Saturday, February 27, 2010

Standing in a line that wound around and down the block to the River Oaks Theater in Houston, I had to laugh at myself and the lengths to which  I was willing to go in order to see Jeff Bridges disappear into the role of Bad Blake in Crazy Heart.   I usually wait until the crowds aren't so big.

I knew that the movie was about a country music singer who is broken-down from too much drinking, too many women and too much hard living on the road of success that had taken him from the good times to the bottom.  What I hadn't anticipated was that the movie would touch me so deeply with the power of redemption.

Leaving the theater after the movie, I noticed that the crowd was subdued.  People talked quietly as we walked to our cars by yet another long line wound around the block.   Perhaps the story touched a nerve with others as it did with me.   I knew that I would be turning Crazy Heart over in my mind for a long time.

Parts of the movie were hard to watch and I was disappointed--at first -- that it didn't have the ending I thought it might have,  but isn't that like real life?

What I did love was that the movie gave a clear-eyed view of redemption and once I got over my disappointment at the way things ended, I saw clearly that the guy and the girl both were transformed in the grit and grime of recovery and because they had found each other for a moment in time.

Bad Blake reached out to Jean, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, a journalist who saw the man behind the musician.  Perhaps he reached out to her as he had to all of the women in his past, hoping that she would save him.  And maybe she thought that she could save him.  We co-dependents live under that narcisisstic delusion.

In their romance, Jean would find her own redemption.  She found her way out of a pattern of co-dependency, but not before she'd repeated her own self-defeating ways and put her child and herself in jeopady.  I wanted her to get healthy and I wanted her to find true love, but how that happened didn't fit my happily-ever-after picture.

And Bad?  In his roughness and rawness, we got to see in brutal clarity that the power of the lifeforce that pushes us toward wholeness, salvation, sobriety and sanity was miraculously stronger in him than those afflictive forces that made him keep doing the same old destructive things over and over again.  Frankly, the moments in the movie when it seemed that Bad would succumb to the downward pull were almost too vivid and ugly for me, but that the bottom was so low made his heroic efforts even more dramatic.

Here's what I learned about redemption from Crazy Heart:   Being bought back or brought back from the edge of destruction is possible, but who you are when you come back and how things are may not be like you pictured them to be.  In the long run and the short one, we are free to choose our habits, year after wasted year, but we aren't free to choose the results and the outcome of those choices. 

As many times as I have quoted the nursery rhyme, I still want Humpty Dumpty put back together again, without any signs of breakage.  That nursery rhyme has stood the test of time because it contains a deep, hard truth about life.   Redemption doesn't mean that everything can be put back like it was.

Redemption doesn't mean that the people you devastated on your way down to the bottom are going to want to have anything to do with you when you decide to reform.  Redemption doesn't mean that you can plant weeds and reap orchids.  And redemption doesn't mean that you don't have to deal with the results of your behavior, but it can mean that you have access to a Power greater than yourself that can work for good within the worst situations.  As it is said in AA about the program of recovery, "It works if you work it."

Redemption from any addiction, whether to persons, processes or substances, doesn't mean you can re-wind your life, delete the unsavory parts and start over from the beginning, but it does mean that every day from the day you decide to live clean and sober,  you can start over again, making decisions from a new place in your heart. 

The most poignant part of the movie is not that the guy didn't get his girl or that a younger, hot singer took center stage.  The saddest part for me is that Bad Blake didn't get to sing his own song for the crowds. 

He got the money for the song, but he didn't get to sing his own song.  He got to hear his own song performed for a crowd as he walked away under a brillian blue sky, but he didn't get to sing his own song.  He had to listen to the crowds cheer while his song was sung by someone else, and that made me want to cry.

Bad Blake recovered from being bad and decided to live by his real name, and perhaps redemption is all about being brought back home to yourself, and having the courage to be who you really are and go by your real, authentic name.  Otis Blake was brought back and bought back, and he had to make a new life. I want to believe that that blue sky and clear sunny day at the end was letting us know that while things weren't going to be exactly as Otis had pictured them, life would be different, better, happier for him.  The reality is that we don't get to know the ultimate ending for Otis Blake.

The romantic/idealist/optimist in me wants to believe that Otis Blake went on to write even better hit songs.  I want to believe he found the perfect person to share his new life and redemption with him. 

And I want to believe that Jeff Bridges will get the Oscar for Best Actor.

