definitions and reference points within scripture. Failing to recognize this keeps our attempts to reclaim the meaning of Law and Grace (or Law and Gospel) in its world from actually capturing that world’s larger concern for the story of Israel as a covenantal expression set within Exodus and Exile.

How does this relate to chapters 1 and 2 of Romans for Staples? What stood out for me in his chapter called The Israel Problem and The Gentiles (Chapter 3) is the way he brings all the diverging viewpoints together by reshaping the focus of those first two chapters back on to a universal, human concern, simply with a different vantage point in tow (the story of Israel). He is the only scholar I have come across to point out that Paul’s use of the interlocutor (an imagined opponent) is not yet established or in play in these early chapters, and how this becomes important for seeing the way his argument establishes it later on in direct relationship to the audience he is addressing. In other words, Romans 1 and 2 is not addressing gentile idolatry but Israel’s idolatry directly relating to the golden calf. There is no imagined opponent in chapters 1 and 2.

Why is this important? Because recognizing this point of focus allows the reader to follow Paul’s argument as he uses that story of idolatry to then “connect Israel’s sin with Adam’s sin.” This establishes a “pattern” that is able to then parallel the golden calf with Israel’s present exile and the ensuing new covenant emphasis that we find in the prophets. More importantly, by recognizing how the term Israel differs from the term Jew, we can see how Paul’s addressing of a Jewish audience relates to the story of Israel as one in which the tribes have been scattered amongst the gentile world and to which the covenant promise hinges on its restoration. This becomes the backdrop through which Paul is addressing a specific Jewish concern in relationship to the problem of gentile inclusion, and indeed salvation.

As Staples points out, the “therefore” in 2:1 (therefore you have no excuse, every human who judges) is the third in a final series of therefores that bind chapter 1 and 2 together. Meaning, “if one agrees with preceding discourse, then no one stands apart from God’s judgment.” We should not though, as readers, assume this universal human focus is somehow doing away with the story of Israel as necessary to making this point. His point is ultimately summed up in the climatic proclamation, “in this way all Israel will be saved.” Not a reconstituted or spiritualized Israel, but the story of Israel. The promise of the Law, or covenant, being fulfilled in Jesus according to its restated application (new covenant language) in the face of exile in the second temple period. In other words, Paul is engaging in exegesis. When Paul goes on to distinguish between those between Adam and Moses and those after Moses he is leaning on this established parallel between Israel’s sin and Adam’s sin to make his point to his Jewish audience, gentile converts or not, that the revelation, or knowledge of God, is found in the revelation of Torah, now fulfilled in Christ. Paul is not disagreeing with the Jewish conception of God and their relationship to the Law (the story of Israel), rather he is finding in that story the necessary grounds for his proclamation of the Gospel (the grace gift of Jesus), a Gospel that sees salvation expressed in the restoration of Israel’s story, a salvation that is for the sake of the world. First to the Jew (or Judeans), precisely because their expectations hinge on the salvation of Israel, and then to the Gentile, as the world’s salvation depends on the same story.

What often happens is modern readers collapse the notion of a shared, universal appeal to Gods impartial justice in the condemnation of Death and Evil with God’s saving act. The story of Israel thus becomes a scapegoat for grace trumping the Law, with Jews being made synonymous with Israel and occupying the crosshairs of the subsequent enemy fire. In reality, Paul’s argument for impartial justice hinges on upholding and understanding the uniquess of the Law as telling the story of Israel in both its idolatry and subsequent exiles, and in its salvation (fulfillment). Appeals to knowledge of this story relate directly to doing or living this story, but Israel’s knowledge, and subsequently the Jews knowledge of the story of Israel and the story of their covenantal failure, is not synonymous with God’s impartial justice of Death and Evil, rather it is a witness to God’s saving act.

Film Journal 2024: Cottontail
Directed by Patrick Dickinson

A simple but powerful examination of family, mostly told through the lens of a solitary aging man who, in the aftermath of losing his wife, stands in danger of losing his son.

