It’s 2019. Which means it’s time to look back at the year that was and the films that were with top lists, notes and stats and more.

Here are the stats that I weighed my lists against:
Total number of films that I saw which were released in 2018: 130
Total number of films I saw that were released in 2017: 33
Total number of first time watches I saw that were released in any other year: 13

My Top 10 First Time Watches of 2017 or earlier ranked:
10. Spotlight
9. Marshall
8. Molly’s Game
7. American Made
6. Breathe
5. Your Name
4. The Breadwinner
3. Straight Outa Compton
2. Secret of Kells
1. Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.

My Top Films Which Were Released in 2018:
Numbers 20-11:
20. The Grinch
19. Three Identical Strangers
18. Leave No Trace
17. The Old Man and the Gun
16. Won’t You Be My Neighbor
15. The Sisters Brothers
14. Beautiful Boy
13. Mary Poppins
12. Aquaman
11. Green Book

Numbers 10-1:
10. Ready Player One
9. Can You Ever Forgive Me
8. BlacKKKlansman
7. Isle of Dogs
6. Paddington 2
5. First Man
4. Blindspotting
3. Tully
2. Avengers: Infinity War
1. The Rider

Here is my link to my complete list of films ranked:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/a-ranked-list-of-the-films-i-saw-in-2018/

Here is a link to a piece I did on the Rider which explains the impact it had on me and why it made my #1 spot. In my next blog when I deal with 2018 on a thematic level I will get a bit more into why it moved from where it was into my number one spot following a good deal of reflection.
https://findingmeatfortysite.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/chloe-zhaos-the-rider-and-a-necessary-grace/

My Most Anticipated List of 2018 (compiled last December) and How They Fared:
Here was my list based on my top 12 Most Anticipated:

1. Paddington 2
2. Annihilation
3. First Man
4. Isle of Dogs
5. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
6. Ready Player One
7. The Sisters-Brothers
8. A Wrinkle in Time
9. Bilal: A new Kind of Hero
10. Please Stand By
11. A Quiet Place
12. The Long Dumb Road

SOME POINTS OF INTEREST FROM MY JOURNEY IN FILM OVER THIS PAST YEAR:
With the exception of the bottom five films on my ranked list, all the movies that got three stars or more on my list are films that I enjoyed, touched me and/or have an appreciation for. The way my personal filtering system works means I have a fairly good system for knowing when a film absolutely will not work for me and when it might. Which simply means in a given year I don’t tend to see very many of what I would label “bad” films, subjectively speaking of course, and where I do they tend to be random viewings on a streaming service here or there.

With that in mind, here are some other categories/thoughts/points of interest from my personal list of films overall:

It was the year of…
1. Ethan Hawke
Following his compelling performance in First Reformed, Hawke continued to impress me this year in one of my favorite romantic comedy dramas, Juliet, Naked and my much anticipated Blaze. It’s a wait and see for any awards consideration, but Hawke definitely left his mark on 2018 when it comes to the films I engaged with in 2018.

2. John C. Reilly 
The Sisters Brothers was a powerful and oddly revisionist (yet not revisionist) western that not only was one of Reilly’s most exceptional performances, but celebrated one of the most powerful and most compelling cinematic endings I’ve seen in a long while. Meanwhile, Reilly was also hard at work giving life to one of the most genius and creative movie scripts of 2018 through his voice work in Wreck it Ralph, while also getting into serious character acting mode and awards consideration with the much anticipated and still to be released Stan and Ollie.

3. Hailee Steinfeld
The talented actress brought new life to the Transformers franchise, helping to shift it in a slightly fresh and decidedly more emotional direction. She was one of my favorite performances to watch on screen this year, and I am still marveling at how she took her raw talent and absolutely dominated the Blockbuster format. She showed us all how it is done. Couple that with her part in the crowd pleasing Into the Spiderverse and she is no doubt at the top of 2018 conversations.

4. Movies about systemic racism and how to heal it
Blindspotting absolutey floored me. BlacKKKlansman absolutely compelled me. Black Panther left me in awe. Greenbook inspired me. The Hate U Give broke me.

What do all of these films share in common? Setting racism in perspective by setting it into the context of relationships that reach across the lines of black and white by asking us to walk a mile in another persons shoes, in the case of each of these films those shoes being the ongoing and persistent struggle of African Americans in a Country where systemic racism absolutely still exists. If these films can add something to the conversation and push us as a society forward towards even a glimpse of what that means for today and where our responsibility lies “collectively” for helping to heal the divide, it could be an absolutely amazing thing.

5. The theater, Big Blockbusters and Independent films
Sometimes the conversation around theater gets confused, but lets be upfront and sure about this- the theater is not dead. In fact, it is breaking records. People still go to the movies when there is something they feel is worth going for. And according to the Box Office there was plenty, both big (Infinity War, Black Panther, Aquaman) and small (A Quiet Place, Eight Grade, Won’t You Be My Neighbour) that made 2018 a stellar year to get out and participate.

The most recognizable theme that stood out for me was…
Perpsective. The loss of it and how to gain it

Films in the conversation for most Underrated/Underseen:
1. Paul, The Apostle (powerful depiction of Paul from the perspective of the end of his life, the time period we probably no least about but that felt incredibly fitting for the cinematic experience).

2. Bilal (The highest rated film in this category, this was a powerful animated film that was not unlike Prince of Egypt in its raw depiction of faith and God and the story of God’s revelation across the lines of our mono-theistic religions. A truly Biblical epic with incredible visual sequences that left me broken, hopeful and inspired. I describe it as Jewish Storytelling that deals with an important figure and narrative in the Muslim Tradition in a way that sheds wonderful light on the shared Judeo-Christian imagery of light and dark, slave and free)

3. Welcome to Marwen (this years The Book of Henry for me, in that it is an original film that tries to do some original things and was desperately and sadly overlooked. One of Carrel’s best performances, and if this film did anything it made me think long after it was over.

4. Mortal Engines (It is sadly dead in the water before it even had a chance to find some legs, but I hold a real affection for this style of film making and thought they did a wonderful job at adapting one of my favorite  books. It’s big, and although the YA material doesn’t rise to the same cinematic levels as the visuals, the story beats were there and the potential I thought could have carried it forward into a bright future, if only people had gotten out to see it).

5. Wrinkle in Time (I have a deep affection for the book, and while many derided this film, I feel it got the short end of the stick. Yes, it’s a bit muddied as a film, but the parts that they needed to get right and where the film could have accentuated, particularly the darker moments, I feel like it does really well with. And the complex message of the book I felt arrived intact, which for me said a lot).

Honorable Mentions: My most intriguing match up/battle of the year- Kin and Alpha. Both underappreciated films, with Kin boasting a wonderfully quiet sci- fi story and Alpha a special experience I got to share with my son whom really loves and has a fascination with wolves. Not only were they both visually wonderful, but they stuck with me emotionally

Favorite IMAX or Big Screen Experiences:
First Man (when it breaks open at the end for that final sequence it is unlike anything I have seen before)
Ready Player One (undeniably a visual accomplishment)
Mission Impossible: Fallout (this is what the big screen is made for.

Favorite Horror Film:
The Little Stranger
In a year where Hereditary ruled the roost (and rightly so), it is this small, unassuming story that captured me the most.

Favorite Comedy:
The Death of Stalin
Honorable Mention: Game Night

Most Enjoyable Viewing Experience:
Game Night (when a comedy hits with a crowded theater, there is seriously nothing like it.
Honorable Mentions: Christopher Robin (I had the special experience of seeing this with a group of young kids who were absolutely mesmerized by the characters and the story. So much so that their verbal participation broke out into claps and cheers at the end. It brought a real smile to my face and made an important figure from my childhood a truly special experience) and The Mule (My adenture towards seeing this film on a particular afternoon is a longer story involving a few different persons and strangers, but my experience in the film is what stands out here, as I had a chance to talk with an older couple who had never been to the theater in over 15 years. Something about Eastwood inspired them to come out, and they were confused about the process and in the wrong seats (my seat), but that fact allowed me to move over and chat with them about why I love the theater. They were quite amazed that the showing was sold out as they felt no one went to the movies anymore. Afterwards I think they were inspired enough to come back the next week to see Vice. That brought a smile to my face).

Movie I’m most hopeful earns a place in awards season conversation
The Rider (Don’t count it out. There’s a real chance it could gain momentum in some of the serious categories, and deservedly so. My hope that in some fantastic world it could earn a Best Picture nom might still be far fetched but not out of the question.
Honorable Mention: BlacKKKlansman (I predicted this one would gain steam in the awards race and on my personal list, and that appears to the case. I am seriously behind this one making a good run)

MY WISHLIST OF FILMS I STILL NEED TO SEE FROM 2018 THAT COULD CRACK MY TOP LIST

1. Stan and Ollie
2. Free Solo
3. Minding the Gap
4. If Beale Street Could Talk
5. Shoplifters
6. Burning
7. The Front Runner
8. Madeline’s Madeline
9. Blaze
10. Destroyer
11. Vox Lux
12. Capharnaum
13. A Private War
14. American Animals
15. At Eternity’s Gate

Many of you know I am a bit of a cinephile. Yep, it’s true. I love film.

What you might not know is that my first love happens to be reading. But over the years I have grown to love the visual arts more and more. Whereas literary form is an art form that works on a couple levels – literary style and prose, the diversity and range of storytelling and storytelling techniques in film is like no other art form that exists. There are so many working parts that it makes these stories not only accessible across sensibilities and interests and platforms (typically running at a couple hours of investment), but also ripe for discussion. You can appreciate the prose of a script or the expertise and precision of the cinematography. You can marvel at performances or indulge in the art of the score and song. You can appreciate the effects or be interested in the editing.

In truth, I like to refer in artistic terms to reading as my life and film as my hobby- a hobby of interest and wonder and investment and learning and collecting.

A Renewed Investment In My Hobby
A few years ago I joined a few online film communities as an effort to help compliment and foster this hobby. I also joined something called Letterboxd, a wonderful social tool that helps you log films and easily follow stats and ratings and trends in your viewing habits, while of course also allowing you to share in this with friends and fellow users. I noted earlier this year after looking through the stats of how many films I watch in a given year a very real correlation between joining these online communities and this Letterboxd site and a significant rise in the number of films I see in a given year. Which is super exciting to me, not because of the numbers (as we like to say in the online communities, it is not a competition), but because it means this investment is paying off. I am finding that I have never held a deeper love for the art of film, nor have I been as deeply connected to it, something that has been sticking with me as I engage in my annual tradition of poring over my year in film and considering end of the year lists, thoughts and most anticipated.

Just for my personal record, here is a resolutions list for my film watching in 2019 that I committed to in one of those online film groups:
1. Rewatch Del Toro’s entire filmography (my favorite Director) and do a blog piece on what his work means to me. This also coincides with reading the book he released with his touring art exhibit a few years back.

