(some pictures used from different promotional online sites or undocumentated available pictures online)

A local resident to Alabama described their state to me in the following way- the money’s in Huntsville, the cultures in Birmingham, and the power is in Montgomery (meanwhile, the good folks over there in Mobile seem to defy definition).

I was thinking about this descriptive while visiting the iconic southern locale. In fact, a number of people I talked to even suggested that the “southern” label is something that no longer makes complete sense when speaking of their “sweet home”. When you consider who is living and working in Huntsville today, for example, what you find is a space populated by leaders in the field of space, nuclear military, and technological development whom come from every corner of the greater United States and beyond. A truly international community. This thread continues through the diverse landscape that is modern day Birmingham.

I’m sure there would be plenty Alabama residents who might disagree with this descriptive, and for legitimate reasons, but it actually rings true to my own experience of visiting their space. This was not the south that I expected to find. What I found was something more nuanced and complex.

If I was to restate the above sentiment in my own words, I might say it this way- Huntsville is progress, Birmingham is present, and Montgomery is the past. What’s curious to me about this descriptive is the way these three things seem to function together as somewhat disparate entities, however unified they might be within the same overarching narrative of the southern experience, an indeed the larger umbrella of the American experience. This would be especially true when you consider the kind of progress that Huntsville represents. It boasts the marks of an upscale city marked perhaps most definitively by one of its most iconic sites, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

Last year it topped the U.S.’s best places to live list largely based on a mix of economic opportunity and a still relatively low cost of living, both of which are playing a role in its prestigious position as a leading player in a number of essential fields. With both eyes on the future, it is remaking itself in the glow of some America’s most wealthy and important companies.

Just an hour and a half further south, standing at the top of Birmingham’s gradual incline, a veritable city on a hill, is the unmistakable site of the Sloss Furnaces, a national historic landmark reflecting Birmingham’s long standing role in the industrial revolution.

Alongside this stands a massive statue of the Roman god, Vulcan, known as the god of fire forge, directly overlooking Birmingham’s university district.

These two images taken together provide a compelling portrait of the city that lays unassumingly at its feet, one steeped in its industrial past but one also shaped by a commitment to modern intellectualism. Birmingham truly is a city of the present, priding itself on a massive subsidation of the arts and culture. Fueled by a growing and diverse population and anchored in a well formed value for real diversity, led as it is by its deeply charismatic “put all the people first” mayor (43 year old Randall Woodfin, who is worth a google), the city uses its civil rights district, a testament to its pivotal role in the civil rights movement (something I’m looking to dive into with Diane McWhorter’s book Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climatic Battle of The Civil Rights Revolution) to tie its storied and often tragic past to its present in a tangible way.

This is a city that invests in and values its creatives, a fact that is nearly impossible to miss traversing its different neighborhoods. It is through its diverse cast of creatives that it finds an opportunity to tell its story in a way that translates to the lived experience, for those who’s lives connect directly to the past and those who have found themselves adopted into it. If the past is all but invisible in the perfectly paved streets and illustrious institutions of Huntsville, Birmingham finds new life by making the past a clear part of the narrative going forward. Nicknamed magic city for its iron rich landscape, to me this place presented itself as a case study for how build forward towards true reconciliation.

As one resident proclaimed, Birmingham might not be flashy, but its honest and homegrown, passionate, and real. A sentiment one might find in the sheer absence, relatively speaking, of endless suburbs and big box/chain stores.

I used a day to tour the city’s neighborhoods via its bookstores, which took me from historic Woodlawn

Beautiful Mountain Brook, a unique neighborhood tucked away into Ruffner Mountain

A local market built into an old Dr. Pepper bottling plant in a once glorified suburb now dedicated to local goods, markets and store fronts and connected directly to its culturally rich downtown hub

A downtown hub bustling during my visit with its annual sidewalk film festival.

Occupying the outskirts of the downtown area is also the railroad park, sitting directly adjacent to the cobblestone streets of Morris avenue, one of many sections of the city utilizing green space and forest as the driving force of its development. Morris avenue, by the way, a fact made apparently by its well marked signs, originated here through business aspirations from Montgomery, naming its district, an indeed modelling it after the famed English city from which it drew its inspiration. Take a walk down the historic street and you’ll be greeted by the smell of peanuts at the classic Alabama Peanut Co. and an endless array of local shops, cafes and restaurants. A perfect stroll to combine with the Park.

Its literary history and presence, which of course spills out into the rural, Alabama countryside, was my main draw, but you couldn’t talk to a local resident without the first thing out of their mouth being- the food. Perhaps due to chef Adam Evans winning the James Beard award, there is something in the air here that seems to be generating excitement over being the next great paradise for foodies. Beyond the homebred southern fare (I’m told beyond the typical BBQ and biscuits, hot chicken, pimento cheese fried green tomatoes, and boiled/freshly roasted peanuts are the must tries) which has apparently been trending more and more in Birmingham towards emphasizing its proximity to the coast, you’ll find a heavy mix of African and Mexican fare (I heard one person say that Birmingham was leading the way in important and necessary African studies).

About an hour further South of Birmingham, through the colorful mountain ridges and valleys that form the Red Mountain landscape, the foothills of the Appalachian region, is Montgomery. Trending towards the coastal regions of the Gulf of Mexico, this small city center looms large as the State’s capital. Truth be told, stepping on to its streets is like travelling back in time, the political shape of Montgomery rooted firmly in the story of its past. Its position on the Alabama river gives its coastal identity the sense of being a hub, connected to the southern trade routes from its inland position. You can actually smell the ocean air the minute you exit the valley and enter its city limits. This is a long ways off from the modern flourishes of Huntsville, to be sure, and its here that I actually felt most connected to what I perceived to be a genuine portrait of the “south”, if only because everywhere I went people were telling its story as a distinctly “southern” one.
Perhaps the most southern experience I had, outside of my eventual stop in Charleston (which is a whole other thing), was the opportunity to then get off the interstate and drive the backroads to places like Monroeville and Selma. Here the biscuits and grits, if only I could have indulged as a celiac, really come alive. Walking in the footsteps of the inspiration for To Kill a Mockingbird at Harper Lee’s hometown. Stopping at the small fruit and veggie stands. Reveling in the ability of brief rain showers to break the humidity (I’m sure I seemed strange driving with my sunroof open and my windows down as the rain came down, but it was glorious surrounded as I was by the long leaf pines), it was hard to experience the area without hearing Nat King Cole and Hank Williams lingering in the background, two natives to Montgomery’s past. Singing some lines from Hey, Good Lookin’ just seemed necessary to ordering up any necessary fare, if just to say I had some Jambalya on the Bayou.

Getting off the interstate and onto the backroads was actually the perfect way to process the weightiness of Montgomery’s history, captured so poignantly by its visual presence be it through the incredible and quite modern Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice, its well marked paths noting the story of Rosa Park, Martin Luther King, the Freedom Fighters, or on the road to Selma.