The father-son dynamic is a significant part of the  culturally rooted narrative, navigating social expectations, honor-shame systems, family responsibilities. But even then, it is also a universal story about grief, loss, estrangement and forgiveness, all which carry this potent sense of intimacy, empathy and awareness.

The fact that it taps into such real emotions without ever becoming sentimental or forced is a testament to the sensitive hand behind the camera and the embodied performances in front of it.

Film Journal 2024: The Devil’s Bath
Directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala

And I thought Goodnight Mommy took things to the next level. I mean it did, but this dark, harrowing follow up after the less acclaimed The Lodge is truly oppressive.

Which might not sound appealing, but as a viewing experience it is unsettling in the best kind of way. It’s horror in the sense of atmosphere and tone, while underneath it is a gorgeous period piece and historical drama rich in the kind of tragedy one might expect from a community soaked in superstitions, social hierarchies and corrupted religious powers. Of the sort that would make Eggers thrilled.

There are multiple layered themes at play that all get embodied in the character if a tortured wife, played to perfection by Anja Plaschg, who is forced to wrestle with the demons that surround her, a battle that never seems hers to win, especially as we watch her gradual decent into despair, grief and madness. It’s a character arc that leaves its mark, especially with that jaw dropping final 20 minutes. The interconnected themes of suicide, sin, confession, forgiveness, and salvation are especially poignant.

Reading Journal 2024
Brooklyn
Author: Colm Tóibín

Fell in love with the movie, got drawn to the book a while ago before it got lost in my ever growing TBR list. This years release of a sequel, Long Island, inspired me to pick it up.

Loved a good deal about this book, especially its strong sense of place. It was interesting reading the thematic push and pull of the film, the element that had captured me most fully, back into the minds of these characters. As is common to these types of stories we get a lot of descriptive taking place inside the mind of the characters, in this case Ellis. In some ways it redirects the on-screen journey, such as the poetic rendering of a life defined by these competing allegiances to place and person tha we find in the film, to something more internal, which taken together form an appeal to the transcendent, most notably aware in the adaptation, as it seeks after something that can help define and determine the nature of the decisions in question in this story.

The book narrows in more specifically on the uncertainty of these decisions and choices in the moment. The book doesn’t take the same license in imagining a grander story as the film does, but such an interpretive move is embedded in the text all the same, capturing the rich character journey of someone caught between space and time amidst those competing allegiances and concerns, with both central figures in Ellis’ life representing Ireland and America, belonging and becoming. In this sense it’s not ultimately about the decisions and choices, but rather finding and locating the transcendent value that runs underneath.

Long Island
Colm Tóibín

I’m still parsing out how I feel about this sequel, which is probably a sign of the books overall strength as a literary work. It feels very different from Brooklyn, and yet it is designed to mirror that story in very specific ways at the same time, just from a different perspective.

Whereas Brooklyn spends time establishing its characters and its sense of place, Long Island hits the ground running. If Brooklyn imagined a grander narrative behind the particular tensions Ellis is navigating, tensions that demand certain decisions and choices to be made, Long Island dials much more firmly in on functional reality of her life as it is. In the first few pages we are plunged into a point of crisis regarding the choices she made in Brooklyn, and informed of a planned trip back to Ireland that, as the text makes clear, she now wants to utilize as a means of reflecting on all her past choices and potential regrets. In a very real sense this sequel is playing the events in Brooklyn backwards, just with years of assumed experiences now in tow. This forces her to wrestle with similar tensions, just with different questions and awareness this time around.

One of the things I’m still dwelling on in my assessment of this sequel is the way it defines the world around Ellis in concrete ways, especially when it comes to the people who occupy it. Whereas part of what made Brooklyn compelling was that all the characters were nuanced and complex, certain characters and realities here are not complex at all. It is easy to know exactly how the book wants us to feel about certain elements of the existing tension, which might actually undercut the tension altogether.