That part of me who believes that God is at work in all things, attempting to bring about good, wants to believe that good things come from taking it one day at a time, surrendering our wills and our lives over and over to the care of God, not just as I understand him, but God who is beyond all understanding. 

The part of me who believes in redemption truly believes in letting go of my agenda and letting God take the lead in making in this mysterious, mighty act of becoming whole.  Some of us call that salvation.

Most of the time, I do believe that, and when I don't, I pray, "I believe; help my unbelief."

Grace happens.

Take it while you can.  Take all of it you can hold.  And then.....take some more.   

And if you want to keep it, give it.

Grace to you--

Jeanie

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

In James Hollis' book, WHAT MATTERS MOST: LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE,  he begins Chapter Two with this quote by Thomas Edison:  "We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."

That quote flies in the face of the part of me that wants to masquerade as a know-it-all, and this second chapter, "Saving the Appearances:  That We Learn to Tolerate Ambiguity," builds on the previous chapter in which Jim lays the foundation of what matters with the idea that our lives not be governed by fear.

If I tell the truth, it can be annoying, disorienting, nerve-wracking and sometimes downright terrifying to face those places in my life where there is ambiguity.   The little child in me craves certainty, and the more tumultous and chaotic the outer world becomes, the more I long for that which is absolutely true, predictable, unchanging and stable.   My ego -- that central organ of consciousness -- all but demands stability, predictability and familiarity.

The irony is that the more I demand certainty, the less secure I feel, for the need for certainty has something akin to the addictive cycle implicit in it.    I have to ask myself, "Just how much certainty do I need to feel secure?" and when I get that much, why is it that I still need just a bit more to feel safe and secure?   How elaborate do the machines at the airport have to be to guarantee me ultimate security when I get on a plane?  How sophisticated do the medical tests have to be to assure me that I am healthy?

Indeed, it is fear that fuels the need for certainty, but life seems to invite us into those places where the answers may be unknown, the dots don't connect and the possibilities open to us do not guarantee that a day in our lives, a relationship, a project or our very lives will turn out as we think they will.  The universe is full of infinite possibilites and each day contains variables we cannot even imagine, and so we are called to detach from the obsessive need to have the answers and move into the largeness of a life that dares to live the questions.

My faith is built on a deep belief in God, and throughout my life that confidence in God and God's infinite love has sustained me, nourished and nurtured me and challenged me.

How God behaves is another matter, and all of my mental gyrations about the Source of all things doesn't make God conform to my will, my prayers or my fantasies about God.    I've learned the hard way that God is Holy Autonomy. 

My friends in AA say that the hard way is the easy way.  I've learned the truth of that, as well.

Here's the other irony for me:  It is the very fact that I cannot manipulate, coerce or control God that makes me able to trust God, for if I could overpower the Almighty, so could....someone else.  If I could make God conform to my laundry list of things I think God should do, would that really be God?  My small ideas about God don't actually have the power to shrink God down into manageable bites, and my little fantasies about life don't have the power to diminish life, except in my mind.

And so it is that my faith is enlarged by stepping into the cloud of unknowing, that interior space that allows me to be curious and open-minded about life and others and God.

Don't get me wrong:  in a nano-second, I can be scared back into that need for life and God and others to conform to my needs, my ideas and my directives.  Scared enough, I scream for certainties that will assure the little child in me that everything is going to be O.K., I'm O.K. and it will all work out in the end.   I want to know that the best woman will win, and I want that to be me.  I want happy endings. I want to know that sick friends will get well.  I want to be assured that what I am doing is the right thing.

Life invites us into a larger, more risky adventure.

What certainties do you want?

When have you depended on a certainty to hold absolutely, at all times?  When have you depended on a relationship, a venture, an idea or a belief that turned out to be strong enough to bear the burden of your demand of it?   When has that not worked for you?

When have you challenged your ideas about God and found that your God-concept was way too small?

I'm confident in the unrelenting grace of God. 

I don't have a clue how God will choose to extend that grace today.

Grace, anyway -- right?

Jeanie

(This is the first in a four week series of reflections based on Chapter Two of the book WHAT MATTERS MOST:  LIVING A MORE CONSIDERED LIFE,  by James Hollis.    You can order Jim's books from here -- http://www.junghouston.org or from http://www.amazon.com.     You can also order CDs of his lecture from this course from the Jung Center in Houston.           Previous posts from this series can be found by clicking "What Matters" on the home page of this website.)