2. Get a start on my idea to own my top five films of the last 20 years in physical copy.

3. Increase the support I give to my local art house (Cinemateque) and/or other local art houses (like The Fargo Theater) which has been very rewarding this year. My goal is to see a few more films in that venue- 6 was my number, and perhaps finally become a member.

Putting Together My Personal Tops Lists
It has typically been a tradition for me to wait until the end of January, or even February to do this, as many films released in a year often don’t see wide release until after the New Year, and I have found it typically takes a month to check off the films I feel I need to see in order to complete my list.
That and typically the Oscar season brings with it an opportunity to catch up on some of those films through re-releases, which also gives me the chance to weigh in on both my top lists and the awards season at the same time.

THE FILMS OF 2018: What I watched, what I loved and what I’m looking forward to
So here is what I would like to do this year. I would like to weigh in with these three things:
1. In Part One look at my top list as it stands now for films released in 2018, first time watches in 2018 that were released in any year prior to 2018, a look back at how well my most anticipated of 2018 list actually fared in the end, and my top wish list for films I still need to see and which I fully expect to present a challenge.

2. In Part 2, my reflections on my year in film from a personal and thematic perspective.

3. In Part 3, my most anticipated films of 2019

And then later in my annual Oscar blog post I will update my 2018 list with 2018 films that I manage to catch up with along the awards season way.

And as always, if you are reading this and a fellow film lover, feel free to weigh in with your favorites, thoughts and anticipations on my facebook page, personal message or here. I always love hearing about and discussing film with others. And 2018 has been another pretty stellar year in film if you ask me.

Cheers to another year gone by and the New Year ahead. May it bring with it plenty more cinematic love and experiences and meaning and excitement.

I confess that life has turned me into something of a cynic.

I haven’t always been this cynical. In fact, it is only recently that I even came to recognize myself as a cynic. Truth be told it is an odd label for me to accept because it is not at all what people used to see me as. Especially when it comes to the Christmas season. But I’ve come to realize I’ve learned how to hide it well. Or at the very least was once more adept at knowing how to battle back against it. Looking back at my younger years, i funneled my struggles with crippling fear and anxiety and depression into a love of story. An embrace of story. Telling stories, reading stories and watching stories. Imagination helped to remind me that there was more to this life than what I was experiencing in the here and now, and fostered a sense of hope that could see beyond my struggles.

But life has a way of unsettling all of that stuff that is lying underneath the surface. The stuff we don’t always acknowledge. The stuff we aren’t always aware of- my questions, my fears, my hurts, my struggles, my inability to change or break certain cycles. All of this has creeped to the surface in recent years, beginning with a personal crisis of faith. And the more unsettled it all becomes the more power it seems to have to turn me into a perpetual cynic of all things big and small.

The Cynical Cycle
And when it comes to that struggle, I have found that the more cynical I become the more I tend to replace imagination with what I perceive as realism. The truth, the facts of the matter, the answers, become the most important thing when it comes to navigating this life. The problem is, as a few significant players in my life once said when they walked away from their once imagined faith, knowing what I know now it is impossible to go back, and the more I feel I know the more disillusioned I seem to become.

And then I wondered, what happens when this starts to move from my perception of what’s right in front of me to the way I view the whole of life? I become cynical. And then more cynical. And the cycle repeats itself. And grows. And grows. And the life I once knew, that life of child like wonder that I used to hold so near and dear. That life where imagination was a possible and cherished part of my reality. Where story could remind me that life is not simply what my grown up mind believes it to be. It gets more and more distant, reminding me that this is a time long gone, a time I cannot to back to knowing what I know now.

But go back to what? That childlike wonder? That pure sense of abandonment I once felt at marveling in the mystery of the small things? Of my ability to imagine God and the unknown and the unseen? None of this fits in a cynical worldview where it is built on a think first and feel second outlook. But I am learning something important about myself as I think through this stuff in 2018. Looking back over some of my previous Christmas traditions and experiences, I am realizing that this is precisely why Christmas has been so important for me over the years. I have always been prone to cynicism. I faced darkness at a young age and that darkness became familiar to me. Christmas was always the one time of year that I seemed to be able to let some of that stuff go and embrace the idea that life was more than I could see on the surface. And the older I got the more important it became to enter into this in an almost liturgical fashion. It reminded me that maybe it wasnt all gone. That some of that imaginative and hopeful process still remained.

Unfortunately the older I got the more life also seemed to steal from Christmas at the same time. So rediscovering this year after year became harder and harder to do.

The Green Book Controversy
I have said in many circles that the new film Green Book has quickly become one of my new favorite holiday films. I had been thinking about writing a piece on it for a while as it was one of those films this past year that helped me to return to that childlike joy I once cherished and that seemed so significantly lost to me.

But as time went on the more life started to push back on my experience of this film, as it does with so many things. Controversy emerged. Writers and think pieces began to question the films “truthfulness” and wonder whether its message of hope was disguising the fact that we still have a very real problem with racism. One writer went so far as to label it a “magic act”. A good one, but nevertheless a feel good delusion that becomes less meaningful once you recognize how the trick is done, let alone dangerous for the degree of manipulation it fosters.

You can see the core of the controversy with a simple google search online. But to summarize the main points of the controversy here:

1. Some have deemed it a picture of a “white savior”, depicting Dr. Shirley as estranged from his family (a fallacy his family says is absolutely not true) and Tony (the white man) as the one who gives him a place to belong and to rediscover who he is as a black man.

2. The story is being told by Tony Vallelonga’s son (Nick) and thus largely from the white man’s perspective. The family has since spoken out calling it a “symphony of lies” that gets very little about Dr. Shirley right.

3. The film tells the story of two sides coming together in hopeful reconciliation, seeing the solution in relationship with one another while, according to some, largely ignoring the fact that racism is a problem that still exists.

4. In making the movie the filmmakers failed to track down and speak to members of Dr. Shirley’s family (Mahershala has since apologized for his failure to do so, which was largely because he was unaware they existed or were free to approach).

For what its worth, this is a good article on Dr. Shirley that highlights an upcoming documentary that will share his story in a more faithful light:
https://shadowandact.com/the-real-donald-shirley-green-book-hollywood-swallowed-whole
And on the side of Tony Lip, here are some of the letters on which the movie was based:
https://www.thewrap.com/green-book-special-read-tony-lips-real-letters-to-his-wife-from-the-road/

Navigating The Complicated Landscape
The big question here for me is, what does one do with a film like this when it is mired in such a complicated landscape? How do I reconcile my experience of the film with knowing what I know about the film today?

This is largely the same question that fuels my cynicism in life. Knowing what I know now, how do I reconcile this complicated landscape with my ability to hold a childlike wonder. And can I even trust life enough to allow myself the freedom to enter into the experience of it?

Spoiler alert: I haven’t figured this out yet.

The Problem of Perspective
If Green Book taught me anything it is that so much of life comes down to a problem of perspective. And while gaining perspective is the thing that stole my ability to experience this film as I initially did, perspective is also the thing that can allow me to reengage it.

This is especially true as I do my best to willingly bring my own perspective to the table.

Perspective. It’s a dangerous idea.

Told from the perspective of Tony Lip, Green Book largely tells the story of his experience of their time together. For as much as many think-pieces and critics desired to display a measured response, more often than not I found them making definitive statements that were not open to challenge on why Green Book was a dangerous and flawed film in a world where racism definitely still exists, and how this film is saying something false about that reality. What they tend to gloss over though is that the reality of reading through much of the controversy actually shows that there is a good deal of uncertainty and confusion that still remains when it comes to this film. There are compelling gaps in the story on both sides, both in the story that was told and the story Dr. Shirley’s family believes they failed to tell.

And as a matter of perspective, as all film is, what Green Book set out to do was fill in those from one particular perspective- Tony Lips. But here is what is important. Just because it is telling his side of the story shouldn’t relegate this to black or white terms. What matters most is what this perspective was trying to do- which is to say something about their relationship.

The problem as I understand it is that far too often perspective tends to get equated with knowledge and absolutes, or even worse “truth”. If they failed to tell the perspective of Dr. Shirley, many critics and think pieces would have you think that the perspective they did share was then unequivocally false. Which is not truth. What gives this film value and what was clearly valuable to those who participated in telling it (from Tony’s letters and his witness) was the relationship that changed their singular perspective. This is what drives the film. This is what lies at the heart of the story the film is looking to tell. Not a white perspective or a black perspective, but a human one.

Here’s what really matters in Green Book. From his perspective Tony was racist, and this relationship with Dr. Shirley challenged his racist thoughts. It broadened his perspective. It opened his eyes to how big and broad and diverse our Country really is. And it helped him rediscover love above all. This is what Tony’s family observed. That is what this film depicts. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And this is a line that you can draw through may of the particular depictions in this film, even if the film (as every film does) takes a bit of narrative freedom in building the stories structure (the timeline is different for example). Take Tony’s perspective on Dr. Shirley’s estrangement from his family for example. It is not that this was necessarily true, and it is important to gain perspective on this from Dr. Shirley’s family. But what is clear is that this was the perspective Tony had from his relationship with Dr. Shirley. This is also something we have evidence of, and this is also important.

And this is always important when it comes to a matter of perspective.

Further Thoughts From My Perspective
The way this film lifted me up, gave me hope and caused me to cheer is important. The way it imagined a world in which the problem of racism could be approached in relationship with one another is important. The way it challenged me to reach inside and examine my own racial tendencies, whatever those may be, is important. But it is important as a matter of perspective, and if anything can break the cycle of cynicism that exists within me it is the idea of gaining perspective.

Christmas as a Matter of Perspective 
This raises an interesting question in terms of my love for the season of Christmas. If Christmas is a season that lifts me up, gives me hope, causes me to cheer. If Christmas imagines a world in which the problem of poverty and struggle and distance and apathy and depression can be approached and dealt with in the context of relationship, what does this do with those of us who’s experience is largely not this? Those who live in poverty, who continue to struggle, who remain distant and apathetic and continue to wrestle with depression… those who are stuck in cycles of perpetuated cynicism.

And from a specifically religious perspective, what does it mean to imagine a world in which the great community of the children of God is being called to live in a hopeful expectation that there is freedom from these things. Do we approach this like Green Book and simply shut the book altogether when it our knowledge and our experience don’t match up? Do we remain skeptical about the experiences that Christmas can bring as a season of hope and reimagining because it does not measure up with the truth of our reality? Of our world?

This is what has fed my cynicism for many years. Again, that old adage that says knowing what I know now I can’t go back. It’s one I have heard too many times over. And it is one that consistently challenges my ability to embrace the Christmas season as I once did. In fact, this is true about my ability to embrace life as a whole.

Full confession here. I have written about my struggle with suicide elsewhere in this space. Far more than that struggle (I have come to discover on my own journey that for many of us who have struggled with suicidal thoughts, the real issue is not finding a reason to live… we know there are reasons, but it is fighting against that feeling that we don’t have the courage to die and the guilt we feel for feeling that. That’s what makes many of us feel most stuck) is the ongoing struggle with apathy. This is what life breeds when we have no idea what to do with life itself.

