"Heaven is for real:" but maybe not a little boy's vision of it

   This falls under the auspices of a Quaker post: Stillwater Friends Meeting, of which I am a member, hosted a showing of the movie "Heaven is for Real." I was interested in seeing the film both as part of the committee that sponsors "movie night" and because it was outside of my comfort zone. To my surprise, I found it fit Roland Barthes's notion of a "writerly text:" open-ended and ambiguous--far more than I would have expected. It really was not quite what I expected.

Little Colby sees heaven--maybe.

The plot goes as follows: a little boy named Colby, aged four, needs an emergency appendectomy, and at some point in is in danger of death. According to the movie, he never actually stops breathing, his heart never stops, his brain function never flatlines--he never actually dies, even for a moment.

Little Colby fortunately survives his operation, but it does cost a bundle. While under anesthesia, he has a vision, a dream or literal experience of heaven. 

After the operation, the boy tells his father, Todd, a pastor, bits and pieces of what the youngster understands as a visit to heaven: He sat in Jesus' lap, Jesus rode a rainbow colored horse, a choir of angels sang. The father, not naive, is intrigued but at first interprets the boy as describing a dream or vision based on fragments of stories he has heard about Jesus, the Bible and heaven.  When the little boy announces that Jesus has blue-green eyes, the father is convinced his son has imagined heaven: the parents have blue and green eyes and, of course, the parents think, the child is projecting mom and dad as Jesus. 

Dad, actor Greg Kinnear, comes to believe--or almost believe--his son has been to heaven. Anyway, it gets him thinking hard about belief. 

And yet. Some residue of the boy's story strikes the father as real. The story nags him, and he starts talking about it in the pulpit, to the alarm of the church's lay council. The father becomes so obsessed with the story that he starts having fights with his wife, Sonja, who will have none of it, and he goes to see a psychologist. This woman, clearly the classic castrating, dark haired, over-educated career woman and definitely not a "believer," pooh-poohs the pastor's thought that the heaven experience could be real.

Colby tells his Dad about heaven. 

Meanwhile, a local paper gets wind of the "boy who went to heaven" and sends out a reporter. The church council becomes even more alarmed after the story runs. Though previously a banker on the council had offered to take care of the pastor's high medical bills--more than $50,000 (apparently the church did not provide him with health insurance or anything near adequate health insurance, though this is never said, and the pastor refuses the offer of help), now the banker is part of the group that turns on the pastor and announces that he has only one more week in the pulpit. (His wife at one point wants to get a job to pay the bills, but the husband informs her that her job is to be a mother.)

So far the wife has been a doubter, just like the female psychologist and the woman on the church council leading the charge against the him. However, when the four year old tells  her he has seen his dead sister in heaven, the wife breaks down: she did lose a baby to a miscarriage, even though she never knew it was a girl. The child, she reasoned, could not possibly have heard about that, so his story must be true. 

Mom becomes a believer after Colby tells her about meeting the sister Mom lost in a miscarriage. Kelly Reilly, the mom, plays another devoted wife to much more twisted man in the current season of True Detective.

In the climatic scene of the film, the pastor, in his final sermon, gives an impassioned sermon in which he states that God is love and that what we believe is important. Heaven means different things to different people, he says. It may not be Jesus on a rainbow horse to everyone, but if we truly believed in sone sort of heaven, wouldn't it change how we lived, make us more loving and secure? Isn't the point to really act as if heaven is real? What he doesn't say is that his son's vision of heaven is literally real--the title of the book and movie are not My Son's Vision of Heaven is Real, but Heaven is for Real. What the pastor really wants people to think about is NOT the 4 year old's story of riding a rainbow horse with Jesus, but what it might mean if the concept of heaven--explicitly open ended as "whatever that means to you"--is real. Could it inspire us to behave less cruelly to one another in the here and now and instead (this is my interpretation) to build a better world.

In other words, this is Barthes's open-ended, ambiguous "writerly" narrative being mis-interpreted as a closed "readerly" narrative locating a literal heaven in a little boy's experience, devoid of ambiguity. 

The parishioners, led by the wife, are so moved that they come on stage in a group hug. Later, the pastor watches a show about a girl in Asia who paints her vision of heaven, and when his son sees her painting of Jesus on TV, amazingly a blue-green eyed man, he confirms it is the same Jesus he saw.

This is what Jesus looks like to little Colby during his trip to heaven.