What gives me pause though is that I think what the author was doing was using the familiar construct of the first book as a mirror, but one that is meant to point us to a fresh tension, not the same one. It wants to make concrete statements about certain characters so that we might turn our attention to different ones. Along with this, the book flips Brooklyn around by switching who it is we spend the majority of our time with in terms of the two central love intersts of the first book.

I felt this, even as I also resisted some of that intentional shifting in the stories focus. There are other characters that emerge here in more defined ways, and that makes the focus of the story different. Add to this the fact that it is a different character this time around carrying that tension between life in Ireland and life in America, thus allowing Ellis’ own wrestling to push further into the realm of these other dynamics. Its subtle, and I missed experiencing much of that in the moment thanks to being locked in to the story from Brooklyn, but I do think that affords this a unique quality as a sequel. All the more so when you get to the unresolved ending (trigger warnings for those whom are bothered by that).

Overall I liked this. It is more simple, its an easy and breezy read, its more narrowed, but in that I think it brings some thought provoking aspects to the larger story that make it even more interesting, especially if it keeps moving forward (it feels like it will).

Film Journal 2024: Fly Me To The Moon
Directed by Greg Berlanti

Of the two films dealing with the subject of space that released this week (the other one being Space Cadet) only one of them lands the shuttle, and that would be this charming and creative crowd pleaser. If Space Cadet came dangerously close to making a mockery out of the entire NASA enterprise, the most brilliant aspect of Fly Me to the Moon, a film that also fuses equal parts comedy, parody, and serious drama/themes, is the way it uses the whole advertising agent tasked with selling the space race to a nation plagued by world conflicts and war and political divide, to quietly sell us as viewers on the idea as well. This is a love letter to the idea of space exploration as a great unifier, even as it also functions as a clever riff on the “fake moon landing” conspiracies and, in its most simplest form, a charming and hugely entertaining rom-com built off the chemistry of its two effortlessly charismatic leads (Johannson and Tatum).

The screenplay also pops with an energy befitting the tension filled fictional take on the lead up to Apollo 11, as does the soundtrack and the period setting.

I will say, as a Canadian I feel like even though I’m only an hour from the southern border, I’m also occupying a different reality that feels worlds away from this sort of overt patriotism, no matter how much it wants to sell this as “America fighting on behalf of the world.” But that certainly doesn’t leave me immune to the sentiments this is trying to evoke on an emotional level, and part of what this film does super well is balanced the bigger stakes of getting these men to the moon with the intimacy of the interpersonal drama on the ground. That I can connect to, and it is really this element that forms the lens for zooming further out to bigger realities and bigger questions, including one of the dominant themes regarding the nature of truth and lies.

As Johannsons character notes at one point, no one can believe the truth and it would still be true, and everyone can believe a lie and it would still be a lie. And yet the real point of concern cuts through this, asking whether there is something that matters more than an appeal to simple factual truth. This question is posed in light of Johannsons character using manipulation and lies to make the dream of space become a reality, suggesting that it is the power of illusion that gives people meaning and that even lies can serve a greater value. This film dares to push that further yet, paralleling the simple nature of relationships and the value of endeavors like space exploration as it wonders about the tension that exists between illusion and conviction. Does it matter that people believe the moon landing was real or fake, or does it matter that it happened? Does it matter that facts are true or that feelings and outcomes are true? What is the driving force of either our lives or our greater human pursuits in this sense?

These are strong and important philosophical observations, and I think the films willingness to leave room for one to experience both a lack or resolution and a clear resolution, depending on how we view the larger story from our personal vantage point, helps to elevate this to another level.