The Model of Apathy and Life’s Deconstruction
I would say that one of my biggest challenges is that this world models this apathy for me on a daily basis. It is insistent on telling me every day that the most important thing is to know that there is a problem, and that any experiences that speak into this problem must be primarily questioned and scrutinized and broken apart before we do anything with it. In my own narrow perspective of this world’s model, it has consistently deconstructed nearly every corner of my life, including religiously, politically, socially, experientially. In a world that appears at once addicted to truth and rational thought and the need for answers, there is very little that the darker corners of our reality does not touch and does not counter.

The problem is that the world, generally speaking, is not very good when it comes to giving us something in its place, in the absence of this childlike wonder. It is not very good at dealing with the idea of hope, of knowing how to live with different perspectives that don’t always reflect our own. It is not very good at being willing to shelf one notion of truth for the idea of actually living “in” relationship where perspective has a chance to grow and challenge our understanding. If I take Christmas as an example, there exists this perpetual rift between those who hate it and those who love it, and what often doesn’t get addressed is the gap inbetween. The places where those perspectives live and breathe and develop. And when that gap dosen’t get addressed it tends to get demonized and/or written off and ignored.

But what about those of us who live in that gap? What does that do with us?

Minding The Gap
What is my gap? My gap is that who I used to be doesn’t seem to belong anymore with who I am today. My childlike wonder is often a fleeting memory, something I have to wrestle to hold onto. My cynicism is often all I can see in the here and now. And yet, again from the confines of my narrow perspective, what I know is that cynicism never brings with it the answers it promised me when I allowed it to deconstruct my world. It didn’t free me. In fact it has slowly revealed itself as a sickness, a fight against my ability to actually embrace other perspectives and see this world more clearly.

The truth is, if I may use that word, is that I need hope. The same hope that Green Book dares to imagine. And Christmas is a place and time where I always used to find it. Hope that wonder still exists in the struggle. Hope that those gaps don’t need to simply represent a life of loneliness and struggle and apathy and depression. Hope that I can still experience something good in the midst of the messiness of life, and that these good experiences can grow my perspective and raise my sights to the promise that all of this is being reconstructed into something new and reborn. If Christmas is ultimately about opening my eyes to the concept of waiting and anticipating this growth, this revelatory break in my singular reality and struggle, these moments where it does break through to me are the miracles worth waiting for. This is what hopefulness looks like, the freedom to experience life and moments and perspectives for what they are- stories worth sharing and stories worth telling and stories worth hearing.

And so this Christmas season I carry my experience of Green Book forward as I look forward to Dr. Shirley’s upcoming documentary. A chance to see one perspective and gain another. My prayer is for a Christmas miracle. Not simply for myself, but for anyone who feels stuck in that gap. And as I do, my eyes remain open to the idea that miracles still happen. That God is somehow in someway still with us. Still with me. That a light is shining in the midst of these growing perspectives.

We wrote another annual adoption update. Late in coming but you can use this link to find it on our official adoption blog.

https://adoptingukraine.blogspot.com/2018/12/another-yearly-adoption-update-looking.html

INTRODUCTION
Back in July, Jen and I had been given the opportunity to drive a group of students down to Knoxville for the Covenant denomination wide (North America) youth conference. Thousands of students from across North America all coming together for a single purpose.

And when you ask me to drive a group of students down to Knoxville you will end up stopping at every possible cheesy road side attraction I can find.

I have a picture of this with me and the students. You can note me looking like I am in Heaven (come on, it’s a real life Willy Wonka inside), while the kids have a look that says, why did I get in the car with this guy? By the time we made it to Col. Sanders birthplace and the original KFC restaurant, the students were, how can you say… miserable.

On the flip side, this is what happens when Jen is asked to drive a group of students down to Knoxville.

Actually, this is what happens after we drop the students off and we made a detour to the Smokey Mountains and Nashville while we waited to pick them up.

• The Jack Daniels Process
  This was actually a really interesting tour. In fact, when we walked out of the tour the first thing Jen said to me was, that would make a great sermon illustration. And so here we are.By far the most interesting thing about the tour was seeing the process of how they make Jack Daniel. To make Jack Daniel (Jack Daniels is the Distillery, Jack “Daniel” is the drink… they were very clear about this distinction) they drip the Bourbon through, very slowly, ten feet of packed, sugar maple charcoal (this is called the mellowing process) and then put it into charred oak barrels for what they describe as the maturing process. This maturing process is defined by elevation. Barrels on the lower level get a certain label for a certain taste. Barrels on the higher level get another label for another particular taste.But what is most important to note, and what they emphasize on this tour is, what makes it Jack Daniel is this slow drip process. This is what sets it apart from the Kentucky Bourbon on one side and the Mountain Moonshine on the other.
• The Definition of Transformation and the Slow Drip Process of the Spirit’s work
  Earlier on in this series I decided to look up the definition to transformation just to help me make sense of some of these stories of transformation we have been working through at our Church, namely how to make sense of those stories when my own life couldn’t appear to be further from that truth. Looking up the definition I found that it can be an instantaneous act or a process, a subtle or dramatic change, present or past tense. If it was a choose your own adventure, I would choose the instantaneous, the dramatic, the past tense. Or at least want to peek a few pages ahead to see if the decision and choice I am making now is leading to a dead end or my impending death.Far more often though transformation appears as the slow drip process of the spirits work in our everyday life. A process that is bringing us to maturity, but one that takes a life time, and if I am fully honest, that can be frustrating even on my best days. Because I want to see the difference in the here and now.
• The Apostle Paul and the Slow Drip Process
  And then we come to the story of the Apostle Paul’s transformation, which is the story I will be looking at here. Perhaps the most recognizable, most dramatic, most instantaneous example of transformation that we find in scripture. Or at least that’s what I carried into his story. Rather, what I found as I dug into his story is that he was a man who shared a little bit more of my struggle than I realized. He wrestled with the idea of this slow drip process over the course of his life. He questioned what God was doing in his story and in the story of his people. He refers to an ambiguous thorn in his side, which however you choose to interpret it is something that he carried with him everywhere he went. He found himself wondering whether everything he was doing was worth the effort. Most significantly he wondered whether God could overlook his past and actually make something of his weakness, weaknesses that haunted him with the confessional question “why do I do the things I do not want to do.” And yet, this idea of being transformed as a “slow drip process” became the centerpiece of his ministry, a full expression of his reigning hope as we witness him struggling to work through all of this tension in his writings.

  And it really is a privilege and a wonder that we can watch Paul being transformed and changed and matured through his writings over time. On this note, reengaging Paul’s story was timely for me. When I was asked to preach on Paul I had actually just started N.T. Wright’s (a spiritual hero of mine) new book, Paul: A Biography. So this welcome intersection seemed like a real opportunity to remain intentionally aware of what God needed to teach me or show me through Paul’s story. And my hope and prayer is that these learnings, as best as I can speak to them, will resonate with you as well.

• Paul’s Story as Context- 3 Things He Taught Me About Transformation
  Wright suggests that to understand Paul we must take him in context: what we know of him before and after the event in question in order to see what transformation is doing in his present. And just as a disclosure, there is much scholarly debate to be had on which writings are actually Paul’s and which are not, and which can shed light on his personal story. I hold to the idea that some scholars do that Paul wrote all of his letters and wrote none of them at the same time. That is, regardless of how close or distant Paul is to the actual penning of these letters, behind all of it is the voice and influence and distinct ministry of Paul’s message, journey and story. So it is no more problematic to me to see his story in something as uncontested as Romans than it is to see him in something a bit more contested as Ephesians.

  SOME REFERENCES:
  And before I get to that, a brief mention of some books I found helpful for exploring his context over the course of my journey, both in previous study and in my reengagement:The Apostle, A Life of Paul by John PollockBackgrounds of Early Christianity by Everett FergusonPaul and Palestinian Judaism by E.P SandersPaul in Fresh Perspective by N.T. WrightClimax of the Covenant by N.T. WrightPaul: A Biography by N.T. WrightPaul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee by Alan F. Segal

  Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary by Harold W. Hochner
  The Writings of the New Testament by Luke Timothy Johnson
  Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey
  Cross Cultural Paul: Journeys to Others, Journeys to Ourselves by Charle H Cosgrove
  Romans by Thomas Schreiner

  Our Mother Saint Paul by Beverly Roberts Gaventa
  When in Romans by Beverly Roberts Gaventa

  Road from Damascus: The Impact of Paul’s Conversion on His Life, Thought, and Ministry by Richard Longenecker

• 3 things that this context taught me about what transformation is and how it works in our lives that I want to look at this morning:
  1. It begins with grace. It is grace that meets us where we are in that slow drip process. Galatians 1:15 But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called m by his grace…”And grace can come in any number of ways. Grace in the way of healing. Grace in the way of something in our lives that needs to change. Grace that we need to extend to others. Grace we need to extend to ourselves.

  2. Grace helps us to see things differently- in the context of God’s story Gal 1:15-16 … was pleased to reveal his Son to me…

  3. And in seeing things differently, in context, it then gives us the courage and strength we need to step out (or back out) into the world as transformed people, trusting that God is using our circumstance for something good. Gal 1:24… in order that I might preach him among the gentiles.

1. GRACE MEETS US WHERE WE ARE
Back to that trip to Knoxville/Nashville. The closer we got to the trip the more I began to recognize that something was going on in me. Perhaps an indication that the spirit was trying to do its transforming work. And I knew that I needed to engage it, figure it out.
So I prayed, I reflected, and I journaled before, during… there’s a lot of road between here and Knoxville/Nashville… and after. You can see those reflections in this blog space under my from Winnipeg to Nashville entries.

And what kept coming to mind was a conversation from my past. It was a conversation that defined my transition out of music, once my life long dream, and into youth ministry. At the time of this conversation I was right on the precipice of seeing my dream to play music full time become a reality, and right before the band I had sunk all my time and investment in ended up moving to Nashville and becoming a success I started to reevaluate why I was doing what I was doing. And what the spirit revealed to me at that time was the life of 5 youth whom I had the privilege of sharing life with as a stand in youth leader at our newly planted Church from 12 years old to now nearing graduation. And music was taking me away from some important milestones in their life. So I used this conversation as a way of expressing and enacting this transition towards stepping out of the band, I stayed behind while they made it to the city of my dreams, eventually went to school to get my Youth Leadership Degree and did Youth Pastoring for a number of years.

Until the last position I held went very wrong and very badly, leaving us (Jen and I) feeling stranded and defeated and destroyed.

What I had felt had been an obedience to living into the promise of God and his call on my life ended up feeling like complete abandonment with my confidence in that promise and call seriously shaken. I was in need of a dramatic, instantaneous transformation encounter.