These backroads would eventually merge with Birmingham’s now familiar cityscape, bringing with this small loop the voices of reconstruction and the civil rights movement. As it encounters the revitalized culture of this present space, it attempts to reimagine a better way of living together. This to me sat in powerful contrast to the very visible notes of progress in Huntsville, cloaked as it is in the allure of the enlightenment project. Truth be told, its money comes from a history as a cotton trading center. I wondered, then, about the promises of these institutions as they continue to exist beyond the confines of this necessary conversation with Alabama’s past, and perhaps some of the irony to be found in the fact that Huntsville remains Alabama’s birthplace. Without Montgomery would we even know the right questions to ask of this unending pursuit of progress and advancement? To what end do these projects reach? I’m not sure myself when it comes to the right questions an potential answers. What I can say though is that I felt more sure of these questions navigating and experiencing the streets of Birmingham, anchored more firmly in the here and now. An unexpected place that, to me, reminded of the inevitable draw that I have towards Omaha, Nebraska, an equally unexpected small sized city that sort of reformed my idea of what a place can be when it is free to grapple with its past. In truth, it had been Charleston and Asheville that had long been on my checklist, one immersed in the sort of highly charged allegiances to confederacy and independence that I expected to find in the south, the other clearly prided on upholding its commitment to liberal ideas in the middle of Appalachia. In the end it was the understated Birmingham that won me over, a city I hope to return to someday.

Rewind to summer 2022. More than a little stir crazy from a prolonged pandemic, borders had finally begun to swing open, offering us an opportunity to go somewhere. Anywhere but here was the mantra. After some time deliberating, we ended up in Oklahoma City. Why Oklahoma City is a question we would be asked more times than we could count. If I sat down to explain the path to this somewhat obscure, mid-western escape, I promise it would make sense. It just became easier after a while to reduce it to a simple “why not”.

Summer 2023. Once again in deliberations, this time staring down potential flights to England as they jumped to an average price of $1500. Where to go when prices are literally sky high. We already had an early trip to Milwaukee planned around a concert, but it is a long summer- rest assured that’s not a complaint- and for as much as I love that Wisconsin cheese I was craving something more substantial.

As the summer days whittled away, so did potential ideas and options for getting away. We had some potential pieces on the table, but no significant agreement and even less that made practical sense to necessary budget travelers like us. The closer we got to the start of a new school season, the less desirable it was for Jen to venture too far off the beaten path. That’s when the idea of a potential solo trip came to the table.

Full disclosure: I had never travelled by myself before, so this was a first. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the experience. But we started the initial thought process. Where is somewhere I would like to go that Jen has little interest in? What were the parameters?

Sky high prices continue to rule out overseas. Local flights to particular North American destinations were within reason. Places I can drive to even more reasonable. One place that had been sitting at the top of my list was Charleston, South Carolina. It often finds itself in the fray of travel magazines and site’s top places to visit from year to year. I love the ocean. There was intrigue over the history and its stated old world charm. Considering that late August would put it in the thick of that southern, summer heat, such an idea was an immediate write off for Jen.

That’s when some other potential pieces started to fall into place. I had just started reading the recently released biography by Jonathan Elg on Martin Luther King.

What about taking those other southern states and turning that into a kind of pilgrimage? Giving the biography some boots on the ground context? Birmingham and Atlanta weren’t exactly on my radar in terms of potential travel destinations, but the more I reflected on its potential the more it seemed like a perfect fit for a solo venture.

Plans started to take shape and a last minute late summer escape came into being.

Along the way- and yes, for anyone wondering, this budget traveler did decide to drive the 2300 kilometer stretch to Birmingham by myself- I used the time to reflect, making my way through Elg’s biography. As I went along, the story of MLK turned into the story of America, and in many ways began to form into a cross-cultural movement from my own context into another. That last point is significant to me. I recall the moment this really hit for me, sitting just outside the doors of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church on Sunday morning, the day before the anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech an historic march.

Borrowing from the story behind the album, DJ Khaled’s album God Did, the preacher used Ezekiel 37:1-14 as a way to tie the story of Israel to the story of King to the story of the Black experience, to the story of the Black experience in Atlanta, to the story of Atlanta, to the story of America, to the story of the world, and ultimately to the story of me an you.The message walked through these following observations and questions:
Something happens when God changes your viewpoint from high to low.
“The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of the a valley; it was full of bones.” (Ezekiel 37:1)

Can these dead bones speak?
“Son of man, can these bones live?” (37:3)

Surrounded by death, do we believe in the power of the resurrection?
“So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, an the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them an skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.” (Ezekiel 37:7-8)

Do we believe we have this power?
“Come breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live… these bones are the people of Israel. They say, Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them: This is what the Sovereign Lord says; My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel…. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.” (Ezekiel 37:11-14)

The phrase that binds this portrait together as a picture of hope is this- “Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:13). If you read further in the passage this connects directly to the idea of God’s faithfulness to the covenant promise. Even in the midst of dry bones, God makes an “everlasting promise”, a “covenant of peace” (37:26). A promise that “God’s dwelling place will be with them”, these raised up bones, and “I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

I came into this service still shaken from my time visiting Birmingham/Montgomery/Selma.

If there was one thing I was struck by, and to be sure there were many revelatory moments, standing in the spot where Rosa Parks boarded that bus, traversing the path of the freedom riders, walking the Edmund Pettus Bridge, or experiencing the EJI’s (Equal Justice Initiative) incredible museum and memorial, it was just how much of a cross cultural movement this was for me. As a Canadian I tend to encounter two primary responses to things going on south of the border. Either I encounter those who, on the grounds of Canada’s tendency to major in American history and minor in our own, want to distance our story from theirs claiming full understanding of what that story is, or I encounter those who want to shine on a light on the story of black discrimination north of the border, resisting those moves to distance ourselves from the problem.

And yet what became clear to me was, this is not my story. This is not Canada’s story. And the story I thought I knew was not the one I encountered. Not unlike the sentiments in an opinion piece on the anniversary of the march on washington penned by Jamelle Bouie for the New York Times titled The Forgotten Radicalism of the March on Washington, it was clear how easy it is to reduce the civil rights movement to a quick list of popular touchpoints, kind of like a tourist hitting all the necessary sights. And yet, as Bouie points out, “less well remembered… is the fact that both the march an King’s speech were organized around much more than opposition to anti-Black discrimination.” Bouie goes on to say that the “march wasn’t a demand for a more inclusive arrangement under the umbrella of postwar American liberalism… it was a demand for something more.- for a social democracy of equals, grounded in the long Black American struggle to realize the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the potential of Reconstruction”, defined as they were by the official ten demands given to Washington.

Which is to say, this is a distinctly American story with an American context and a very real concern for the oppression that existed an exists on American soil. Which is also to say- this is not my story. This is not the story of Canada. Canada has its own story. If I am to know this story I must resist the tendency to make the story synonymous with my own.

And yet, as the sermon that Sunday demonstrated, it is at the same time a story that is not contained to such boundaries. To hear and to learn how the Black experience approaches an applies the story of Israel, for example, is to invite me to consider how I read the same story from my own vantage point. For me, the a portrait of a prophet speaking to an enslaved and divided nation, offering a word of hope to those dry bones, who are being raised up and given power to enact change and declare liberation, was an invitation to know this same God in my own context. standing as I was on the outside looking in. To know that this story is not simply about an oppressed people being afforded liberation and life, but that such liberation and life comes with the invitation to bear witness of this knowledge of God to the whole world is the thing that invites me in as a participant.

Talking to one Atlanta resident prior to the service, I noted how the weight of my experience in Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, an experience that evoked similar emotions to visiting Auschwitz, contrasted with the hopefulness that I felt travelling this path from King’s childhood home and boyhood neighborhood to his final resting place and Church. There was something in the air here that helped turn immense tragedy to life, even in a climate where, as the sentiments they shared seemed to echo, the dry bones of this present moment felt more like witnessing to zombies wandering around in a zombie land (to borrow the language of the preacher).

