Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Viney Revelation
I do believe that I just had a, how you say, epiphany of sorts.
As I was cleaning my room I was listening to a sermon by Efrem Smith, which he evidently gave way back in 2004. Mostly it was about people saying "no" when God asks them to do something, and how that is completely counterproductive to what His hope for the Kingdom (why does it seem like so many words should be capitalized when one writes about Christianity?) is, because every day one of us wakes up it is because God has said "yes" to us and we should return the favor. As long as He's letting us plod along on His green Earth (non-religious capitalization) we may as well do something about it.
Then, in what was just a tiny supporting argument Efrem brought up John 15 (the "I am the vine" passage) and, somehow, the way he read it made me get something out of it that I never had before. It also had nothing to do with what he was talking about or his overarching point, but I'll take what I can get, yo.
Lemme quote for you:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser (I'm sorry...this is a weird translation. English Standard Version..published in Chi-town). Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he prunes, that it might bear more fruit."
The bolded line, obviously, is the one to which I would like to call your attention. To me that line has always meant that if you're not working for God he snips you out of the way and then throws you and all other inadequate persons into a bonfire, after which he and all his angels roast cloud marshmallows over your twiggy, burning body. (I'm being macabre and poetic, and not entirely serious. Calm down. This ain't no "sinners in the hands of an angry God" talk here.)
Now, I'm getting something new. Pruning, although sometimes awful (in more ways than one), does not always mean maiming or bastardization. Maybe sometimes when we feel a little snip snip in our lives (and yes, it fucking hurts) it is God, knowing best, and making a few cuts to help us grow in a way that we otherwise may not have been able. What he takes away can seem vital. It might seem impossible to continue without whatever it is that he so painfully wrenched away from our side.
Anyone who knows me knows already what loss I am referring to in my life, and I'm not going to come out and say it because it is exactly what I never wanted anyone to say to me. It still doesn't make any sense to me, and if it was purposeful it was seemingly mean and premature. But it gave me comfort for a couple seconds. Maybe the comfort will return, maybe not.
Weeee shallll seeeeee.
As I was cleaning my room I was listening to a sermon by Efrem Smith, which he evidently gave way back in 2004. Mostly it was about people saying "no" when God asks them to do something, and how that is completely counterproductive to what His hope for the Kingdom (why does it seem like so many words should be capitalized when one writes about Christianity?) is, because every day one of us wakes up it is because God has said "yes" to us and we should return the favor. As long as He's letting us plod along on His green Earth (non-religious capitalization) we may as well do something about it.
Then, in what was just a tiny supporting argument Efrem brought up John 15 (the "I am the vine" passage) and, somehow, the way he read it made me get something out of it that I never had before. It also had nothing to do with what he was talking about or his overarching point, but I'll take what I can get, yo.
Lemme quote for you:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser (I'm sorry...this is a weird translation. English Standard Version..published in Chi-town). Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit he prunes, that it might bear more fruit."
The bolded line, obviously, is the one to which I would like to call your attention. To me that line has always meant that if you're not working for God he snips you out of the way and then throws you and all other inadequate persons into a bonfire, after which he and all his angels roast cloud marshmallows over your twiggy, burning body. (I'm being macabre and poetic, and not entirely serious. Calm down. This ain't no "sinners in the hands of an angry God" talk here.)
Now, I'm getting something new. Pruning, although sometimes awful (in more ways than one), does not always mean maiming or bastardization. Maybe sometimes when we feel a little snip snip in our lives (and yes, it fucking hurts) it is God, knowing best, and making a few cuts to help us grow in a way that we otherwise may not have been able. What he takes away can seem vital. It might seem impossible to continue without whatever it is that he so painfully wrenched away from our side.
Anyone who knows me knows already what loss I am referring to in my life, and I'm not going to come out and say it because it is exactly what I never wanted anyone to say to me. It still doesn't make any sense to me, and if it was purposeful it was seemingly mean and premature. But it gave me comfort for a couple seconds. Maybe the comfort will return, maybe not.
Weeee shallll seeeeee.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Social Network
Tonight Heather and I went to a preview showing of The Social Network in Saint Louis Park. Movie theaters these days are doing this newfangled (old fashioned?) thing where viewers get assigned seats, so upon arrival they flipped around their computer screen and let us pick which two gray, digital seats we wanted to turn green. I felt like I was booking tickets for a flight. It was all very new and exciting.
Getting into the preview was a bit of an ordeal. The movie theater seemed extraordinarily worried about people pirating the movie, so we had to surrender our cellphones to brown paper lunch bags and concede to metal detecting wand searches before we were allowed into the theater. As we only arrived 15 minutes early we had the immense treat of sitting in the second row, which made it very hard to read any text on the screen without supreme effort AND made me, personally, hyper-aware of how much makeup characters were wearing for the first scene (until the storyline of the movie caught up to me and made me focus more on the action and less on how cakey people's faces looked.)