“I will not go up in your midst, because you are a stiff-necked people, and I might destroy you on the way.”
– Exodus 33:3

“Due to Israel’s sin with the golden calf, the earlier promise of Gods presence to guide Israel on her way, once the very expression of his blessing, has now become the instrument of his judgment. But that God would consent to withdraw his presence is also an ironic expression of his long-suffering grace. Given the “stiff-necked” nature of the nation, Gods withdrawal of his presence from Israel’s midst is not only part of his judgment upon the people for their sin (32:34), but also a necessary act of divine mercy which makes it possible for Israel to continue on as a people.”
– Scott Hafemann

“From this point forward, Israel would only encounter God’s glory through a veil- whether that be the one covering Moses’ face, the one in the tabernacle, or (Paul argues by extension in 2 Cor 3:14-15) the “letter” or written “Moses”. The progression in 2 Cor 3 from Moses the lawgiver to “Moses” as a metonymy for the “letter” or written Torah allows Paul to focus his critique on the mediated nature of the “old covenant” (3:14) without criticizing the Torah itself.”
– Jason A. Staples (Paul and the Ressurection of Israel)

Let this poor heart be your mountain
be your mountain
the mountain where you dwell, O Lord
Yes, let this poor heart be your mountain
be your mountain
the mountain where you dwell, O Lord
and let this hunger become a pathway
become a pathway
that brings you here to me, O Lord
Yes, let this hunger become a pathway
become a pathway
that brings you here to me, O Lord

Fire, fall down
Thunder, surround
Glory, come down
Fire, fall down
Thunder, surround
Glory, come down

Let this longing become a love song
become a love song
that you teach my heart to sing, O Lord
Yes, let this longing become a love song
become a love song
that you teach my heart to sing, O Lord
Let this desire become a fire
become a fire
burning deep and bright in me, O Lord
Yes, let this desire become a fire
become a fire
burning deep and bright in me, O Lord
– Brother Isaiah (Holy Hunger)

Just as i came to read the above passages in Staples book, I found myself simultaneously asking God to teach me what it means to reconcile the veiling with the ensuing revelation of the unveiling of God in Jesus in the Judeo-Christian story, and this song by Brother Isaiah came on my spotify shuffle.

Let this poor heart
Let this longing
Let this desire

I wonder about the ways in which conservative Christians, driven to protect all of the things they see as necessary to claiming Gods presence in our lives and in this world, and progressive Christians, driven to do away with the many things they believe get in the way of seeing Gods presence in our lives and in this world, can equally find themselves standing apart from the story of Torah by way of making it either an enemy or an antiquated evil, a reflection of things that our conservative or progressive ideolgies have superseded in their grasp on the truth

I say this as someone who has stood in both of these polarized camps and operated in the same tendencies. I say this as someone who also found myself once intrinsically stuck without a real way to anchor Gods presence in my life and in this world. As someone for whom “the story” had ceased being told and could no longer be told because of the ways the new waged this necessary war against the old. I found myself unable to get back to Jesus, either through those conservative trenches or that progressive battlefield.

Some time ago I came to this realization through a time of crying out to god to “show” or unveil that seemingly absent glory once again- to be drawn back to (or simply to) the “story” of God is to be drawn into a story that speaks first and most completely to the whole of creation. Without this creation-new creation story there is no revelation or unveiling.

It is through this story that we arrive then at the story of Israel, the people through whom God would reveal this glory in its fullness. Thus, how we see the story of Israel becomes our lens for seeing the story of creation-new creation, and subsequently how we see ourselves in relationship to creation. What god does in the veiling becomes an equal judgment of the enslaving Powers of Sin and Death that reign over creation, and a divine mercy for this movement towards new creation, or what the scriptures call the story of salvation.