At that time we entered Faith Covenant, which has been an important part our healing journey over the last five years. But what this trip was bringing out in me was two things: Rather than something dramatic or instantaneous, God had been at work in a slow drip process way as I began to look back on where I had come from and where I am now. And secondly, in the spirit of that process it seemed there was still more healing that needed to happen. Here I was driving a group of students (yes, I know I was just a chaperone) to the place and symbol of my once lifelong and now failed dream (Nashville). This was telling me there were more steps I needed to take towards being freed from that destruction and despair and, as I came to realize, heavy cynicism. And as I like to believe as I was working through the story of Paul, this is where grace found me. On the road to Nashville. The same grace that found Paul on the road to Damascus “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord”. A grace that seemed to be calling me to reengage that slow drip process for what it needed to do in my life, my context, here today. And it is Paul’s story, Paul’s context that has been helping me make some sense of what that grace might look like for the next step in my healing process.

The Conversion of Saul (Acts 9:1-19)

9 Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest ² and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. ³ Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. ⁴ He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” ⁵ He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. ⁶ But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” ⁷ The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. ⁸ Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. ⁹ For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

¹⁰ Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” ¹¹ The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, ¹² and he has seen in a vision^[a] a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” ¹³ But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; ¹⁴ and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” ¹⁵ But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; ¹⁶ I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” ¹⁷ So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul^[b] and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁸ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, ¹⁹ and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

This is what Grace does in Paul’s context- It reminds him (and us) that even when we can’t see where God is in our story (Lord, who are you?), He knows our story (Saul, Saul.. he calls him by name). It tells him that grace, and the transformed life that grace pushes us towards, is a gift. In Gal 1:11-16, Paul says, “For I would have you know that the Gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel, for I did not receive it from any man nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”

• Sharing from Paul on Remembrance Day
  This is the written form of a sermon I gave this past Remembrance day. Knowing that I was preaching on this day of remembering the stories and persons who gave their lives for our own freedom story here in Canada, I found myself thinking back to an old neighbor of ours. We often called him our very own Wilson from Home Improvement, as we would often find ourselves in our backyard gaining from his wisdom as we chatted through our chain link fence. As a retired war veteran (from injury), I remember him often reveling in the opportunity to share his stories from being overseas, not because he needed to be remembered as a hero, but because he cherished (and perhaps grieved) the opportunity to impart one of his most important learnings from his participation in that freedom story, which is that there are no winners in war. There is simply an awareness that things are not as they should be and a hope that some day things will be made whole again.This is what grace imparts to us. The present is messy. Frustrating. Incomplete. Rife with our (and the world’s) failures and fears and brokenness and struggle. And yet in grace we are offered hope that there is more to this present picture. That despite all our incomplete efforts to battle back or respond to the mess, in war and out of war, to find peace in the conflict, healing in the sickness, growth in the setbacks, a way out of the cycles that continue to bind us as a now modern society that looks much the same as it did in Paul’s day (issues of slavery, race, sex discrimination, fear of the other, hatefulness and violence), grace arrives as a gift, something that we can submit all of those things towards in our feelings of desperation.  As theologian Johann Peter Lange puts it, there is “no fall so deep that grace cannot descend to it and no height so lofty that grace cannot life the sinner to it.”

2. HELPS US TO SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY
And if transformation is a gift, it is primarily a gift of sight. For Paul, seeing begins with the mind, or this marriage of the mind and the heart that forms the Biblical (very Jewish) notion of belief. Not an intellectual exercise, but an exercise of spiritual knowing, the increased and imparted knowledge of who God is and who we are and the world. As Paul writes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…”

And if it begins with the mind it ends in this passage with discernment, seeing things differently, rightly- “… so that you may discern what is the will of God- what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Coming to see our story, our context, in fuller picture and clarity as a part of Gods story, of a part of what God is doing in our world still today.

• Blindness and Sight
  The blindness that we read of in Paul’s story forms the emphasis of the three accounts of Paul’s Damascus Road experience in Acts. This blindness highlights the idea that the others with Paul “did not see” what Paul could not see himself. Eventually we get this dramatic instance of the scales falling off of his eyes and Paul’s sight returning, a powerful symbol of that slow drip process of the spirit’s work in transforming our lives. And here’s the truth that Paul came to embrace- the scales fall off in order for Paul to see Jesus, and the Way of Jesus, not as a conversion from his Jewishness to Christianity (an important distinction to note here), but as a way of seeing how God’s story intersects with his own context. An expression of the sacred Temple-Torah story that has shaped Paul’s covenant promise and Resurrection hope of God with us. A reminder that Paul is a child of God loved and marked by God’s grace in a messy, difficult world.

  And here is what I think Paul can teach us about the process of allowing those scales to be peeled off of our own eyes. The blindness leading to sight. Our desperation, the inward struggle that our outward actions are often a symptom of, can either push us towards Jesus or away from Jesus as occupying that place in the center of the tension we have been talking about. The job of transformation is to reorient us back in His direction, to learn and relearn to embrace that existing tension and to allow Jesus to carry that tension for us in order to help us see the Way He desires us to move us in its midst towards the particular grace that we need. And in the context of the traditions of the fathers and the prophets that came before Paul, that anchor his tradition, to allow Paul (and us) to see what God is doing through Jesus in order to speak that sacred story that binds his zeal into a broken world. To breathe hope into the hopelessness.

  So here is a question for us. Where can grace offer us a change in perspective? Where do we need a reorientation in our lives?

Jesus allows Paul to see that transformation is not about everything suddenly going right or becoming perfect. It is about submitting our context- the messiness, the tension, the not rightness about it all- to Him and allowing Him to do something with it. To carry it for us. To this end, Wright offers an interesting note that the one thing Annanias does not give Paul when he is imparting God’s prophecy for Paul’s life, is the prophecy that he “must suffer for my sake”. That was something Paul needed to figure out on his own in the way only the slow drip process could teach him. It is something we are asked to learn in our lives as well as we embrace the slow drip process of the spirit’s work in the light of the Cross, the full expression of that slow drip process way of life.

• Seeing Differently
  And here is the great truth about seeing differently. We not only come to see differently (this is a mark of transformation), but Jesus frees us to participate in the process. No matter our baggage. No matter our past. No matter our frustrations and failures and weaknesses. And what is this process? Pastor and Theologian Greg Boyd puts it this way. Transformation is a process of “becoming who you already are.” And “the process of becoming who you already are in Christ is identical to the process of being healed from who you were.”

  This is the true freedom story. We are becoming who God already sees us to be. Forgiven, loved, sons and daughters of God. Which then frees us from having to fight and claw our way to become something other in order for God to see or respond to our story differently than we perceive it to be. This is the true beauty of the grace that meets us where we are. In our imperfect ways of seeing we are called to take one step forward into a fuller truth of who we are in Christ, and we do this while forever allowing the transformation process to push us towards trusting God with the rest. One step into grace, and one small step back into the world. And this is what met Paul exactly where he was on the road to Damascus in order to help him see and participate in this fuller truth by calling him to take one small step back out into the world as a transformed person. The sad truth is Paul never got to see what his ministry would become, the vast influence of his life on the wider story of God’s grace and story being made known to the world at large. But what he did come to see in his lifetime was Jesus and the difference Jesus made on how he learned to trust and live into God’s story. And that alone became enough to carry him through all of the tension.So here is another question for us this morning? What small steps can we take? Either towards grace or in response to that grace by stepping back into the world as grace filled people? And what is the rest that we need to learn to trust God with as we take that step? If Paul taught me anything, meditating on that is a way to stripping off the weight of those extremes and actually living towards freedom in a meaningful way.

3. The Courage and the Strength To Step Back Out Into the World

So if it begins with grace, and grace helps us to see things differently, more fully, the final truth of transformation that I found in Paul’s story is this. The movement of Paul’s transformation account is undeniably one that takes him back out into the world as a transformed person.
– The first is a 3rd person narrative that speaks to Paul’s circumstance. (Acts 9)
– The second is one that emphasize the Jewish foundation. (Acts 22)
– The third, ultimately shapes where Paul is headed as a transformed person- out to a world that needs God’s grace (Acts 26)

The placement of this transformation narrative also marks in Acts this natural movement from Athens to Rome and out to the world. And as this movement progressed, the multi-ethnic, globalized, diversified characteristic of Paul’s world became the context for his ongoing embrace of the process of transformation, both as a Jewish man (Saul) and a Roman citizen (Paul). And what shapes the movement of Paul’s ministry is a single truth to which all of Paul’s ministry efforts point to- love of God and love of others. This grace that meets Paul ultimately becomes an extension of God’s love for all, a promise of a creation restored.

And here’s the thing about this movement out into the world. The more steps we take out into the world as grace filled people learning to embrace the stuff that transformation desires to make more clear to us, the stronger our hope can become. Because this small step is what offers us that glimpse of forgiveness and love and healing that we need, not only in our lives but in the lives of others. And the wonderful truth of the Way of Jesus is that we get to participate not only in our own transformation, but in the transformation of others. And this participation builds a foundation. It plants markers for our journey. A place to start and restart from. A means of moving forward when the tension appears to be too much, spinning out of control. It is the promise that we are being transformed into the same image from “one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:15-18).”

CONCLUSION

• Coming Back to My Story
  In that place of desperation, of feeling stranded and defeated and destroyed, over the years God did give me glimpses of where God was using that story to show me His. This came in the form of letters from youth letting me the difference I had made simply by being where I was. In a big way it was this experience that paved the way for us to finally as a couple take that step towards adopting our now son of 17 years old.But one of the most distinct memories of that time was the glimpse God gave me of his grace after being asked to preach one last time in the final moments of everything falling apart. I don’t know why they asked me to preach when there was so much hurt and brokenness, but they did. And not knowing what to preach on I felt called to preach on Acts 4. In particular I focused on the prayer by Peter for confidence and boldness in the process of growing into transformed people of God living in the “tension” of that hurt and brokenness. The same prayer that paves the way for Gamaliel’s story and Annanias’ story and Paul’s story to start to emerge in chapters 5 and following. And at the end of that sermon I asked the Church to stand with me and for all of us to pray that together, in the hope that it would center us on the one who can heal that tension and protect us from falling into those extremes of despair or misplaced zeal. It was after I had preached that a member of the prayer team, whom had been on that team long before I arrived, shared with me that when she came on that team she had a vision of someone someday leading the Church in that specific prayer out of Acts 4, and that she had been praying for years towards that end. Apparently that was to be me.And that’s the thing about the foundation these small steps create. That example, and all of those examples above, are now meaningful places to restart from in seeing where the healing needs to come from. They are reminders that somehow and in someway God is still here, doing something with my life because He was doing something with my past. And that a small step, whatever that might be for me, can actually do far more than my expectations of this present reality. That is what the freedom story is. It is a hope that is not my own. A hope that stands much taller than just my own story, my own limited perspective.And if hope is a virtue, something that has to be practiced, if I may add this. We are entering into a season (Advent) that is the perfect illustration of this slow drip process. Advent is literally and spiritually and theologically about the function of waiting and anticipation. Of living with the tension and allowing Jesus to occupy the center. So as this season begins, this is a perfect opportunity to engage in the sort of discipline that Paul modeled himself, that I believe kept him open to seeing and hearing the grace of the spirit breathing into his own story.