Right before I left on my trip someone sent me a timely article. It was also from the New York Times, and it represented two different opinions on the subject of travel. In one article, penned by Agnes Collard titled “The Case Against Travel”, the general sentiment was that “travel turns us into the worst versions of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best”. The target of this sentiment was this- travel as a status symbol. This can equally be applied to being well read or well educated. Collard conjures up the great philosophers of the past and contrasts them with this emergent idea called “tourism”, locating the greatest ideas and most fruitful accomplishments in those who disdained the idea of turning other places into shrines. When we are at home we tend to avoid touristy spots like the plague. When we travel, touristy spots become the portrait we find of places not our home. And the only thing travel really tends to foster are people who love to talk about their travels and those who hate to listen to travellers talk. As the writer puts it, “forms of communication driven more by the needs of the producer than the consumer.” The primary question becomes this: “(One) might speak of their travel as though it were transformative, a once in a lifetime experience, but will you be able to notice a difference in their behavior, their beliefs, their moral compass? Will there be any difference at all?” And then they pose this question:

“Imagine how your life would look if you discovered that you would never again travel.”

Collard suggests that what would become immediately clear is all the ways in which travel functions as an illusionary practice breaking up the monotony of life in a singular place, “obscuring from view the certainty of annihilation.” And just to dial this down even more, Collard accentuates this with the following sentiment: “You don’t like to think about the fact that someday you will do nothing and be nobody. You will only allow yourself to preview this experience when you can disguise it in a narrative about how you are doing many exciting and edifying things…. Socrates said that philosophy is a preparation for death. For everyone else, there’s travel.”

Ross Douthat penned a responsive opinion piece to this article titled The Case For Tourism: “Community and Sublimity on a European Vacation”. He sums up his opinion in this way.

“Seen clearly, one might argue, the entire world is shot through with majesty, which is why the perfectly enlightened need never practice tourism. But there are places where the sublimity is especially strong… Going in search of such places is no substitute for seeking deeper forms of conversion an communion. But neither is it just a detour or distraction from those obligations. The sublime justifies itself.”

I had these dueling think pieces lingering in the back of my mind for most of my trip. I wondered about what the sublime means, what enlightenment means, what it means to distinguish between a traveler and a pilgrim or even if we need to, and how my own sense of wanderlust relates to this. For me I returned, as a I typically do, with a greater appreciation for my home. But I also returned with a greater awareness of what travel means for me- it broadens my world. It broadens my awareness of the world. It helps me to see how this place I call home is indeed a microcosm of the bigger picture of this story we call the world, one pertinant an aware with its own particularities and questions.

One of the things that Elg’s biography did, being the first to incorporate the recent release of a mountain of information and documents along with testimonies of eye witnesses now free to speak this many years later, is demythologize King in the public eye. He was a complicated human with very real shortcomings. And yet it is in the demythologizing that we are able to see the true power of his accomplishments. As travelers, we romanticize the places we have not been to and have not seen. To traverse these places is to have them stripped of their mystery and cast in a new light. The real question becomes, is a demythologized figure someone we can still find wonder in? Is a demytholgoized place somewhere we can still find wonder in? The true worth of travel for me is its ability to encourage us to do just this. To recover the sort of wonder that is willing to reclaim the mystery of the myth in a world that threatens to redefine these stories as mere illusion. The problem with demythologizing is that things like wonder an hope tend to be tossed out the door as well. And yet thats not what I experience in the doors of this church. Rather, what I found was an inate desire to allow the God known in the demythologizing of these dry bones to reveal the greater reality of the resurrrection, hope in a world often thrust into darkness. In this sense the myth becomes a truer representation of their reality. In this sense travel opens us up to a greater awarness of the world and its genuine mystery an wonder. That we can appreciate and enjoy the art of good travel at the same time- good food, good sunsets, the joy of an ocean front, good company, interesting and awe inspiring sites- is simply part of the wonder.

Reaing Journal 2023: DO NOT DETONATE Without Presidential Approval: A Portfolio on the Subjects of Mid-century Cinema, the Broadway Stage and the American West
Edited by Wes Anderson and Pushkin Press

Do Not Detonate is a collection of Essays written by different voices about the different films that inspire Wes Anderson’s recent film Asteroid City. This is all anchored by an opening conversation between Jake Perlin and Wes Anderson as they discuss the creation of the film. It is here that its main source of inspiration- 1950’s- is fully fleshed out. The films themselves span different time periods, but this is where we fin the films rich setting being actualized.

Beyond the conversation piece, the essays begin with a reflection on Lee Stasberg and his filmmaking process, particularly when it comes to method acting. We can see this emphasis on “real emotion” playing into certain aspects of Andersons film, especially when it comes to Scarlott Johannsons character. On the other side of the “process” is the final chapter is a story by Sam Shepard which establishes an emphasis on theme. This is arguably the strongest and most interesting essay given its ability to contextualize the collection of essays in a simple idea, one that the film evokes through the wildness of its setting.

By far, the largest of the essays surrounds Marilyn Munroe, a story that has rich influence in Asteroid City an its focus on the relationship between art, artist and viewer. Other dominant themes are the desert, and experiences behind the set, be it theatrical or film. Jorge Luis Borges delves into the relevance of allegory in his essay on The Petrified Forest. Or Ace in the Holes emphasis on post war America. The emphasis on a fusion of styles, be it noir, the western, nostalgia, comedy, abstract in Desert Fury. The political backrop of a particular time in Americas history (Fail Safe), or the cultural commentary of the film Nashville.

Taken together, what becomes clear is how big the questions actually are in Asteroid City, while also being contextualized into a very particular time in America’s history. Art helps us to navigate these questions, and yet they exist as an interpretive exercise that arrives without the baggage of needing concrete answers. It is a film, as the influences suggests, that balance fear with ideology, the world the artist is then navigating and speaking to. An as an artist, what Anderson seems to be finding in all of these influences is a freedom to allow the art to say what it will.. That it exists in such an uncertain world is perhaps the most important thing.

Chicago film critic Josh Larsen notes in his review of the recent Indiana Jones movie, Dial of Destiny, Mangold’s interest in demythologizing Indiana Jones He strips away the hero’s storied past and creates the necessary space for exploring who this figure is and what he is all about in light of his story seemingly coming to an end.

Where Indy was once romanticized and idolized as the young teacher inspiring bright minded students to engage with history, now he is all but ignored by a class of fresh, bright eyed students shoving him aside in favor of a “new age” of exploration. The hero has seemingly been made irrelevant by progress, his aged, shirtless body sitting in stark contrast to the fully clothe and deaged relic of the past. For the all the adventures Indy has experienced, it seems aging in the midst of an ever changing wold is too great of an opponant to overcome.

As Josh notes, the film is about time, and your place in time, and further yet “the appropriateness of your place in time”. Jones is resisting all the forces that are threatening to “move him ahead in time” while giving in to a pesistant cynicism regarding his life an this world at the same time. His typical ornery an disgruntled persona finally suits his circumstances, in a nearly poetic fashion. On the larger level of the mythos of Indiana Jones, what hangs in the balance is “his relationship to us and to the world” today.

As mentioned, Jones has always been something of a cynic. Someone who is constantly battling against the nature of his experiences, which threaten to undermine the safety and certainy of his reasoned and compartmentalized understanding of reality, as an academic and historian an as an adventurer. Such existential and theological crisis are apparent throughout the series, surfacing in different ways and in different forms. In a sort of penultimate statement, all of this angst comes to a head when Jones confesses in Dial of Destiny, “I don’t believe in magic. But a few times in my life I’ve seen things, things I can’t explain.” How does he manage this in the face of his commitment to reason? He goes on to say, “I have come to believe its not so much about what you believe, but how hard you believe it.” What is interesting about this statement is how Jones applies this to time itself. To the reality that who he is in the world no longer seems to matter or hold significance. This is, I think, what forms the existential crisis in Dial of Destiny. Does his strength come from resisting the truth of his aging by believing he still has significance, or does his cynicism hold more power when it comes to recognizing he no longer has a place in this world?