The movie closes with the wife announcing she is pregnant.  We never see the pastor write the best-selling book, but clearly the wheels are turning--and he does have a huge debt load hanging over him. We might question him exploiting the naive statements of a four-year to make money, but we can also understand him needing to get bills paid--and it's not his fault he lives in a country that allows grossly inflated medical costs to be normal. Of course, it could be that Todd actually literally believed his son's story, but the tenor of the story suggests he does not. To give him his due, he seems to have sincerely wanted to get people thinking about their faith lives.

The movie is set in Nebraska, and the pastor lives in a big white frame house, apparently built very recently (not a 19th-century farmhouse) surrounding by open fields, reminiscent of Field of Dreams. The cast is almost all white, but I caught at least a glimpse of a black parishioner, and a black parishioner calls 9/11 at some point. The black-skinned person who calls 9/11 presents as extremely culturally white--very short hair, clean, crisp conservative clothes, an ultra-clean-cut look that does not threaten white sensibilities in any way. The real blacks, I would say, are a Latino couple with a baby to whom the pastor's wife gives a beautiful baby dress. When the Latino woman (who looks safely legal and as if she probably heads to a night job working at the Holiday Inn) exclaims it's too nice a gift to accept, the pastor's wife assures her: "Not for YOUR baby." This is apparently meant to exhibit lack of racial prejudice, but it comes across as very condescending: even a brown baby deserves a pretty dress! I am going with the idea that the movie makers meant well. 

This movie interested me in particular because I am fascinated by the way people misread texts. I don't know how many times even top scholars in a field don't see what is right in front of them. I am even surprised at myself: as I go back to familiar texts I can come away with completely different takes at different times. (This is why I always tell my students to head back to primary sources.)  I am thus more and more in accord with Nietzsche's thought that people read or see what they have already decided is there, not what is really in front of them. 

 So I am interested that people seem to misread this movie as primarily about a boy's literal trip to heaven rather than as exploration of the power of belief. Why is the boy's story so important? Why are we all so prone to misread?

Back to the Zombies!

    I completely missed this comment about the Zombies post from March, as I so seldom get comments anymore that I stopped looking. In any case, I was delighted to hear from Hystery, who I have missed. Since the original blog post is so old, I decided simply to make this into its own post. Hystery is responding to a blog (that I try to push back against) saying the Zombie craze is really about younger people's dread of aging Boomers. I am in agreement with Hystery and wonder if others feel this same vague dread of Exploitation, Apathy and Despair? I also see that our story is not yet written, and am haunted by Germans who committed suicide during World War II because they became too hopeless, and yet a new, better time was coming soon.  I too am an adjunct these days, love the work, but am not crazy about the conditions ... :) I also wonder if the intergenerational family will become the new norm--or the new old norm, as it once was the norm. 

     From Hystery:

It is an interesting idea, though I hardly think it is consciously held by most of us Gen-Xers, that you Boomers are like Zombies. I think you are right that this attitude, conscious or not, is born of a divide and conquer propaganda that tells us there is not enough for all and that we must fight each other for the scraps.

I do live with my mother and father and 98 year old grandmother as well as with my husband and children. It is what it is- usually good. Sometimes quite difficult. And I work as an adjunct (dreadfully exploited if I'm being honest) and share an office with my Baby Boomer father. We're both history faculty. He holds the only full time history job at the college and when he retires (which will be soon) they will likely decide to replace his full time position with more adjunct faculty without insurance, without a union, without job security. Until then, he does his best to protect us with all the pull and power his years, experience, and union membership afford him.

But there is a strong sense that there is some shuffling undead monster tracking us- feeding off brains and drawing us into a living death. I think it is not our parents but Exploitation and Apathy and Despair that mindlessly lurches toward us. We are not, perhaps, a generation well-known for our capacity for hope. But we shall see. Our story is not yet fully written.

Patience not passivity

I recently read a children's book from 1946 called The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. I am interested in children's literature, among other reasons, because of its influence on adults. In any case, in this story, a 13-year-old named Maria goes with her governess, Miss Heliotrope, to live with her uncle on his estate in the West Country. Early on, the village parson and several wise animals,  a dog (who turns out to be a lion--several years before Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and a cat, advise Maria to be patient and curb her troubling "feminine curiosity." This involves sitting and waiting quietly to be asked, for instance, to tour the estate's kitchens and other areas. Maria obeys, virtue is rewarded and Maria's curiosity satisfied--without annoying anyone in the process.

The book, which relies on the page-turning curiosity of its mostly female readers, and on Maria having the pluck to follow where her questions lead, soon drops the theme of cultivating passivity. However, I continued to ponder it, and the way passivity is often confused with patience.

Patience is not one of the fruits of the spirit contemporary Quakers emphasize. Our "p" is primarily for peace--more precisely peace-making, and we celebrate active virtues: cultivating simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality in how we live. Sitting patiently and waiting for other people to initiate change has not been part of our tradition.