Back to Acts 4 one final time. Here’s the thing about Peter’s prayer. At that time I considered it a prayer we needed to pray together as a community. Because transformation doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens together. That’s why it calls us to move out into the world. So in that spirit I would like to use this prayer now as a means of encouragement to embrace that slow drip process of transformation together, wherever grace finds you, and in whatever it is revealing to you. And to see it as a prayer of encouragement and courage and strength and confidence to take that small step back out into the world.

“And now Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

And when they prayed it says they were transformed.

Far more than monsters and ghosts or the joy of a well told horror story (which I admit, I am quite fond of), it is the “why” questions that seem far more threatening and scary to me. There is something about the uncertainty and fear of the unknown that tends to show itself in places I least expect and linger long after the lights have gone out.

Giving Thanks For Virtuous Idealism
Thanksgiving is an opportunity for our extended family to come together over food and conversation. Although we do live relatively close together, it is typically the nieces and nephews who are the most visible measure of another year gone by, arriving a little bit taller, a little more socially mature… a little more graduated than the year before.

And with graduation comes an increased awareness of those why questions. Like where should they go to school and what should they be taking in school and why (and how) will these decisions matter for their future. Our own son is merely a year and a half away from facing these same questions, something that is, if I am being honest, both exciting and extremely frightening for me as a parent.

For one particular family member this year, these why questions had led them to consider, given the irreversible impact they perceived human activity to be having on our environment, that the single most important human endeavor needs to be a renewed commitment to space exploration. Space is the only way future generations will have a chance to survive, and this was leading them to work through a decision to head into engineering in an effort to help towards this goal. A valiant and ambitious goal to be sure.

Damien Chazelle’s First Man
In a similar way, considering the importance of space in shaping the future of humanity, the much anticipated new film by Damien Chazelle (the director of Whiplash and La La Land) tells the story of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, and, in the larger context, the story of NASA and the complicated political nature of the space race.

The way Chazelle frames these two aspects of the film shapes the most interesting dynamic of what I think is an exceptional cinematic accomplishment. It is for movies like this that we go to the theaters. He takes the larger context and sees it through the lens of Armstrong’s personal story (it is based on his biography). And in doing so he affords an expansive, culturally aware, larger than life event a sense of intimacy and urgency by putting us in the chair with Armstrong, played to wonderfully restrained, cold, static affect by Gosling.

In effect, Chazelle is asking us in this film to consider, from this perspective, the question of whether the risk of this mission was truly worth the reward. It is a harrowing question given the vulnerability and sacrifice required to accomplish this mission.

A Spiritual Experience
It would be an understatement to suggest that something happened in my spirit as I was watching this film. To see a monumental moment of human achievement in the light of a tragic human story allowed me to see both the event and the person in a way I had never considered before. And the more I began to see of this story, the larger the why questions began to loom in my mind. Over the course of the film we watch as Armstrong deals with loss and grief by sinking himself into the mission and distancing himself from the pain, causing growing dissension in the family unit which Chazelle sets directly against the demands of the mission. The more Armstrong and others sacrifice for the sake of the mission, the further detached he becomes from the things that seem like they should be the greater priority.

The question that ultimately lingers in the shadows of this monumental accomplishment (and yes, we all know he ultimately makes those first steps onto the moon) is not whether America won the race, or even whether Armstrong accomplished his goal. This is demonstrated as a matter of fact in a film that is brave enough to shift the flag planting to the background and move the relationships to the forefront. Rather, Chazelle chooses to explore the greater why questions using this shifting perspective to consider why this mission mattered and why this momentary step taken by a single man became such an important part of our cultural and human story? What it is that makes this giant leap forward a necessary human accomplishment? What made the race for space worth the cost, sacrifices that become increasingly evident as the film moves forward. And why do we (or should we) value space exploration to begin with?

A True Horror Film
In exploring these questions, in his own way Chazelle has made what might be the most horrifying film of this season. And really, when it comes down to it, framing something as small and intimate as the human experience against something as large and monumental as the space race is scary business. Not simply because of what it celebrates, but for what it reveals- we don’t necessarily have the answers to the questions, and there is no promise that they will come by the time we reach the end of this film.

What the film does capture with certainty though is the complicated process by which we measure the things that are most important, the messiness of our human condition and the reality that we are not as in control of our world as our achievements tend to make us feel. And that leads to a growing sense of fear, both in the characters on screen and for me as a viewer. What Chazelle coaxes to the surface through the performances is a sense that it is actually this fear that fuels much of our need for progress and the pain we feel when we become a causalty of it, whether we recognize it or not. Hiding underneath the surface of accomplishments like the moon landing is the tragedy of our human story, the stuff that we often would rather ignore rather than face head on.
So Why?
When asked why they wanted to go into engineering, this young family member answered by offering a stark commentary on our human condition. Our life here on earth is past the point of no return. We are self destructing. We have messed things up so bad our only means of survival as a species is to get off this earth and start over. And yet I couldn’t help but think as I considered his answer in the moment, why? If humanity is so messed up, why is it so necessary that we find and fight for a way for to survive? What makes this fight for survival a meaningful endeavor, and at what cost will it arrive?

This is the same question asked of Armstrong in the film. Why go to the moon? For him he was given a glimpse of the world from space, and it is this shift in perspective, this new way of seeing the world that makes him the right candidate to fly to the moon. And yet the more he gazes at the moon the more he blinds himself to his earthly struggle and is haunted by his failures and mistakes. He fails to see what is right in front of him- his life, his wife, his son, the memory of his daughter, and he allows his pain to build a wall that begins to separate and guard his mission from his relationships.

And ultimately what Chazelle constructs is a sense of context. For as awe inspiring as that first step is in the film (an incredible moment to experience in Imax format), it is the tragedy of the human story that affords it meaning.

Quest for meaning: values, ethics, and the modern experience by Robert H. Kane
When it comes to the relationship between our why questions and our search for meaning, recognizing the tension is half the battle. And in his book, Kane argues that one of the things we need to recognize is that modernity, in its shift towards relativism, has actually begun to erode our sense of meaning, and, as one critic added in conversation on Goodreads, “stripped value from fact.” There is a sense that one gains from this book that society, or more specifically philosophy, has been attempting to (over) correct this by reinserting meaning back into the current reigning system of thought (using Locke’s blank slate theory as an example) by reestablishing value as creative (or created) fact. Whether it is doing this successfully is a matter of interpretation and perspective, but at the very least one could argue this is a problematic exercise at best.

Married to this notion (again, from Kane’s book) is the idea of progressivism as an idealized process. This is the idea that our social systems, human (technological) invention and our biology is being perfected (progressed or progressive) over time. He takes the time to examine this idea by offering a focused break down of the main schools of philosophical thought: Spinoza’s feeling-emotion tradition, Hume’s appeal to human nature (Sentimentalist approach), Hobbes and Rawls’ social contract theories (Contractarian approach), Bentham and Mill’s utilitarian theory (Utilitarian approach), and Kant’s reasoned ethics (Rationalist approach), understanding that each of these schools of thought plays into how we understand this ideal progression in terms of human reason and rationalism.

And yet, as another commentator put it, the reality is “the game theory of Utilitarians (the aim and expression of this perfection), the veil of ignorance of the Contractarians, the categorical insistence of the Rationalists, even the optimism of the Sentimentalists, all try to reduce humans to stick figures which are interchangeable with any other human.” This is the truth we often choose to ignore in favor of our accomplishments, our visible progress if you will. The bi-product of this is a confusion of the nature of personal responsibility. In other words, we seem to deem it necessary to hold humankind responsible while simultaneously allowing our reason and ration to dismantle the source of our responsibility- free will. And what ultimately gets sacrificed in this wake is meaning, or at the very least an honest expression of it.

Through all of the work of building these philosophical frameworks, we seem to still be sitting in this tension between “modern ethics and the wisdom of the ancients”, an idea I referenced in my previous blog on The Tangled Tree and the problem of Progressive Thought. Which is to say, meaning itself has become something of a problematic and volatile construct that finds itself stuck between the concreteness of rationalist ideals and the allusiveness of relativist meanderings, with the real question being, “is there a universal and absolute good that can actually connect these two worlds of stripped and re-created meaning (the questions of MacIntyre’s “After Virtue” and Plato’s “Good”).

In the book the suggestion is yes, there is a universal, objective truth of meaning. And he finds this by tracing it back across the secular-religious lines (or modern-ancient line), from everything such as the Eastern mystics and the Mosaic commandments to Jefferson’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, suggesting that we have always retained a shared sense of who we are and how things should be- which is precisely the foundation we need to recognize a shared value system of virtues or meaning that is not bound by cultural lines but rather shaped by human progress. And what does this come down for Kane? Love. Love is what we share and what gives us meaning.

THE GOOD PLACE AND GOODNESS FOR GOODNESS SAKE
It is interesting to note that a recent episode of The Good Place recently came to precisely this same conclusion. Outlining the same essential philosophical constructs, one of the shows main characters faces an existential crisis when an unexpected realization threatens the ability of his philosophical constructs to define and offer meaning to our everyday actions, primarily by doing away with the question of motivation. No longer able to assume a proper motivation for determining what is good and what is not, what has value and what does not, the only thing he has left is nihilism. Another character eventually helps to remind him that life means something simply because it is meaningful, and therefore we must do good for goodness sake, especially in the context of relationship. And to simply do this should be enough.

As I suggested in my previous blog, there is an obvious (to me anyways) leap of logic (or faith) that is necessary for this episode to arrive at this final conclusion (season 3, episode 5, for those keeping track… And it feels like they will be using this to set the stage for the remainder of the season). There is an existing, and arguably unbridgeable tension that exists between these two conclusions, nihilism and goodness for goodness sake. And while authors like Kane and the writers of The Good Place do deal with this tension in some shape or form, in both cases they eventually choose to ignore the inconsistencies of their reasoning in order to allow themselves to reconcile the fragility of the human experience with the reigning philosophical lines of thought that guide them. The values and virtues and meaning that they desire to find and uphold are, as I argued in my previous blog, antithetical to the facts of nature (survival, reproduction, non-linear adaptation and the selfish gene), and it is only (really) by neglecting the idea of human nature (which Locke does) that we are free to circumvent this fact as a necessary contradiction. As another commentator understands it, “goodness often creates disorder and disunity” precisely because it circumvents the natural order. If, as in the Jefferson mantra and the religious constructs of the ancient world, it is about freedom above all (as the highest expression of love as virtue), we are essentially left with a world that is consistently pushing back against the order that has imposed itself on our will. To be free is not our natural state.

And So We Start Over… and Over Again
The solution of the young idealist in my family (mentioned above) is to leave the mess and start over. To let the world self destruct and try again. Our responsibility today is to give future generations the opportunity to leave behind humanities mess and push forward towards something better. Given this individual has grown up in a relativist philosophical system, it is likely fair to assume this idealized future somehow sits above the accepted natural order that informs it. In this system of thought, humanity is the reason but progress is still the end game. All of which, once again, assumes meaning where meaning is not a given, while at the same time it cannot function unless these pursuits mean something. In this context it assumes the race for space is in-fact the greater good, while forgetting that it is the tragedy of the human story that this goodness is supposed to be for.