If Jone’s passion for history rings true, what seems abundantly clear is that he now finds himself wondering whether his own history had any worth at all. The question “does the past matter” and the subsequent question “does my past matter” seem inseperable when it comes to weighing a world defined by inevitable progress. On a more meta level, the film wonders about a world that no longer seems to have room for Indy and this franchise as well. What the film lingers on and lets perculate, is the idea that Jones has finally given up. He has to reckon with “who he is now, and whether he wants to be a part of this world”, as Josh surmises. Late in the film this point of crisis comes to a head when Jones literally wants to stay buried with the past, faded from the world’s consciousness. Given the mythology of Indy, this seems fitting. Given the demythologizing of Indy this seems tragic. As Josh Larsen suggests, “It’s okay for him to be done.” But even as we say this, something about this statement feels to be not quite right. In truth, if we do say this, we must then wrecken with where this character goes when his time has come and gone and why it mattered at all. Lest we think we are immuune to such things, those of us who grew up with Indy then become bound to the same fate and to the same point of crisis. Who is Indy becomes a question that then gets turned in on ourselves: who am I. A question that we can dial up even further in the grander scope of this film: what then is the meaning of existence.

It is not dealing with a “dial”, not unless you count the internet in a post dial up world, but Celine Song’s much celebrated indie film Past Lives also happens to be dealing with some of these questions as it explores matters of destiny. As the official synopssis outlines: Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected chilhood freinds, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. 20 years later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront notions of love and destiny.

Through this contemplative and richly thematic exploration of our relationship to time and to the passing of time, Celine Song pushes us as viewers to think about our lives in terms of story. The motif of past lives is functioning on multiple levels within the film, digging underneath the what if’s of all our past choices and potentialities, all of which intersect with the different moments, people, possibilities and actualities inherent in the story of our lives. Song seems to differentiate the stories that we are given by way of living in the present time from the stories we tell outside of time by way of the past. The now that we occupy brings us into relationship with all of the past that has brought us to where we are, making memory less than static as a function. It develops. It grows. It emerges within our storytelling. It can help us to mark one path from another, even as these paths are ultimately connected and bound together, the ones we take and the ones we diverged from. We are different things to different people, and within this hangs all the myriad sides of lifes pontentiality, be it realized in the now or lost in time. There is a real sense that hidden in the passage of time is a deeply rooted anxiety regarding the possible lives that have indeed passed us by, leading to an inate sense that the story we are living now is the story we have, and yet how we make sense of this story in light of the past is a much harder notion to wrestle down. How do we keep the story we are occupying in the now from locating its true measure in the stories of our past. This question seems to be, in a very real way, at the root of how it is we figure out this thing we call a life.

This blogspace was birthed out of my own existential crisis over turning 40. As I’ve written a few times over, this was a real dark point in my story. The story that I was occupying at that time felt deeply uncertain when I set it in relationship to my past. If I’m honest, I’ve made efforts to recover, but I’m not sure how far I’ve actually come. With every new year my experience of turning 40 becomes more and more indebted to the past, the story of now more and more freighted. That is how this life seems to go: forever forward with the baggage in tow, leaving us only with the uncertainty of the now.

Perhaps the more difficult thing for me to process is that these ruminations reach far beyond “my” place in this world. Not unlike Indy, these personal questions tend to push further into questions about the nature of existence as I wonder about whether this world still has room for “me” at all. Much harder to reconcile is the idea that so many of the things that once made this world matter, things that my younger self would have insisted were necessary to the now, no longer do. Opinions. Knowledge, Truths, Pursuits, Convictions, Investments. Experiences. Many of these things have become relics of a story now lost to history, in danger of at least feeling like they are becoming increasingly given to insignificance and irrelevance as time pushes forward. In truth, in my most cynical an struggling moments, this raises serious questions about what truth an reality even is. The longer I live, the more I find myself living in a world that I no longer share a language with, the past erasing the necessary lines of communication that can enable me to live into the now with much significance and clarity. And the more these feelings surface, the more I tend to retreat into the handful of equally fading relics that surround me, feeling like a passive observer stuck in time as the world grows narrower and narrower.

Perhaps this is what makes the ending of Dial of Destiny so poignant for me personally. Not because it answers this point of crisis directly, but because it locates the singular space where we are able to wrestle with such feelings and thoughts. Its no accident, in classic storytelling form, that this singular space is the very thing that ties the ending of Dial of Destiny back to its beginning: the relationships an experiences that hold this world together with some semblance of meaning, however illusive it might become. The journey Indy takes towards recognizing, or perhaps reconciling, when his story definitively goes from one that is “being told” to one “that is finding its completion” is worth reflecting on. Attached to this is Past Live’s exploration of a similar and parallel process, linking this quesetion to the increasingly narrowing gap that exists between our present potentiality and its gradual loss. The more time pushes forward the narrower this gap becomes, begging the sorts of questions that we find surfacing in Dial of Destiny relating to Indy’s aged self navigating an unfamiliar world: How long do we fight to stay relevant, and when does time begin to pull us back into the past and tell us to stop. This has real implications for how we navigate the now, especially when we begin to attach this to questions about truth and meaning.

That poignancy surfaces for me all the more as I face down 47, my birthday having just passsed me by on August 4th. If my 40 year old self imagined my story 7 years later I’m not sure if its the cynicism or the optimism that wins out. I’m not sure which belief is the strongest, and likely that changes day by day, week by week. As my 47 year old self, the one who occupies the now, reflects on the past 7 years, I’m not so certain I know what to do with this story, especially as I think about the ever narrowing gap of between my own potentiality and the loss of it. The only thing I can say with confidence is, something sustained me. I was 40. Now I am 47. And if I look hard enough there is a story to tell, and maybe one worth telling. And the more days I live, the more need there is, I feel, to reflect on both sides of that story, spending less and less time on the now and more and more time on the past that led up to the now. Which of course feels antithetical to how I was always taught to live: in the now. This is why such ruminations are a fearful and uncertain exercise, to be sure, as such truths leave me uncertain about the power of the now to shape my story. As I continue to wrestle with my anxiety surrounding the act of living in the face of my own aged self, the past has a way of unsettling the things that seem important to me today. And I don’t know if that is a defeating thought or a liberating one.

Thinking about Celine Songs film though, one thing that seems to unsettle that picture for me is this: as long as I’m reflecting I’m still living somewhere. On my best days I can relate to Indy’s dilemma. I get the past. In many ways I feel like I belong to the past. It is a story I know and know well. This is my mythology. Am I fooling myself into thinking that this story matters? Those are the doubts that anxiety fuels, and the reality of the now and its unfamiliar terrain has a powerful tendency to stoke these flames. The world can be a lonely place when you can’t speak its language and when it seems to have little to no interest in learning yours. This is just the honest places that my mind sometimes goes to when I confront these yearly markers. And yet, as Past Lives seems to suggest, time is not a concept that can make sense of the problem of infinite regress on its own. That’s why it attaches itself to the passage, to the idea of beginnings an endings as a conception that our minds can handle in the now. But Song never lets that cannibalize the nature of reality itself. She leaves room for mystery to weave its way into the tendency to comparmentalize and rationalize our experiences away. Likely for the same reason Indiana Jones can’t simply rely on reason alone: because he’s experienced things. Things he can’t explain. If we are being honest, I think we all have. And often it is that mystery that sustains us, even if it is against the powerful efforts of our cynicism to undermine it. That’s not always enough. On August 4th I wasn’t convinced it was. But today is different, and for now that’s enough.