It's important, however, I think, not to confuse patience with passivity. It seems to me Biblical patience has little to do with sitting quietly. The  patience of Job had everything to do with enduring suffering, not basking in beatific stillness as he laid on the dung heap, covered in sores.  Job actively cursed God, and God told the people criticizing Job for doing that that Job was right, that nobody deserved the kind of suffering he'd endured.

Early Quakers like  Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, who were imprisoned in Malta by the Inquisition for preaching up the Quaker word in a Catholic region, also don't fit a model of serene and saintly acceptance that we tend to associate with patience. They endured imprisonment--but they also fought back against it. Evans and Cheevers mounted a hunger strike in prison, complained vocally and resentfully about their abusive treatment and argued vigorously to refute both the theology and the threats of priests--but had the patience to resist trading freedom for, say, kissing the crucifix or recanting their Quaker testimony.

Malta cell of Evans and Cheevers

They had Biblical patience, a willingness to endure the consequences of following leadings, leadings that brought them into clashes with worldly authorities. Their patience was a fruit of activity, not passivity, and it was active in itself.

One of the earlier, lost meanings of being a "plain" people that the Quakers adopted as a label was "plaint" or complaint. The early Quakers were not simply plain because they had leveled their religion from the "airy" heights of the Anglicans or because they lived simply, but because they were people of the plaint--people with complaints--people who had suffered. They were patient but they weren't complaisant. Their patience in suffering was active and vocal, an incessant cry against the way they were treated. Their patience was accompanied by calls, again and again, for social justice.

This kind of patience,  a robust and even defiant willingness to endure the suffering brought on by following leadings, is a supernatural fruit of the spirit. The flesh shrinks from imprisonment, torture and want, the soul from the shame and censure that defying authority elicits in other people. This patience emerges not through passivity but through active immersion in the life of prayer and attention to spirit. Why does it well up during some periods and not others? Why do we seem to have so little of it today?

Eating violets: the Olney poetry slam

  
A month ago Olney had its poetry slam, and that might as well be an eon past in a wider culture structured to rush ceaselessly onward. We live in torrenting rapids, which threaten to smash to bits anything that can't keep pace. We hurtle into the latest event, temporal proximity lending to whatever is newest a heightened, if false importance. 

I say this as a way to note I am very late in writing about this slam. I recognize, however, that endless haste is the world speaking and will chose to live in the eternal Now, in which a poetry reading at a Quaker boarding school outweighs events much closer to us in time and (seeming) importance.

Olney students enjoy the poetry slam. 

At the poetry slam, I was impressed by Lee Tran's recitation of Brenna Twohy's  "In which I do not fear Harvey Dent." 

Lee Tran performs Brenna Twohy's  "In which I do not fear Harvey Dent" in the girl's dorm parlor. 

Lines from that poem, which likens coping with mental illness  to being a superhero,  still leap out at me: 

"you have never seen me out of costume,would not even recognize me outside of this armor
 ...

When you have mental illness, society tells you your only power is your invisibility.
Tells you that they would save you if only they could see you,
but of course they cannot see you,
of course they will not save you, no matter how bright you sew your cape.
Invisibility is not a superpower,
it is the best weapon of a broken system
desperate to make their streets look clean
... 

I know what it is to fight monsters.I know how strong an ordinary human has to be." 

Senior Noah Howells wrote a moving original poem about his four years at Olney, friendship, community and "mango cakes at midnight." Senior Joe Kingery read a poem called "A New Addiction Please" by John Brehm, which spoke eloquently to how upside-down our society is, asking why, instead of oil, we can't become addicted to the sun and the wind. Lichen Yang recited William Blake's "To See a World,"  going beyond the often quoted opening: 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

to the darker condemnation of human cruelty:

A dog starvd at his Masters Gate

Predicts the ruin of the State 

A Horse misusd upon the Road

Calls to Heaven for Human blood 

....

to the observation

Joy & Woe are woven fine 

A Clothing for the soul divine 

Under every grief & pine

Runs a joy with silken twine 

....

to

Some to Misery are Born 

Every Morn and every Night

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to sweet delight 

Some are Born to Endless Night 

 

....

to a Quakerly use of imagery:

God Appears & God is Light

To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 

But does a Human Form Display

To those who Dwell in Realms of day

     Concerns over language in prior slams led to a more decorous approach this year, and the running monologue of the facilitators, seniors Amihan Tindongan and Joe Kingery, spoofed propriety. Joe and Amihan kept the audience laughing with mock British accents, pinkies in the air and lessons in proper manners and inflection. The British-themed intermission included homemade scones and the hanging gauzy drape was a mannerly white sprinkled with purple flowers. 