In the movie First Man, Chazelle recognizes that assigning meaning to something like the space race as one of the greatest and most important achievements of human kind can only be true if framed against the more intimate, human story that informs it. The painful why questions of Armstrong’s life. In-fact the tension that Chazelle manages to achieve in this film comes from the way he allows these questions to haunt Armstrong rather than satisfy him with the answers he needs. He believes what he is doing means something, and yet the closing scene leaves us with an open ended silence that simaltaneously shakes our confidence in what we just experienced and returns us to the brokenness that brought us to this point. Was it worth it? Here I think is where Chazelle does a rather brilliant job of giving this tension a subtle yet distinct trajectory, both as a larger cultural statement and as an expression of Armstrong’s personal story, giving us glimpses of hope while allowing the uncertainty of the moment to linger. We have landed on the moon, but the truth is the world he left behind is still a divided mess. Armstrong has completed his mission, but the truth his relationship with his family is still broken. The pain still persists. For all that we can control, even now as we try to get to Mars and manipulate genes and create robots, we remain as much out of control, at war and divided as we were back then.

In my previous blog I mentioned that one of the biggest obstacles to our ability to derive meaning from human progress is the latest research (The Tangled Tree, or HGT- Horizontal Gene Transfer) that is pushing back on one of the foundations of rationalist thought- that linear picture of evolution that allows us to posit and locate an original source for our progressive ideological and biological pursuits, a source that is able to draw a clear line in our progression from here to an idealized there. I then wondered if the greatest obstacle to our ability to locate this source is, in-fact, the human experience. After seeing First Man I am left wondering this even more.

As a film, First Man dares to wonder whether the cost was worth the reward, and in doing so considers why the space program is so important. What is it that we are after? Immortality? Survival? Achievement? And what gives these things meaning in the first place? To find the answer it has to dig underneath the surface to see the human story that helped guide this mission, and in doing so considers that it is the stories that we neglect in our need to control the future on our own terms that tend to be the things that leave us most out of control. Armstrong is not established as a pilot with super human abilities or a series of amazing accomplishments. He is simply presented as the last one standing. He must complete the mission because it is something that needs to get done. To what end is not a question he truly considers until it costs him everything. And the truth is, exploring the grief, the loss, the broken relationships, the uncertainty that marks Armstrong’s journey to the moon, this requires us to actually get into the mud with him and wrestle with the why questions on a deeper and more complex level. It requires us to wrestle with what is virtuous and good and right and meaningful in this world. And it requires us to do this even when we don’t have all the answers.

More Than Goodness for Goodness Sake
Truth be told most days (again, if I am honest) living life in the name of survival and progress gives me more reason not to live than to go on living. In truth, it is difficult for me to see the moon when I can barely see myself on the best of days. And so it requires faith for me to believe that who we are and what we are striving for matters. A faith that can transcend the experiences of this world and speak to something universal, something that is given to us rather than created by us. Because the truth is, for as awe inspiring as it was to go to the moon, to see the surface open up before me in all its accomplished glory, it is the broken experience of Armstrong’s story that left me most shaken. And if there is a greater point to Chazelle’s film (subjectively speaking of course), I think it is that, for all that we give to achieving the impossible, it is our willingness to enter into the human story that is the far more worthwhile journey. Because it is when we enter into this story that we can actually attend to the brokenness rather than escaping it. That we can learn to embrace it rather than try to control it. This perspective, the perspective Armstrong finally seems to gain near the end of the film, even if in limited fashion, has the ability to turn our gaze away from the false promises of our ambition and towards something greater, something other. Something we can actually call good not for goodness sake or because it is something we accomplished or achieved by the measure of our ambition, but because it has the power to change us.

A few years back I wrote in this space about a class I took on what it looks like to navigate “the second half of life”. It was a class designed for those over 40, and in part it is what inspired this blog.

One of the big learnings I took away from this class was that loss, a benchmark for defining what it means to grow older, has many faces, some that are more obvious and easily recognizable, many that are not. And learning how to grieve well might be the most important part of the process, certainly when it comes to our ability to recognize and label these losses for what they are.

I also discovered that I am really… REALLY bad at knowing how to grieve. And given the obvious loss that has shaken my, our, lives over these past few months, this is a reality that has hit doubly as hard, a fact that has turned even more necessary to reconcile

Simply put, loss sucks and life is…

A GHOST STORY
One of my favorite films of 2017 also happened to be one of the most striking reflections on the grieving process I have seen on film. Directed by David Lowery and starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, it tells the story of loss, in this case the loss of a spouse, from a particularly unique perspective, that of the Ghost whom we see struggling to make sense of life on the other side of death as he stands helpless against the process of grief.

Lowery breathes into this process a timeless perspective. The haunting of a mere moment by a bed sheet with two holes in it for eyes gives way to a more expansive view of life that sees the cycles of grief playing backwards and forwards through the building and demolishing, the progress and the destruction, the construction and deconstruction of the land on which he stands. What is most striking about this panoramic picture is the way it connects this sense of time and place. For as much as the Ghost’s view of the world gains this brevity, it remains intimately tied to the place which gives it definition, a soul so to speak- the home, the people, the experiences, the memories of this place. There is something unfinished and unresolved that haunts the Ghost who is forced to watch the process of grief unfold, watching Mara’s character slowly coming apart, desperate to hold on and to remember and eventually moving on and letting go. We see the house itself being built, moved into and made into a home, and finally forgotten and demolished. And what centers this whole process is the symbolism of this singular note. A note that Mara’s character writes and sticks in wall, seemingly as a reminder of what we see fading from her own view. A note that captures all at once the complexity of their relationship in the years that they were given together. The regrets and the joys. The hurt and the love. This note comes to symbolize what haunts the Ghost as he is unable to gain access to it. And yet it seems to hold the key to this unfinished business. And what is stunning here is Lowrey’s choice to leave the contents of this note out of view, unresolved for us as viewers, even as the Ghost finally accesses it. We never get to read the words, only surmise about what it said, if anything.

Which for me is sort of like trying to make sense of life itself. Life is allusive. For me it is like trying to make sense of this loss. I feel the pain of regret and second guessing. The hole that now exists that seems like it will never get filled. The questions that will never be answered. And the memories of all the stuff that made that relationship meaningful and joyful and full of love.

Gone, in a moment.

There is very little dialogue in A Ghost Story, but there is one scene in-particular, occuring right in the middle of the film’s narrative, that appears to hold the film together on both sides of the grieving process giving it a degree of narrative force and direction that allow the visuals to become reflective in a more concrete fashion. It is a conversation that happens between a group of people, with a specific individual caught wondering about the nature of life in the face of loss. The big question that the film pulls out this moment is why?

Why does it all matter? What is the point?

As the character suggests, we die, others die, the world and the universe is one day going to die. And the only way to hold it all together for this singular moment, to give it meaning, is to in some sense give in to the lies that we need to tell ourselves in order for that meaning to take shape. The lies that say who we are and what we do matters in the bigger picture of that timeless view of life. This character’s questioning of it all then becomes a way of interpreting the Ghost’s perspective of seeing the grieving process unfold as a panoramic shot, of seeing how quickly things move forward and are forgotten.

This becomes the tension we are forced to carry from gaining such a sweeping view of the world, a tension that struggles to stay centered on that sense of place where meaning and identity and purpose can be realized. These are the places out of which grief flows and pushes back against, allowing the questions of our despair to take hold and challenge that sense of certainty. The only certainty to be found in these moments is that loss sucks, and life is…

FIRST REFORMED
One of my favorite films of 2018 so far also has to do with a similar question of grief, albeit from a slightly different perspective.

It tells the story of a priest whom, after dealing with loss begins to experience his own crisis of faith. Over the course of the film there is a relationship that then begins to develop between a widow named Mary, with these two characters representing the difficult place that lingers in this crisis between hope and despair. What disguises itself as a physical relationship emerges as a stark and surprising symbol of the spirit, with much of the imagery of this relationship imagining the moments of spiritual transcendence (the levitation scene for example) and transformation (being reformed) that is able to break through the despair.

First Reformed is, in many ways, an ode to transcendental filmmaking that flows out of the director’s intent to write a film that can contrast or be set in conversation with the films which inspired it- Ordet, The Diary of a Country Priest and Winter Light. Set against these films we have an idea of redemption, or of life and resurrection, set against the bleak and threatening reality of suicide, world weariness and defeat. The gradual deconstruction of Hawke’s character’s faith over the course of the film is given a rather striking resonance through the subtle polluting of the whiskey glass that mirrors his physical deterioration. The ending then, in the director’s own words, arrives as this sort of intervention of the spirit, a picture of a necessary grace that meets us at the crossroads of this struggle between hope and despair. It doesn’t necessarily answer all of the questions that this crisis of faith brings to the surface, but it is nevertheless transformative as it embraces the shape and form of the crisis itself.

I think it is, like A Ghost Story, this willingness to sit in that space in-between, in the sort of ambiguity out of which our questions and uncertainties seem to persist with the spirits transformative work, that is also able to give voice to the films larger concern- can God ever forgive us? Can God ever forgive me? This is not so much a question of sinfulness in the film as it is a desperate need for grace in what feels like a desperate, persisting and helpless condition. When we look out ourselves and then look out at the world with all the war and sickness and death and struggle, is it fair to suggest we are broken beyond repair, or is there hope and joy to be found in the mess of it all? In the process of grief, through the anger and the questions and the pleading and the doubting, the answer we find in the films final picture of its main characters I think is yes, yes there is hope, but it is a hope we can see only when the spirit invades our space and transcends our brokenness.

In interviews the Director suggested that he toiled over where to take the films ending. A part of him wanted it to end in a picture of ultimate pollution, of that whiskey glass becoming poison and suicide overtaking notions of faith, capturing that sense that even when hope is in our grasp it remains allusive. The truth that often times despair seems like it will and often does have its way with us and our world, sometimes to tragic effect, is a brave picture to confront. This lingering decision to confront this is felt in the film’s narrative force, and it allows the tension to remain real even as the director allows the idea of hope and resurrection to transcend the human experience. This is not an easy conclusion to what is a heavy and difficult film to embrace. Nor is facing and walking through the overwhelming emotions of grief and loss and struggle. Hope is allusive. Life is…

HEARTS BEAT LOUD
Some have considered this to be a movie about finding yourself, a family drama about a child coming of age and a parent needing to learn how to let go.

For me this is a movie primarily about grief and the ways in which loss can isolate us from the places and people that define us rather than pull us together. It is, on the surface, a sweet, affecting family drama that proves music, a universal language, can speak louder than words and be an incredibly effective narrative device through which to tell a story. Underneath it is a drama that proves with the right script, the right direction and the right performances, a movies heart can beat even louder than the music, breathing into this universal language a degree of meaning that actually transcends and transforms the song itself.