Film Journal 2023: Theater Camp
Directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman


The aim of this mocumentary is so pure it almost dares you to not want these characters to be real. And certainly the power of its depictmemt of “theater kids” comes from the fact that this subset of culture is in fact very real.

Which does leave this film as something of an insider’s commentary of this experience. Meaning, someone like me are left looking in at this from the outside. Even if it wants me to know that “I’m not one of them”, it nevertheless is wanting me to learn and experience something of what it means to be them. And not just as a culture separated from the world, but as part of the universal human experience.

Thus I felt welcome not just to observe, but to participate, and despite being at a necessary distance, these things translated to a deeply satisfying experience. Its laugh out loud funny, effortlessly charming and entertaining, and within all that bursting with meaning and heart.

A genuine crowd pleaser, theater kid or not.

Film Journal 2023: The Beanie Bubble
Directed by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash


The whole “product origins” trend in film this year is admittedly getting a bit tired at this point. There is little doubt The Beanie Bubble falls prey to this exhaustion, made all the more relevant by the fact that its predecessors are simply the better films.

Set that aside though and this film has a decent amount working in its favor. I thought the editing was really solid, interspersing the straight forward progression of the story with jumps back and forth in time. And the performances, anchored by the three women who’s story this film is telling, are all solid. To the films benefit, these things only get stronger as the film goes on thanks to the genuine intrigue of its real world point of crisis.

Even if the film never quite finds a way to go from good to great, which i would argue is mainly because the intrigue of the source material is fairly limited in its scope, the way these stories are meant to be a microcosm of capitalism in general is still very effective. It makes you wonder if this isn’t the story that follows every product that exists in our world. The film would want us to believe that there are heroes at play here, examples of the good ones who fight back against the system. I don’t know how much of this story maps onto reality and how much is interpretive licence serving the drama; there is little doubt who the enemy is here, presenting one of the most unlikeable characters of the year. But at the very least it’s also wanting to offer a bit of hope. I certainly won’t begrudge it for that

Reading Journal 2023: Why the Gospel: Living the Good News of King Jesus with Purpose
Author: Matthew W. Bates

If you haven’t yet read Bates’ Salvation By Allegiance Alone, I would highly recommend reading that, along with The Gospel Precisely, before you pick up this most recent work. Not because this can’t be read on its own; it gives enough of an overview of his basic assumptions surrounding what the Gospel is to satisfy his move to ask the subsequent question, “why the Gospel”. But gaining a full grasp on the what goes a long ways towards helping to contexutuaize the why.

In some ways this book functions more as an apologetic, but not iin the sense of sharing information regarding the what. This is less about the cogntiive side of things and more about the emotional and the practical implications of the what of the Gospel. Its about how the what translates into a motivating purpose for living according to the truth of what the Gospel claims.

It’s about why one should care at all about the Gospel, once clarified and understood. To live the Gospel is to see it most clearly.

Bates begins where one might expect him to given the interests of his larger body of work, with the King Jesus Gospel. If begin anywhere else but with the Gospel as royal proclamation we will end up with problematic motivations for following the Gospel. King first matters. Further, King first unsettles whatever else we have set in its place. The King Jesus Gospel begins with the proclomation of Jesus as “the Christ”. It ends with this proclomation functioning as the fulfillment of a story, in the person and work of Jesus the story of Israel. Thus our motivation for following the Gospel is attached to what the royal proclamation says regarding what God has done in Jesus. Crucial to this is the fact that we cannot understand the person and work of Jesus outside of the messianic expectations that give this its necessary articulation. Which is why reading and hearing the larger story of Israel matters so deeply to our living out of this story in our present day. If, for example, we believe the person and work of Jesus begins with Jesus dying for me so as to satisfy a necessary punishment/consequence of death, our motivation for living the Gospel is going to look much different than living out a story of Jesus’ ascension to the throne proclaiming the defeat of Sin and Death and the ushering in of the promised and awaited kingdom and king. Allowing the story to push us towards dwelling on what the story is and what the story actually says about the King Jesus Gospel can help uncover why these motivations matter in the day to day of our lives, especially when it comes to how we view and percieve Gods good creation, humanity and the very character/nature of God reigning and acting in the world by way of this established kingdom and king.

Bates takes a cue in the later chapters from Scott Mcknight, applying his “read backwards” approach to the Gospel. Here the apologetic force of the book becomes most clear, attaching how we live the Gospel to how we witness the Gospel to the world. But he is careful not to detach these two things from eachother, framing motivation in the light of a shared truth regarding a shared existence, a shared problem and a shared solution. Any us versus them approaches or assumptions need not apply. “We want to poclaim the good news to others. We desire to become more rooted in the gospel ourselves.” These two things function as one. To “Gospel Backwards”, as Bates puts it, is “to reverse the logic of the church’s ordinary ways of presenting the good news.” For example, the Church often leads wih an offer of forgiveness for ones sins. Jesus is your Savior, accept Jesus’ salvation and you will be saved. Only then do we move to say something, if anything, about Jesus as King of the long awaited Kingdom. At best, such a proclomation is lobbied out somewhere into the future with Jesus’ second coming, leaving this world and our experiences of it as little more than a forming ground for our individual salvation. How much different does this Gospel preach when beginning with the proclomation that Jesus is King. It is this truth that enters into the expereinces of this world with the good news this accomplishment can promise. Anything that we can say about this salvation taking root in our lives is only true because Jesus is King. Unfortunately, we have been so conditioned by a Gospel that has made this story about me and my assured salvation that it remains extremely difficult to locate and appropriate this Gospel reversal. One of the outcomes of this is a general resistance to seeing the Gospel as something that goes out into the whole world as good news for all. Salvation is the person and work of Jesus, not the saving of me from my sins. It is the defeat of the Powers of Sin and Death (the crushing of the head of the serpent), the establishment of the kingdom (new creation) and the throne (the ascension). To step into this is to experience the benefits of such a truth in a clarifying sense. It is to be formed in faith, which appropriately rendered means faithfulness or allegiance to the King. This is where we find assurance not of our individual salvation, but of the work of salvation in a world that often appears to be otherwise. And yes, to participate in faithful allegiance is to be confronted by the truth of forgiveness as well.

It is only in reversing the Gospel in this way that we can make space for the whole of the story. it is only by seeing the Gospel in this way that we become free to live out this Gospel in the fabric of our lives in ways that matter and that feel true to our experiences of this world. This is the stuff that shapes the middle ground of Bates book, centering especially on the interrelated relational dynamic that frames perceptions of Gods “glory”. I really appreciated how he redefines glory away from common notions of power and control, ideas that seem purposed to create distance between creator and creation, and towards the idea of a “revealed truth”. God’s glory is the marriage of His revealed name (who God says He is) to God’s acting in and for the world. We know who God is by the way God acts, and for God to glorify Himself this means being true to His name in a way that reveals it to creation. For us to glorify Go is not to say less of me, more of you, but rather for our actions an participation in the kingdom to image God to creation and image creation back to God. Bates astutely notes that it is here where can locate the true problem that creation shares. It is a failure of this interelated truth regarding Gods glory. Thus where Gods name is not being glrorfied (imaged) in our lives, the proclamation of the Gospel hangs its hat on the truth of Gods faithfulness to glorifying Himself by being faithful to the promise. To doing what He said He would do and being who He said He would be. This is where we find true knowledge of the Gospel, not in some neverending list of attributes or ideas that keep God and Gods ways hidden from the world.