At the slam, facilitators Amihan Tindongan and Joe Kingery spoofed propriety.

Discouraging the f-word, the s-word and other transgressive expressions can't, however, suppress poetry's ability to speak truth to power. As I listened, I was moved by the poems the students chose, and I sank into poetry's spiritual power, which we experience in our bodies as well as our minds. Even the early Quakers, frown as they might on romances (early novels) and drama, couldn't resist the allure of poetry: I think of Elizabeth Bathhurst bursting seemingly spontaneously into ecstatic couplets to express her vision of heaven. 

"An infinite ocean of light and love."

I learned at almost the same time as the poetry slam that humans can eat violets and that the leaves are high in vitamins A and C. For weeks, the violets were interspersed with the grass, and I added the bright flowers to salads. They tasted mild, faintly sweet, and seemed a metaphor for the Kingdom of God: it's all around us but we don't always know we can have it, not just watch it from afar but let it become a part of us. 

Violets bloomed all over Barnesville for awhile: "Eat and drink, this is my body given for you."

Eating violets also seemed like a metaphor for the poetry slam. With the seemingly fragile and ephemeral, we are touched and fed by the eternal Now.

March 14th Barnesville

Hyacinths will bloom soon. The weather is warming. Most of the snow is melted, though the lake is still covered in ice.

I have a terrible cold. Hoping it will pass. I feel a little like Gandalf in the caves of Moria, when he thinks he has escaped the monster, only to be felled by a last whip of light. I thought I had gotten through the winter without a cold ... and now this. The only redeeming quality to a cold is it reminds me how much more vigorous I usually am.

It is late for the hyacinths to bloom but it has been a very cold winter. It seems to me in Maryland we would see them in February.

My father, if alive, would have turned 91 today, Pi Day. We never used to call it that. He died a few weeks shy of his 80th birthday, during a nap. Not a bad way to go, at home, in peace. Eighty good years are fine. I still remember the sense of peace that emanated from the bedroom after my brother called me and we got there. His father died the same way, just shy of 80, in his case simply not waking up one morning. I would not be sorry to have such an end. Of course, with spring coming, new life is on my mind as well.

I am also almost done with my Bonhoeffer MS and could be done if I would just get well. And I believe I will. :)

Roger is very kind to me in my fallen, miserable state. I sometimes think kindness is all the world needs more of.

March 11th, Barnesville

It was heavily foggy this morning when I left, but I didn't think to take a picture. The fog was so thick and white it was eery, especially hanging over the lake, and the sun was not quite up. It was dark, appropriate for doing "House of Usher" in class.

I am sick with a cold. My throat is sore, my eyes itchy, everything is slow-motion. I can't do real intellectual work and maybe that is a gift. I could clean and I did. Students are coming over tonight to watch Apocalypse Now. I can blog and I am.

I did take a mid-afternoon photo, below. It's still overcast and through the trees you can catch glimpses of what looks like fog but is ice on the lake. All the snow has melted after all these months, except for a few patches, that look like some sort of fungi. It's warm, springlike.

I took a second picture this afternoon. This one above is to the west. The one below is the south view.

How I see space has changed since moving here. I think for the first year or more I just didn't see how much space we had around us or how big our yard was. My eyes had adjusted to small, and just couldn't take in large. I notice the opposite effect when we are in York. Roger's parents' quarter-acre yard now seems tiny. My eyes jump over it and into the yard behind it, as if were a prelude. It's odd, because before, my eyes fell right on their backyard and I didn't notice much beyond it. There's a metaphor here, that we see what we're trained to see. How much do we miss?

I like the empty space here, the vistas.

I am grateful for how the head cold slows me down and for being able to be at home. I read today wise words: "hold fast what is good." (1 Thess. 5-21) Hold fast what is good or you will lose it. I thought about what is good, so much good around me.

It is so quiet right now that you can hear the stillness. I think the birds must be glad of the warmth.

Snow Fort at Olney Friends School

Olney snowfort. If you look hard, you can see the circa 1910 Hutton House in the background.

When I saw a snow fort on the Olney campus, built by teacher and alum Jamie Zavitz and students, it captured my imagination, and I couldn't help but think of a book I read as a child:

That book really makes you want to build a snow fort. So I was delighted to see one at Olney. It made me wish I had gone to the school. 

According to the web, The Wonderful Winter Secret was published in 1931, but I remember it having a pre-World War I feeling. 

Whatever the date, there's a timeless quality to a snow fort, which seems to fit Olney.