And transcends the human experience that defines this movie’s heart and rendering of the grieving process.

At the heart of the film is a father-daughter relationship, both of whom are attempting to navigate life on the other side of the loss of their wife and mother. What holds them together through this loss is a shared love of music, music which acts as the thread weaving into their own process of grief the memories of this loss and the struggle to make sense of this loss in the present. The reality is that life continues to move forward whether they want it to or not, like a song intent on writing itself, and it is the way they are able (or unable) to submit themselves to this process that gently form their journey towards each other in this film.

With its use of music the film shows that there is a certain poetic presence to the way grief works to isolate the different notes of our lives and to bring these notes together in song, and it is this subtle and growing isolation that can sometimes blind us to the fact we do not perform this song alone. Our notes can only become a song when performed in the context of community, and it is here where Hearts Beat Loud emerges as the true family drama that it is.

Through the music it considers the idea that however messy the process of grief can be, it is in the context of family and community that we are given the means to give it words and definition. Grief only means something if it can be expressed against the joy it has stolen, and the best way to find that joy again is to allow it to push us back, and with more intention, into relationship where it can once again emerge. But it takes courage to sing the songs we need to sing and perform in front of others on the best of days. In times when those different faces of loss threaten to steal our voice, it takes more than courage, it takes desperation. And yet at the heart of this film is the idea that desperation can push us forward and allows us to heal even when we think it is pulling us apart. Desperation is what can form in us that lost desire to learn how to perform again when life seems to be forcing us to leave our songs behind. And that power comes from the melody of others. And ultimately for me from the gift of a truly transcendent other.

There is nothing flashy or complicated about the direction of this film. It is the simple nature of its approach, largely stripped down, that allows the performances and songs to do the hard work of bringing us in on the journey. And in this sense Hearts Beat Loud offered me one of the most compelling and meaningful cinematic experiences of this year. In this present moment it offered me something even more powerful-hope. The tension is still there. Just the other day I told someone in my life that I am not sure I am ever going to come out on the other side of the loss we faced in the past few months. But as I considered the perspective of A Ghost Story and the hopeful transcendent spirit of First Reformed, Hearts Beat Loud gave me a picture of what it looks like to actually step into life again, even if in my moment of grief I remain unsure of what that is. I am reminded of the promise that somehow, in someway it is still worth embracing in the midst of the process.

What does it mean to be progressive. To say that we live in a “progressive” society. To champion progressive policy. To share a “progressive” view of this or that issue. To be labelled a progressive in the world of politics, religion, philosophy or social reform.

I started to think about this word “progressive” a number of years ago after finding myself at a point of frustration over the ways we tend to give opposing points of view both a label and a box. I wondered about the wisdom of viewing the world in such overly defined ways that sees one generation as smarter, more advanced and more aware than the last. Or whether there even is such as a thing as a highly defined trajectory towards better, more enlightened ways of thinking and being in this world that can be measured without the muddled presence of human presupposition.

In the midst of all of this wondering and perusing I happened across an article which led to a book which led to more articles on a revolutionary find in the world of scientific theory that appeared to be changing the way we see, or at least my Grade 10 and 11 Biology textbook saw, the evolutionary process. This is a theory I have found myself returning to all these years later after once again feeling frustrated by similar things and picking up a book called The Tangled Tree by David Quammen. And it has found me thinking about these questions all over again

THE WAY OF HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER
The revolutionary theory in question is called horizontal gene transfer (HGT). It is an idea that challenges the old paradigm of the Darwinian Tree of Life, in which gene transfer happens inwards and in protective isolation by proving that genes can also transfer sideways and backwards and forwards by permeating DNA from the outside world via outside sources (read: molecular phylogenetics).

In this theory we are far more a product of our environment than we once thought ourselves to be. So what are the implications of this theory?

As said, it changes the old paradigm, which it is worth noting remains the reigning paradigm in my son’s Grade 11 Biology textbook. It takes the Tree of Life, where a single source branches out over time into succinct, measurable and defined evolutionary changes via inherited genes, and rewrites that picture as a web, or in the case of the book a picture of tangled branches where these same evolutionary changes are far from succinct, measurable and defined and rather a testament of an extremely complicated mix of sources and outcomes that defy previous notions of natural progression.

In other words, in purely biological terms life is a bit of a mess. A bit of a sprawling, undefined mess. Far messier than we once thought it to be. And, for what it is worth, far less “naturally” progressive than we once perceived it to be under the old evolutionary paradigm.

Which begs the question in my mind, why is it that we hold so tightly to the idea of “progressive” on purely human terms, a key tenant of the modern age, when there is no true paradigm in nature on which to measure this sort of natural progression, certainly not in the linear fashion that history tends to read back into our human evolution on both a social and biological level. Why have we attempted to deviate from the natural process so succinctly, desperate to pick and peruse elements of nature that match our perception of the “good” human condition while ignoring the others? The root word, progress, after all is burdened by the idea that we are becoming better, more advanced, more informed, more “progressed”  than we were before, and therefore weeding out the less productive, less ideal, less enlightened stuff that used to hold us back. It is a word that owes itself heavily to the old paradigm in which the enlightenment was essentially birthed. And in terms of human advancement in progressive ideology, this tends to be seen as “freedom” and rights of the individual as the highest value.

Yet, science would suggest that this is not a consistent picture of the evolutionary process as a whole. We aren’t evolving to become a more advanced species, nor an advanced version of our species. The idea of a progressive society is in a sense an aberration born out of humanities need (or desire) to circumvent the norms of the process precisely because we looked at the process at one point in time and found it unbecoming and in need of a recognizable moral foundation. And yet this needs a universal morality to work, and the idea that philosophers (for as much as they have tried) can actually pull a universal meaning or value out of the evolutionary construct is questionable on the best of days, precisely because it is something that must work against the natural order.

Thus, if one was to spend time with the philosphers who created the framework for progressive ideologies, we would find a philosphy that still sits in tension, needing to work against the natural order while also proporting to work in service of it.

In truth, the only real universal constant over time is change, and in the context of HGT this change happens without regard for the sort of progress we have long been trained to see by modern philosophy, at least in the ways we are taught to see it as measured against idealistic visions of what “civilized” societies must be. What we see as progressive is little more than a facade, a mirage, a value that we have superimposed onto society that nature does not hold to on its own merit outside of change for the sake of survival and reproductive methods, the two central values of that construct. The best philosophers can do is read into this construct some proclaimed higher, superimposed values of human activity that render things like inclusion and social awareness as a representation (or means) of these values of survival and reproduction. For example, freedom for all is a value we have set over and above the natural order, but this is a value because by protecting freedom for all we can protect the survival of the human species.

And the more I consider this tension the more I feel like it is a rather large problem when it comes to how we view the world, especially as we use our need to see civil and social change as a means of filtering out the weak (non progressives) from the strong (progressives).

HUMAN NATURE AND NATURE
One of the other big implications of this revolutionary theory is the way it reintegrates our understanding of human nature back into nature itself. HGT recognizes that we are at our core “mosaic creatures” made up of bits and pieces of the world that surrounds us over time. In this sense the idea of a unique human condition that sets us over and above nature as civil versus wild is little more than a figment of our inherited imaginative process. With the old paradigm of the tree challenged, we are as much a part of this nature as anything else, and a randomized and broken version of it at that. Not as enlightened or in tension with the old construct of nature as we tend to see ourselves to be.

Further, HGT has shown that 8 percent of the human genome originated through virus genomes operating on this horizontal transfer theory. In other words, regardless of how we see the size and/or function of our brains as the thing that sets us apart as “civilized” beings, we are at our core broken, flawed and corrupted representations of the natural order given purely to the construct of change for the purpose of survival. This remains the highest order.

Which had me thinking even further. By its very nature the word progressive divides. In fact, on philosophical terms the entire construct of evolutionary theory divides. Not simply according to ideologies, but it divides us by our nature. Tribalism, seperation of species, nationalism, progressive ideologies. It all flows from the same place. In modern terms it sets humanity directly above the natural order from which it belongs and is in relationship to and divides us from nature. The word progressive also coopts for its own purposes and sets us over and above one another. It supplants nature with superimposed virtues and values that essentially attempt to control the trajectory of the one constant in the process- change, and thus gives it meaning and purpose according to our own culturally embedded values. And lastly, the word progressive sells us on an idea. It sells us on this idea that because nature is heading somewhere particular, so should humanity, and that this progress aims for something better, whatever utopian ideal that might embody, at the expense of what we deem as worse.

Which leaves philosophers trapped by this need to find a universal value that can pull all this division together (because values tend to throw the old natural construct into disarray) or accept the division as a function of natures value (which leads to things like the Holocaust).

So back to my question, why do we hold on so tightly to this idea of “progress”? I think some semblance of an answer could come from contextualizing the word into our modern paradigm of old versus new. We have been taught that nature is heading somewhere particular, towards self correction and the betterment of our world and humanity, and therefore we expect it to be true and make it our task to interpret this. And in many ways we need this as social and socially aware creatures that can actively measure one action against another. This is an affect of becoming increasingly aware of the world around us, the world which we inhabit and must make sense of in order to reconcile how we feel against what we see.

This same contextualization could also apply to the way we understand this old versus new paradigm in the light of history. Historically we can measure human society as being at some sort of intersection of secular and religious ideologies. And as humanity continues to try and control this shift away from the old (religion) and towards the new (secular), with the belief by the stronger that this is progress, we are experiencing a tension between what is essentially still borrowing from the language and assumptions of the old paradigm- religion, and what is also fighting at the same time for freedom from this paradigm. Which means that this idea of heading somewhere particular, of this process having universal meaning and purpose beyond just survival (the assumptions of religion), of this trajectory being one of heading somewhere better (which is built into the language of redemption and restoration of creation in religion) is an inherently religious one that is trying to disassociate itself from religion altogether. Talk about messy.

THE WHY QUESTIONS AND OUR SELFISH SELF

The harder answer of course is to say there are no easy answers. I’ll be honest, the reality of this revolution in scientific theory bogs me down even on my best days. I have no real answers, only struggles and considerations and convictions. There are moments though where contextualizing my struggle into my own relationship to this old-new paradigm shift, which largely includes wrestling with my own faith based perspective and progressive ideologies and value systems and questions of meaning has been helpful.

At the heart of this for me is the question of why. Why should we care about what is good or bad? Why should we spend our time trying to convince others about what is right or wrong, helpful and not helpful when it comes to our ideas of what it means to progress and to get better and advance as a civilization? Why does any of it actually matter when, at best, meaning and purpose on a purely biological basis is something that we must admit we have presupposed and superimposed seemingly to make ourselves feel better about what is at it’s heart an aimless process?

When the author of this book encountered the question, why does nature choose to invest its energy in this HGT when there is no consistent or measurable outcome to be gleaned from it (sometimes it results in good, sometimes bad and at other times it is simply benign), he went on to suggest it comes down to one thing- it does it for purely selfish reasons.