Why the Gospel is a necessary book. It doesn’t have quite the punch of his articulation of salvation and faith in his previous works, but it does function as a necessary and helpful compliment to that. It helps give us a framework for not leaving the what on the page. It helps us to live the good news of King Jesus with purpose.

Reading Journal 2023: Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
Author: Malcolm Harris

Heavy on information and academically detailed, Harris’ massive book on Palo Alto proves to be Silicon Valley’s definitive history. And subsequently, given the nature of this history, a commentary on the development of American capitalism from its western roots to its global impact.

The book begins by affording the reader a deeply personal portrait of the areas indigenous roots. No matter how sprawlilng the history becomes, this is the beating heart of Harris’ vision. Somehwere behind the plasiticity of the areas symbolic position as a bastion of progress and American idealism, is a note of humanity, however buried it has become.

Its not that Palo Alto’s identity was completey foreign to me. What I did not expect, and did not know, is how its modern iteration sits indebted to the patterns of its past. I mentioned this in my review of a recent book I read on the development of the Mississippi river, but if that history captures America’s movement from the ideological vision of the East to the eventual evolution of its westward push, this book traces the countries formation from its westward development back East. Whereever the vision begins on those Eastern shores, what happens in the West reshapes the narrative with its own ambitions. Harris does a masterful job of explaining how palo alto’s reimagining of the agricultural system, the creation of the Hollywood system, its role in the railroad, the implementation of monetary sytems and trade, the creation of class systems and its relationship to development and immigration, this all places Palo Alto at the forefront what would become the emergence of American capitalism and its distinct libertarian vision. What makes this more troubling is the impact this would have on the global front. And the closer the history gets to the present, the more we see that reversing its trajectory as it takes hold of the American system with an illuminating force.

Given the breadth of detail in the book and scope of its history, Harris smartly organizes the book according to major sections each with a series of sub-sections. This allows one to track with where we are on the timeline, what subject we are exploring, and where to locate it in the bigger picture. It makes it easy to move back and forth too, if something in one section seems to be recalling something from a previous one. I will say that this does affect the pacing a bit, particularly when it comes to tracking with the arc. The arc is there, but its easy to lose sight of when you are in the thick of certain portions, and many of those portions end up necessarily hyper focused on its particular point in history. That means some of this will certainly be a bit of a slog. But there are enough sections that exhibit a natural excitement and sense of intrigue (the space settlers for example). And without a doubt, the closer the history gets to our present day, the easier it is to connect to.

It seems strange, perhaps, to say that a history book like this just might be one of the more important books of 2023, and yet I feel like the relevance of this history reaches far and wide in our present context. As I suggested, the narrative cohesion here with the movement West provides a fascinating point of perspective when it comes to the larger development of the American ethos. We can see how the seeds take root and become a living, breathing potentiality. One that either consumes itself or proves able and capable of learning important lessons. History seems to suggesst that capitalism is destined to be the former. It is in digging underneath, perhaps, and finding the human face that a book like this can present a hopeful contrast. Whether this is heard and considered amidst the noise is another question.

I’m around 8 years old. It’s late December, which for a Winnipeger means cold and snow. My parents have entered my room to get me out of bed, a 4 A.M. wake up call my young body is not yet accustumed to. Still half asleep, they usher me into a packed van, ready to make the long drive to Toronto to visit our relatives for the holidays. As the only ones in the family to live outside of the GTA, these trips would be common place and an annual affair.

I have very little awareness of the challenge the 2400 kilometer trek is for the ones behind the wheel. Navigating the treacherous northern Ontario portion of the transcanada highway in the middle of winter while attempting to occupy three boys in the backseat. I do have a distinct memory of being tossed out into the snow with no shoes during one of these trips, the van doors being locked along with the message that I would now need to walk the rest of the way. Good times.

For the most part it is the small things that stick in my memory more than the big events. This big events tend to blur together into a singular portrait I call “summers at the cottage” or “Christmas with the cousins”, littered with a smattering of iconic ventures such as riding to the top of the CN Tower, visiting the Falls, or braving the coasters at Canada’s Wonderland. The smaller memories are the ones that engage my senses, the ones that I can embody and which place me back in the moment. Like being ushered in to the van at 4a.m and snagging a prime spot on the floor of the van by the heater, letting the sound of the hum lull me back to sleep. Or waking up with the sunrise to the presence of those bright red cliffs that tell inicate we are now in northern Ontario. The great lakes coming into view. Obligatory stops in towns like Thunder Bay, Christmas, Wawa, and Sault St. Marie. And of course the first glimpses of the big city skyline, Fighting over those 12 packs of cereal boxes so that we wouldn’t be the one stuck with the bran flakes or rice krispies. The smell of the grandparents house. Sitting and listening to the old transistor radio for the next big police chase or fire, the old hand run manual washing machine churning in the background. 

There was an undeniable sense of adventure that accompanied these early endeavors, breaking out of the bubble that is the middle of nowhere Canada and broadening my understanding of the world. To this day, trying to explain to my relatives what it is like to live in a place where the next significant major city center is 1200 km away is difficult to say the least. Living in the most populated part of Canada where you are never more than a few hours drive from the next massive city center is sort of like living in Europe, where a couple hour flight or a short train ride has them crossing multiple countries and timezones. If you’ve ever tried to give a European a sense of how big Canada actually is then you know what I mean.

Its precisely that vantage point though, distanced as we were, that allowed the adventure to exist. For as much as I love Winnipeg, the sense of wonder that was birthed by making that 2400 km trek never gets old. I point to these trips as the seeds that would grow my love for travel and my inate ability to be fascinated by even the smallest and most ridiculous things. The feeling of entering an unfamiliar space has a way of shaking up the imagination. When we became parents and eventually introduced our son to some of these same experiences, it struck me how, even seeing these well worn roads from a much different perspective this side of 40 was offering something more than mere nostalgia. Such experiences now blended with a greater awareness of history and geography and architecture and culture. It might be following in the footsteps of my childhood self, but it also reframed it as a fresh endeavor, perhaps molding the memories into concrete and tangible knowledge

So why all this reminsicing? My wife and my son and I had done this trip using the Canadian route a couple times before and during the pandemic, but this reflection was actually sparked by a recent trip we took down these same roads, only reliving one of the more expressive of these childhood memories on the American side of the border: embarking over what my young mind only knew at the time to be the “giant bridge”, which I later came to know was called the Mackinac Bridge. Anytime we chose to cut across Michigan rather than snaking our way through northern Ontario, we crossed this bridge. The Mackinac is a 5 mile suspension bridge, listed as one of the longest in the world, spanning the Mackinac Straits, connecting the upper and lower Peninsulas of the state of Michigan (or as they say in Michigan, connecting the “Yoopers” with the southern “Trolls”). 

The thrill of the long ascent would meet with the nervous sounds of those metal tracks lining the top. The majestic views of the strait, when I wasn’t attempting to look straight down at our imminent death, was always awe inspiring. My wife hates heights, and hates heights over water even more. So this was of course the natural choice.