The Social Network is not a happy-go lucky adventure story of a college student who starts up a billion-dollar company and has a great time doing it. It is not an exciting comedy-romp based in nerd-dom that is dumbed down just enough for us poor, unassuming commonfolk, who are mastered by instead of being masters of technology, to understand and enjoy.
It's actually kind of depressing.
Zuckerberg, although undeniably funny, is so consistently a jerk that it is really hard to like him (and this is coming from a girl whose taste in males tends towards witty, intelligent assholes.) His best friend, Saverin seemed to be portrayed as the quasi-hero of the movie, which was odd, because he was clearly a secondary character and most of his screen time was spent with him blinking back betrayed tears. The most likeable character in the movie was one who we we weren't supposed to like: Sean Parker. The thing about Sean Parker, though, was that he offered an energy, a love for life, that no other character had. While Parker was enjoying life to its maximum (albeit while being a skank, yes I will call a dude a skank), Saverin and Zuckerberg were so lost in their personal life-drama that it was hard to ever see them as what they probably were most of the time: college students who, although angsty, enjoyed their lives and friendship. One of my favorite scenes was when the two of them realized they had groupies, because, for a moment, they looked like exactly what they were: a couple of kids who were overwhelmed by, but excited about, what they were in the middle of.
This is not to say the movie is bad, because it's not. In fact, it is very, very good. The script is tight, witty, and interesting (I just looked up the screenwriter, because I was so impressed with his work. Turns out he's pretty much just worked on the West Wing. Also Charlie Wilson's War.) The actors are believable and talented. (I cannot tell you how many times my heart broke for Saverin and how many times I snorted into my ICEE when Zuckerberg drolly let fly another rude, defensive, but oh so comical aside. Even relatively unimportant characters, like Amy, the Stanford panties girl, were natural and added significantly to the development of other characters.) The cinematography is solid (there were a few shots that stuck out in a bad way, but usually shots ranged somewhere between functional and slightly artsy, which was exactly where they should be for a movie like this one.)
I definitely suggest seeing the movie. If nothing else it explains where our number one addiction these days comes from and even for those who have no interest in facebook or the lawsuits brought against Zuckerberg, there is the story of a lovelorn boy wedged delicately somewhere in the middle, who never quite learns how to say what he wants to say.
Getting into the preview was a bit of an ordeal. The movie theater seemed extraordinarily worried about people pirating the movie, so we had to surrender our cellphones to brown paper lunch bags and concede to metal detecting wand searches before we were allowed into the theater. As we only arrived 15 minutes early we had the immense treat of sitting in the second row, which made it very hard to read any text on the screen without supreme effort AND made me, personally, hyper-aware of how much makeup characters were wearing for the first scene (until the storyline of the movie caught up to me and made me focus more on the action and less on how cakey people's faces looked.)
The Social Network is not a happy-go lucky adventure story of a college student who starts up a billion-dollar company and has a great time doing it. It is not an exciting comedy-romp based in nerd-dom that is dumbed down just enough for us poor, unassuming commonfolk, who are mastered by instead of being masters of technology, to understand and enjoy.
It's actually kind of depressing.
Zuckerberg, although undeniably funny, is so consistently a jerk that it is really hard to like him (and this is coming from a girl whose taste in males tends towards witty, intelligent assholes.) His best friend, Saverin seemed to be portrayed as the quasi-hero of the movie, which was odd, because he was clearly a secondary character and most of his screen time was spent with him blinking back betrayed tears. The most likeable character in the movie was one who we we weren't supposed to like: Sean Parker. The thing about Sean Parker, though, was that he offered an energy, a love for life, that no other character had. While Parker was enjoying life to its maximum (albeit while being a skank, yes I will call a dude a skank), Saverin and Zuckerberg were so lost in their personal life-drama that it was hard to ever see them as what they probably were most of the time: college students who, although angsty, enjoyed their lives and friendship. One of my favorite scenes was when the two of them realized they had groupies, because, for a moment, they looked like exactly what they were: a couple of kids who were overwhelmed by, but excited about, what they were in the middle of.
This is not to say the movie is bad, because it's not. In fact, it is very, very good. The script is tight, witty, and interesting (I just looked up the screenwriter, because I was so impressed with his work. Turns out he's pretty much just worked on the West Wing. Also Charlie Wilson's War.) The actors are believable and talented. (I cannot tell you how many times my heart broke for Saverin and how many times I snorted into my ICEE when Zuckerberg drolly let fly another rude, defensive, but oh so comical aside. Even relatively unimportant characters, like Amy, the Stanford panties girl, were natural and added significantly to the development of other characters.) The cinematography is solid (there were a few shots that stuck out in a bad way, but usually shots ranged somewhere between functional and slightly artsy, which was exactly where they should be for a movie like this one.)
I definitely suggest seeing the movie. If nothing else it explains where our number one addiction these days comes from and even for those who have no interest in facebook or the lawsuits brought against Zuckerberg, there is the story of a lovelorn boy wedged delicately somewhere in the middle, who never quite learns how to say what he wants to say.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)