To arrive at his answer it is important to recognize that the author holds to the conviction that what he writes is hugely important to not only our understanding of how things work, but about where we are headed in terms of medicine, exploration and ultimately survival. But if there is a sharp criticism to be made here, it is not so much about his material as it is about his assumptions. He spends so much time challenging the perceptions of the old paradigm where he believes it is necessary to do so that he fails to consider the ways his own assumptions are indebted to the ways of the old paradigm in the first place. He assumes a measure of meaning and worth to human advancement. He assumes a measure of meaning and worth to the idea of progress, which for him is still an important part of human participation in the natural “disorder”. But he cannot disassociate it from selfishness or the disorder of HGT.

The end result of this research is that the only true carry over from the old paradigm that still matters as perceivable and rationalized truth is that of survival. We all, as an interconnected species, share this same need and want and built in natural desire to survive on purely selfish terms. Which is super interesting to me, because if there was one big takeaway from this book for me it is what it exposes about our need to survive, the same answer the author gave when asked the question, which is the idea that in this revolutionary theory it is the selfish gene that still reigns. From the pages of Ayn Rand to the polemics of Dawkins and the modern, neo-darwinist new atheists, to modern expositions of the importance of the selfish way, it is the power of the selfish gene that continues to permeate the messiness of the process. And in HGT we can see that this is still the only real reason nature would have for expending energy on something that has been exposed as far more eraddic than we once thought it to be.

And then I wondered about this notion of selfishness as I pondered some of the markers of progressive thought. What if selfishness really is the great adversary, the great mark of the natural condition. What if even our ideas of progress, when you pull back the curtain of those imposing “why” questions, is indebted to these same selfish aims. It all leads me to wonder about where it is we think we are heading when we speak of investment in space travel, advancement in technology and medicine and genetics, protection of the earth and our children and future generations. For the book this is all a reason to celebrate. The necessary science to better our understanding of the world and give us a better chance at survival. But when I pare it all down, to what aim do we invest in all of  this when progress is little more than a carry over from our old nature? Why survive as  human species? Why live?

SELFISHNESS

Selfishness becomes even more complicated when one tries to make sense of the values of socio-political progress in ideological terms. Values that grow out of and depend on reading a level of distinction into this mosaic. Of finding individual beauty in the mess. Values that assume meaning in the importance of individual rights and expression as the highest order of society, of being able to distinguish why one value matters next to another based on a “given” meaning that says we have value to begin with. And yet the paradox of this is the thing that holds it all together continues to be, and has always been selfishness. Human survival. Species distinction. The betterment of our society and our future generations. All things that fight against the picture of the mosaic creature as a virtuous being in and of itself, valued because of it’s diversity. Ask someone why progressive ideolgies are necessary and important and the answer will be because it means something important to the value we can give to humanity. But where does this greater meaning actually come from?

Which brings me back to the intersection of the old and the new. And this is purely my personal and subjective opinion. In my eyes, the only true paradigm that we have for meaning is religion. It seems to me that for as much as philosophers try, the only true measurement we have of expressing this degree of value and meaning is spirituality. Sure, we might be lying to ourselves in order to believe religion is actually a viable (human?) construct on which to base our progressive ideologies, but we owe much to it in terms of our modern social evolution. But the reality is we are lying to ourselves on the other side of this paradigm as well. Outside of religion nature orients us around species. Nature embellishes who we are by taking broken beings and adapting us to our environment for the sake of ensuring our survival. It’s an instinctual genetic function, not a given value. And to give it value from our “human” perspective is simply to play god with nature. And we all know how that is turning out.

Which, again, all leaves me even more curious about the place of faith in helping us to understand why we continue to see progressive thought as important in light of the evidence to the contrary. Spiritually speaking I can begin to see the idea of the new creation all over this concept of the “mosaic creature”. I can begin to see the promise of redemption against the light of our corrupted and broken genes. I can begin to see notes of grace in the messiness of the process. I can begin to see beauty in the diversity, even if the selfish gene continues to challenge my human condition. And I can begin to grow a love for all of life and the whole of the created order.

In the same light of this spirituality it also then becomes even more compelling to me to consider that what this book calls endobiosis (the event that set up and enabled life to begin to take shape) has only ever happened once. In other words we are indebted still to a single source on either side of the old/new paradigm. This to me is hopeful. This to me makes some sense, because if there is a singular source of life it means it is possible to see a given meaning rather than a created meaning, one that maybe has been hidden but in our awareness is now being revealed. This is different than the progressiveness modern eyes tend to read into the evolutionary process, if because it means we are not growing into more enlightened beings, but rather discovering truths about who we have always been, who God has always been and what this world has always been. We are then coming back to a point of perspective before evolution had its way with this world.

Which means the real question is, can this single, universal source actually shape our values and sense of direction (or lack of it) with purpose? With science alone I feel like my answer to that is no. When I leave space for my faith to inform my wrestling with this science, I can at least begin to see the possibility of a yes forming out of the mud, out of the messy mosaic, and that gives me the strength to at least begin to accept the process of itself. To actually see the mosaic as beautiful, not only in its cohesiveness which pushes back against our divisive ideologies, but in its expression of the spiritual process itself that is in fact heading somewhere, towards being made whole again.

If there was a flaw in the film White Boy Rick, one could argue it is the film’s central, titular character played by Richie Merritt. If you know the story of his casting, he was a troubled youth hand picked straight from the principles office to portray a troubled youth on-screen. On paper the idea sounds inspired. On screen it becomes obvious that Merritt is outmatched by a tremendous supporting cast, most notably the incredibly talented Matthew McConaghey. At its best, the film allows the supporting cast to elevate Merritt’s emotionally static performance. At its worst Merritt keeps the film ever so slightly chained to his level of inexperience.

I can see how this could represent a problem for some viewers. It makes for a slightly uneven viewing experience. But the context in which I saw this film allowed me to play this semblance of imbalance as a sense of of inspiration and an overall strength. I knew nothing about the story of White Boy Rick going in. If anything I had high hopes from the trailer that this was going to be a notable Oscar film. In-fact, the only thing I really knew was the casting story of the young Richie Merritt, and through that small bit of information I was able to read his story into the character he plays in the film. Which of course sounds a bit counter intuitive to what good film making “should” be. Merritt should be bringing us into his story, not expecting us to read into it something that is not earned. But I felt a degree of humility and earnestness behind the inexperience, an earnestness that has followed his public journey as well on his way from the principles office to the big screen. Commenting on the struggle, at one point he declared, “I’d remember what my mother always told me: ‘God wouldn’t put you here to fail,’ ” he says. “I would take a couple of deep breaths when I was anxious. I would always try to be in the moment, have fun and do what God brought me to do.”

This degree of humility suits a character who is uneducated and an equally unlikely candidate. It left room to consider his performance was perhaps more honest than unpolished, a reflection of his own context rather than aspiring or trying to be anything else other than his true self. And the more the film went on, especially in the films final 30 minutes, the more this began to grow on me.

Regarding the film as a whole, since seeing it for the first time I have read a number of articles and reviews that have found not just Merritt, but the entire film to be slightly underwhelming. I have heard many decry the films lack of a clear trajectory. Even more have complained about the films pacing, some calling it flat out boring and uninspired. In nearly every case (if not all), these two issues seemed to come back around to the idea of the film as “social commentary”, which is to say, some feel like the film needed to comment on “a” or any number of social issues that arise through the context of the film- the plight of Detroit, poverty, gun control, drugs, prison reform; but that it never truly commits to any one of these points, rather feeling scatterbrained in terms of what it wants or desires to say, even to the point of saying nothing at all.

It is fair to say this is where I diverge even more sharply in my own opinion and experience of this film. The first thing that deserves mention is the degree to which this film is not the film we see in the trailer. The trailer advertised a fast paced, taught, entertaining character drama about a particular kids story of living through the epidemic of a post apocalyptic Detroit. The moment I realized most of the trailer occurs in the first half hour of the film was the same moment I knew my expectations were going to be upended, if simply because the story itself had yet to be told. What the film becomes, rather quickly I might add, is a slow burn, immersive experience that sheds light on the everyday moments that form the real life, post-apocalyptic setting. Instead of simply telling the story in a direct and concise way, it is content to meander, at times allowing us to simply sit with the visuals while it takes the necessary time to build a deeply felt sense of atmosphere which flows out of this routine sense of direction and misdirection.

I think peoples criticism of the pacing and lack of clear direction speaks more to people’s expectations than to an actual weakness of the film. It is fair to want a film to represent a more direct social commentary, but I think in doing so it becomes easy to miss what White Boy Rick actually is and desires to be, which is a dysfunctional family drama. This also happens to be the film that landed with me on a personal level, more so than if it had been a more direct social commentary.

I think where the film truly finds its voice is at the halfway point when the narrative takes a sudden twist out of its more dire sensibilities and into a complicated vision of optimistic fervor. We see McConaughey’s character sitting on the porch of their house having a conversation with Ricky about the idea of family. In a life born out of their own given and earned social context, the idea of family seemed to remain just slightly beyond their grasp. In this moment though it is an idea that seems realized, an idea that maybe, just maybe could capture and reinforce a bit of Ricky’s sentimental longing for those forgotten childhood moments where “things were good for while, right?” And yet the sentiment of McConaughey’s character that breaks through this moment of perhaps ill-placed optimism quickly reminds Ricky that “family”, or at least our expectation of family, is an incredibly fragile and volatile thing. It is a stark picture of what it feels like to be stuck in a cycle without hope while doing everything in your power to simply put another foot forward.

It is out of this moment, looking both backwards and forwards as the story moves seemingly from point A to point A (for lack of a better description of the movies trajectory), that we begin to see where this slow burn is heading. The people we meet at the end of the film are not the same ones we meet in the opening moments. There is transformation, even if in some cases it is hard to recognize, and this transformation arrives in the midst of the fragile and misguided world that they embody.

Sometimes when your expectations are upended, a film can go very wrong. And sometimes, as it did for me, it makes the film that much more compelling. I was there for the real life story, and instead I got something that was far more immersive, a film content to sit and marinate in its sense of time and place. The narrative that it does follow becomes important for how we learn to weigh our sympathy for a family of corrupt individuals making corrupt choices that somehow and in someway manages to mirror something of worth and demand our empathy. And it is this process that becomes incredibly important for the ways we are able to engage with larger social issues. If we can’t gain sympathy for the brokenness of others, and if we are unsure how to see the good in something that appears on the outside to be morally corrupt, our engagement with social issues will be limited to the level of responsibility we see people taking for their own problems. And yet these problems are rarely so black and white. Often they are systemic and complex. What White Boy Rick teaches us is that what is most important when it comes to those larger social issues and concerns is taking the time to hear the story that lies behind it.

For Richie Merritt, it was the compassion of others that gave him the chance to better himself and to tell his story. In the context of this film it is the story of a family that ultimately leads towards a compassionate end. In both cases the starting point is the same- a story about corrupt people making corrupt choices struggling to become better people. And that is the issue that compassion should be concerned about first and foremost.