Here is the thing though. This time we weren’t going to Toronto. Rather we were stopping at the bridge to explore something my young eyes had managed to miss through all those years of travel, something my ignorance had hid from my sight: the populated island situated mere miles off the shore. An island where cars had been banished years ago and bikes and horses continue to rule the day. An island where the fudge is as iconic as its array of eclectic and independently owned B&B’s. An island distinct from the mainland and yet somehow still a part of it. An island aptly named Mackinac,

When I first became aware of this island’s existence it immeduately made my bucket list. Which is really more of a multi-paged product of my OCD stored on my computer. It baffled me that the place had managed to hide in plain sight, the ferry dock snuggled under the bridge, bound to the streets of Old Mackinac City. To ask others, “have you heard of Mackinac Island?” was to be consistently met by puzzled looks. Finally taking the plunge would continue to be met with exclamations of, “where is that exactly”!? We left people even more puzzled because, barely a month prior we had vacationed in Oklahoma City. Where is that became paired with “why Oklahoma!?” It sounds silly, but it felt like we were unearthing a little known secret or experiencing a little known exotic locale in our own backyard. And truth be told, it might be a mere 20 minute boat ride from the mainland to the island, but those first glimpses do make you feel like you have travelled to the other side of the ocean.

The first thing that comes into view from a distance is the majestic Grand Hotel looming over the hilly incline When you get closer you are hit with the smells. It is difficult to describe, so I’ll borrow a descriptive from a local; it is a unique blend of fudge, horse dung, and seaside. If that sounds less than ideal, it is not. It is the sort of scent that helps frame a memory and tie you to the place uniquely and forever. When I visualize the place, I smell it. A comforting frame of reference that pairs one sense with the other.

The sense of sight: What greets you when you dock is the glimpse of Main Street peeking through the alley way. Stepping on to the platform, this soon melds into the sounds of its busy foot traffic, the moving wagons, the zoom of bikes, and the clicking of hooves. Dave McVeigh and Jim Bolone’s The Dockporter, a novel that accompanied our drive to the strait, captures this experience perfectly.

For me it mirored my experience of arriving in Venice. It required immediate reorientation, something that I gained by slowly emerging into the thick of the hustle and bustle. Over the course of the next few days some of my most cherished moments would become the early mornings, where these same streets would transorm into a mostly silent and vacant oasis, the sightlines of the sun rising unobscured and radiant across the open waters and across the cobblestone streets. I don’t know if this inspires a descriptive of an “island’ way of life, but it certainly has a way of drawing you under its spell. For the moment, the sheer busy-ness of it all was energizing and stimulating.

The island is essentially connected by a narrow car-less highway that circles the perimeter of the landmass, the only highway of its kind in America.

This is contrasted by the gradient, hilly center. Thus the minute you step off of Main  street you are venturing inwards and upwards on a persistent incline, most of the lodging lining the raised streets above. We stayed at a historical Irish mansion, situated one block off of Main on a central throughfare for bikes, horses and wagons. Once the quiet of the morning oasis met with the busy-ness of the day, it became the perfect place to commune with guests on the porch or to people watch from the wooden lawn chairs accompanied by an endless array of complimentary coffee and snacks. Island life, as it were, comes with very little demands. Its possible to experience the whole island in a day. To experience it well in two days. Three days might be considered a stretch for some, but for us it presented the gift of entering into its rhythms.

When Therasa Weller embarked on a project in the hopes of tracking down the Anishinaabe name of her anscestors, she uncovered a distinct reality of the Mackinac Island Band that she belonged to. The island was unique given that the Anishinaabe who occupied it were born of a varied mix of Bands, which meant that this isolated island did not abide by the singular customs that tended to govern the mainland. This included exogamy, meaninng that, unlike the mainland, mixed clans meant that intermarriage within the tribe was common. The problem for Weller was that this made tracking down her ancestral roots near impossible. It did however grow her awareness of just how unique this island was.

But of course the Islands history isn’t simply confined to its post colonial reality, despite the Fort that still marks one of the highest points of its outer limits. Shaped by the last ice age, the island’s occupation reaches back into the great native american traditions of the early centuries of the emergent civilization, the name (Mishimikinaak in Ojibwe) evoking the great Spirit believed to inhabit the island. It would be in the 1600’s that a French mission would meet the British occupation, resulting in the islands Fort Mackinac being dismantled from its original location on the mainland and moved to its present day spot in the onset of the Revolutionary War. A later treaty would secede the island to the Americans before the onset of the war of 1812, resulting in the now infamous (for island natives) Battle of Mackinac Island. The war, which Britian won, ultimately ended with the land being returned to the Americans, paving the way for the early tourism boom of the 1800’s to reform the island from anceint indigenous territory and modern fishing village to a national (and eventually state) park and summer escape. There is perhaps no greater sign of this transformation than the Grand Hotel, the largest summer hotel in the world, The banning of automobiles would eventually solidify its unique identity both as an island society and as a destination.

All of this really lends the island its aura of distinctivness. It was said (to us) that the population of full time residents sits somwhere between 600 and 1000. It might be easy to mistake the destination as a tourist trap framed by a litany of ready made gift shops, but that would be misunderstanding what this place actually is, Yes, prices reflect the isolated location; bring your own snacks/food from the mainland if you want to save some dollars. But unlike, say, Disneylands Main Street, which reflects a manufactured ideal and an optimistic expression of “Americana”, or even Venice’s overt catering to its incessant tourism, replacing authentic Italian Gelato and Pizzarias with generic, marketable versions (as local Italians will say, if it has bright colors and sits in the open air, its a forgery), the shops of Mackinac Island are indeed independently owned, and plenty even owned by local residents. This is a desination, but its also a home with a local culture fueled by a school, congregations, workers and residents. Even the famous fudge shops, desgned to foster friendly competition (we actaully went during the annual fudge festival, which, its worth noting, is not really a festival as much as an excuse for a late summer season draw) are immersed in a genuine love for the craft. Equally so for the local artists whom line the adjacent streets, giving the island an interpretive representation and crafted presence. This is part of what endeared me to this place, is the apparent authenticity lying beneath the surface of its curated island life. It might be easy for young mainlanders to treat this space as a simple weekend away or a night out at the island eateries, but linger a little bit and get to know the voices who speak its story and you’ll find staunch defenders and protectors of the islands good name. For me, it was a reminder that even the brightest eyes don’t always see the value of what’s right in front of them. And yet this became an opportunity to reshape old memories into something entirely new.

With that in mind, what does it look like to linger?

It looks like buying into the tradition, renting a bike and riding the highway around the island.

It looks like sunsets on the rocks with the original Macinack Island Fudge ice cream, soaking in the sea air and sitting in the shadow of the bridge across the strait.

It looks like perusing the artists shops and inquiring about the artists work.

It looks llike grabbing the famous Love Potion #9 coffee, a spicey brew, from the only coffee shop in town and strolling through the shops of Main street.

It looks like venturing up the incline to admire the majesty that is the Grand Hotel.

It looks like tracking down the different locations for the on location shoot of Somewhere in Time

It looks like listening to the Mackinac Island Podcast interview locals and businesses and helping to unearth the islands story.

It looks like perusing and purchasing a book from the local island bookstore and immersing yourself in the islands history and culture.

It looks like learning the art of doing nothing and having nowhere to go.

It looks like life removed from the mainland, yet remaining accutely aware of the wide world that surrounds it.

Not always a fan of the stuff that comes out of Christianity Today, but they do have some decent stuff littered in the mix.

This take on Barbie is particularly interesting to me given that it touches on some issues I have with certain forms of Christianity while also bringing to light the tensions that Gerwig tables in what is arguably a pointed social commentary.

First off, it rightly frames Barbie, and I think Gerwig’s intent based on the interviews I have heard, within the context of the Biblical fall.

“The movie is a kind of retelling of the Fall. In both Genesis and Barbie, a prototypical woman reaches for forbidden knowledge and then offers it to her male companion. Both are met by a loss of innocence and exiled from perfection.”