What do we find in this story when it is allowed it to speak?
– we find the freedom to see the imagery of the garden (dwelling with God) and the wilderness (gods removal of his presence) as both a judgment and a grace note, both of which find their resolution in the giving of the spirit to once again dwell in the whole of the creation
– we find the condemnation not of Gods good creation, or the other, but of the Powers of Sin and Death
– we find the freedom to see death and suffering as fundamentally opposed to life and transformation
– we find the freedom to lay claim to the fulfilled promise that God not only will make all things new through the establishing of his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, but has made all things new through the establishing of the kingdom in the here and now. As Staples puts it, “when Paul refers to the “curse of the Torah,” he is referring to death… the blessing, on the other hand, is equated with life… Unfortinately, modern readers frequently overlook that for Paul, like his Jewish predecessors and contemporaries, death is not solely an individual problem but a corporate one.”
– we find the freedom to locate evil as the antithesis of love, finding in the story of the veiling a fundamental problem of idolatry, not moral failings. If Gods life defining and life giving presence cannot coexist with Sin and Death, then the unveiling must come with the removal of these things, which is exactly what the ancients understood the blood (which was life not death, a grace gift not a necessary killing) to do- it has the power, in the face of that which opposes god (Death) to remove the pollution of Sin and Death from the creation space precisely because it is where life resides, a life that, through the ritual practice of gift giving sacrifice (of which death and killing do not belong) resides with god through the fire, or the burning.
– we find the freedom to hope and to wonder in a world still burdened under the reality of Sin and Death. In the story of Torah righteousness is not moral perfection but resurrection reality. It continually points to that which we can claim as truth in the unveiling (jesus and the spirit) even as we wait in anticipation for its completion- a transformed creation space.

Be a mountain
Be a love song
Become a fire

Because the unveiling of gods presence has happened for the sake of gods good creation.

Film Journal 2024: The Devils Bath
Directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala

And I thought Goodnight Mommy took things to the next level. I mean it did, but this dark, harrowing follow up after the less acclaimed The Lodge is truly oppressive.

Which might not sound appealing, but as a viewing experience it is unsettling in the best kind of way. It’s horror in the sense of atmosphere and tone, while underneath it is a gorgeous period piece and historical drama rich in the kind of tragedy one might expect from a community soaked in superstitions, social hierarchies and corrupted religious powers. Of the sort that would make Eggers thrilled.

There are multiple layered themes at play that all get embodied in the character if a tortured wife, played to perfection by Anja Plaschg, who is forced to wrestle with the demons that surround her, a battle that never seems hers to win, especially as we watch her gradual decent into despair, grief and madness. It’s a character arc that leaves its mark, especially with that jaw dropping final 20 minutes. The interconnected themes of suicide, sin, confession, forgiveness, and salvation are especially poignant.

Film Journal 2024: Despicable Me 4

Full disclosure- I’ve been an apologist for this franchise since it started. I loved the idea of the tortured villain in the first film left trying to measure up to standards that label him a failure. The second film found its proper chemistry by balancing the act of bringing the now iconic minions further to the forefront while still keeping Gru at its center. The story there also found its natural progression in the whole villain turned good guy motif.

While I also appreciated the Minions film, a half step down in my ratings from the 4/5 I gave the first two films, and which came as a bit of a surprise with its heart felt premise (who knew you could mine such character development from the loveable comic relief), it would be fair to say the third film followed the law of diminishing returns (3/5). My biggest critique of that film, besides the beats starting to feel a bit repetitive, was one of the worst on screen villains in recent memory.

This fourth film actually reverses that trajectory towards diminishing returns, not by giving us a more memorable villain, rather by making the villain secondary to the real story and concern. Once again, as we found in the first and second films, we find Gru learning from a strong group of female characters, including his daughters and the addition of a charming and likeable next door neighbor. This is paired with the male villain, a fellow student from Grus past, providing a way into Grus troubled relationship with his only son.

Nothing here lives up to the first two films in my mind, straddling a line between fine and enjoyable. There are some decent running gags, but no true laugh out loud moments, and some welcome time spent with what becomes different groupings within the film just building those relationships. It also has a tight running time, which allows it to feel like it never overplays its welcome.

However, I will say, the final 20 minutes makes a valiant effort to come close, offering that moral/life lesson the franchise is known for, concluding the different threads with an emphasis on the family, and even providing a few touching moments that almost earned a tear.