But the author then goes on to evoke the language of “original sin”. What’s even more relevant to this evocation is how original sin takes the larger story of the fall and writes it almost entirely into the question of “individual salvation”. The author writes,

“For evangelicals, framing maturation in light of original sin can be deeply unsettling, especially because Gerwig seems to suggest that experiential knowledge is necessary to human development. By contrast, we understand the Genesis narrative as a story of rebellion. In choosing what was forbidden, the woman and man disobey and come under a curse that will plague their entire existence—from the earth under their (flat) feet to their own bodies.”

Notice the emphasis on “human development”, which is then played through isolating the woman and the man by describing existence as “theirs”. The earth gets reduced to that which is under “their” feet and something that only exists in relationship to “their” bodies”.

The writer then goes on to say,

“Even more, much of evangelical theology and practice is aimed at reversing this curse. We understand Jesus as the Second Adam, come to redeem and restore what was lost (Rom. 5:12–20). We look forward to the day when we are perfect once again.

And yet, within this frame, we sometimes overlook the process by which God sanctifies us. As we confess our sinfulness, we then convince ourselves that life with Christ will be an upward trending line of increasingly good performance that eventually results in perfection. Having begun by the Spirit, we’re pretty convinced we can continue in our own strength. But insofar as this approach to discipleship denies our humanity, we will struggle to live with our imperfection. As a counselor told me recently, “You’re not an angel, Hannah. You’re a human being.”

Notice how the appeal to Jesus as “coming to redeem and restore was lost” gets directly tied to the “we” who look forward and the “we” who will be made perfect once again. Therefore, as “we” confess, “we” convince oruselves, finally resulting in this point of observation:

“In this way, sanctification requires that we leave behind plastic ways of being and embrace our God-given humanity, flawed as it is. It requires that we move from idealized forms to the complexity of embodied lives. It requires that we leave Barbie Land.”

So here is the issue I have with all of this. It sells the Gospel as the proclamation that “we” are saved. That existence is about “us” being sanctified. That the process is about a fall being used to bring us to eventual perfection. It then frames the entire existential question that it notes in the film within a personal crisis of sin and perfection. The problem of a world that is not right or not as it should be, meaning a world with sin and death, is explicity defined as a problem with us that needs God’s forgiveness in order to be solved. The world that we percieve outside of ourelves becomes an afterthought. At best any concern for the world becomes part of our own sanctification. We become the primary point of this story of existence.

This is, of course, made all the more problematic when it attaches original sin to an Augustiinian point of perspective on the world. Here any mention of the fall becomes subtly swept up into subsequent appeals to God’s sovereignty. The fall becomes the divinely orchestrated means of our sanctification. It becomes the necessary proocess through which God brings me to perfection. All nods to a cursed reality or a cursed existence become merely a means to establishing the creator-created distinction rather than a reality that exists in opposition to God’s good creatiion.

All of this is a very common way of telling the Christian story, of course. But I think it misses the point of the story. In its rush to make the story of salvation about us and our salvation it quickly bypasses the necessary foundation for which to make sense of the problem salvation actually addresses. Existence is not us and our imperfections, even if there are grains of truth in those observations. Rather, we exist in an imperfect reality. A world with Sin and Death is not reflective of God’s good creation or Divine directive. It exists, necessarily, in opposition to God’s good creation and Divine directive. If we lose sight of this we lose all basis for speaking to the person and work of Jesus as accomplishing a victory over the opposition. If we lose sight of this we lose all basis for speaking to what is good and what is evil in this world. When it comes to speaking to an “embodied existence” in a cursed reality, we lose all sense of what precisely is being redeemed and restored.

Now here is what I think the article teases out that is helpful. I think one of the dangers inherent to the kind of story Gerwig is telling is that it uses relgiious imagery and language to etablish a basis for morality, but then uses that to reinforce an appeal towards living rightly in a materialist world. If Gerwig rightly locates the crisis of the enlightenments appeal to an undefined point of perfection and its culturallly rooted expressions, she also is wise to locate a necessary pushback to these perfections in a rejection of necessary “idealism”. But herein lies the problem. Can we truly reject idealism in a world that is admittedly not as it should be? If the world is indeed moving forward to something, what is that something? Where is it heading? If not to perfection, then where? These questions get to the heart of the crisis inherent to the enlightnment era,, and it is why idealism is both inevitable and also a very real problem when it comes to wrestling with the larger question of “existence”.

Gerwig ultimately takes the oft paved road around these questions rather than facing them head on. She romanticizes the same “fallenness” she presents as the problem. She skirts around notiions of becoming and tries to root the idea of being within the confines of a life lived between 0 and 100. If ideas live forever, existence is meant to die. The sentiment sounds nice on paper, but even a minutia of thought can betray the sentimment as muddled and nonsensicle. Death is made into a god rather than existing in opposition to life. It assumes that life can only be valuable in a world where death exists, and yet it also wants to say that death is at the root of the existential problem.

Death here is more than simple non-existence. Death speaks far more broadly to its primary expressions in this world- suffering and decay. And ironically, the materilastic worldview inherent in Barbie is not that different than the religious point of perspective it is subtly critiquing. The ultimate point of existence is the self and its salvation. Now, to be fair, I think Gerwig has written a story that is intelligent enough to breathe some necessary nuance into the equation. This is both the stories strength and weakness, as it finds itself wrestling with these big ideas and struggling to bring it all together into a fully coherent portrait of existence and its inerhent struggles. And I think those nuances are trying to cut through the noise of dangerous forms of idealism to locate some semblance of togetherness. But I do think she falls prey to some of the trappings of the worldview that ultimately underlies the story. What she glosses over is the fact that simply romanticizing death and its primary expressions (suffering and decay) does not actually do away with the existential crisis. In fact, it could be said that it ignores it in favor of simply living a life detached from any coherent and definable trajectory, at least at first glance. If she rightly notes that the world we exist in, the same world in which we locate our own imperfections, is something that requires “embodied” living, she misses how it is that we become free to emoby this existence. I am “me” might cut through the noise of our messy and often harmful cultural constructs, but if being “me” becomes my motivation for living in a not right world it becomes easy to simply see suffering and death as necessary to it and our overcoming of such as our measure of success. It simply replaces God with existence as the author of suffering and death, and further yet applies this to an undefined trajectory and unexpressed idealism that appears to be deconstructed but ultimately still remains. It limits our perspective of existence to the here and now while allowing us to pretend that the sentiment “ideas are foreever” somehow justifies this reality as it is. That might afford us motivation to get out of bed and face the struggles while turning them into opportunity, but it doesn’t have the necessary foundation to actually contend for the plasticized illusions that are ultimately driving it.

If my issues with the Christian story presented in this article stem from its message of me as the problem and my potential sanctification as the solution, the worldview that we find in Barbie is every bit as selective in that sanctifiying force. It unifies us around “original sin” by breaking down the illusions of our perfections but then anchors the ultimate goal in my story of overcoming, a story that is completely dependent on the luck of the draw and the harsh nature of a reality that hinges our success as humans on an endless list of external factors. If an Augustinian perspective has a very real penchant of celebrating ones election to that promised sanctification, in Barbieland it depends on being born in the right place and with the right abilities to overcome realities struggles. Unfortunately this “reality” has a way of reminding the many of where they sit on both sides of this forward moving story. Motivation to those who won the luck of the draw. Potential defeatism to the rest. And what is most telling about this is that in its rejection of idealism it quietly sneaks idealism back into the picture as the necessary driving force of a “succesful life” lived between 0-100.

Link to Christianity Today Article