I don’t imagine this franchise is dying out any time soon, but if i was able to imagine a final entry I might dare to imagine it using this upward trajectory to really bring things back full circle as a way of capturing Grus development through the family that has now come to define his moral center. There is potential there for some nice commentary to emerge both through the father-son relationship as well as the different women in his life, perhaps making Gru the central villain once again, subservient to the necessary transformation of course.

One can hope.

Film Journal 2024: The Listener
Directed by Steve Buscemi

“We’re programmed to hate the idea that we’re programmed.”

That line has been sticking with me like few others this year. Perhaps the best descriptive of what it feels to live in the tension of attend8ng for reality while at the same time finding the freedom to live within it. For anyone who’s experienced this existential crisis,it can become an all consuming, mental, physical, psychological challenge.to wade through.

We find the language of this crisis fully formulsted in the context of one of the films final callers. Whereas the help line employee has spent the night trying to help people through their personal points of crisis with her words and her verbal presence, the final caller throws all of these words into question by forcing them to attend for reality. How is it that we attend for the illusion of this thing we called life. How do we reconcile the fact that our experiences of this life are essentially dependent on acts of manipulation. As the final caller surmises, we have this inate need to feel like we are the author of our stories, and to feel otherwise is to experience feelings of oppression. The problem is, reality tells us we are not. Thus we find ourselves managing this apparent discord even as we remain unaware or wilfully ignorant about what this discord is.

In a climatic moment, our final caller poses a challenge to the worker to give a rational argument for why someone should not commit suicide, readily anticipating and cutting down the inevitable answers as irrational. I remember distinctly sitting down with an association of mine and giving them the same challenge once upon a time. I noted that there is no rational reason to not to end my life, especially when reality tells me that suffering far outweighs the pleasures of living, not to mention the purely ethical question, should we want to breach that, spilling out into the stark fact that no matter what I do my life will, objectively speaking, do more harm than good simply by me existing. The only way to truly get around my awareness of this was to choose to live in ignorance of this, and to bind myself to truths that were in fact illusions and manipulations of reality. It just felt like something has to give in that equation- either my conception of reality or my living.

This film definitely tapped into all of that old wrestling in a very real way. I loved the simplicity of its premise and the way it uses it to dig down deep into those vulnerable spaces. There’s a subtle progression to the phone calls, even though they are each occupying their own space with different conversations with different people at the same time. It mounts to this space where everything is ultimately thrown into question, and where the language being used to speak to points of crisis is turned back on the worker.

Blue skies on one side, grey skies on the other.

There is a rather clever and brilliant move on the part of the Director to keep the narrative from gettimg locked into any hard and fast conclusions, regardless of how deep and dark and vulnerable it gets. There is no hand holding here that pretends to offer false answers. As it is noted, whenever someone says “there is always beauty and meaning we can find”, or “you mean something to me”, what this is in fact saying is that there is no meaning in a rational sense of the word. This is the language of human nature, grasping as it it designed to do at meaning making constructs. We are designed to fight against what reality ultimately is and says about this world, who we are, and our place in it. And the world, or nature, is designed to push back.

If I can be clear and transparent, I once thought this way. I was this caller caught in the throes of this battle between the world and my ability to survive it. Confronted by the truths that surfaced through my desperate search for some objective truth that could help explain how I was feeling, I was left with no way to reconcile my allegiances to the illusion with my observations about reality. While my journey ultimately brought me to a place where my conception of reality had to give, it did so with a sense unease and fear. Thus I often find myself analyzing and experiencing the world through wearing different sets of shoes. I find it necessary to reason from those differing assumptions and to allow the reasoning to take me where it will within those given parameters. And thus what this film evokes, and where my journey once found me, is as true as the fact that I am still living and would ultimately find myself working from a different set of assumptions. They are both part of me and my story. Which is why I find films like this, even though they go to dark places, helpful and rewarding and even cathartic. It reminds me that my questions and struggles are ones that find good company, even if they find equal resistance on all sides of the philopshical and religious/non-religious fence.