Jason Ardanowski

August 11, Part 2: Meeting Gerry Adams

2006-11-28T16:12:00.000-08:00

Clonard Monastary, a Catholic enclave nestled within a Protestant neighborhood on the west side of Belfast, promoted peace in Northern Ireland in a unique way. During the 1980's, as Belfast got sick of the Troubles, but before the goodwill to make peace existed, the Clonard monks used their good offices as a clandestine negotiating place for (still officially "terrorist") IRA members to meet and arrange local ceasefires with Protestant militias. The trust built in these informal, off-the-record meetings proved crucial to the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement.

The irrepressible Brian McKee had arranged 40 tickets for the Americans and Germans to attend a rare Friday night concert at historic Clonard Cathedral, its interior decorated almost wholly in stained glass and mosaics colored purple or lavender. We entered at sunset into an eerie, otherwordly church. Strange reflections radiated from the impact of the rays of the setting sun upon the cathedral's purple interior. We felt much nearer to the presence of Jesus than I usually feel in Catholic cathedrals.

While I was silently meditating, a buzz passed through the crowd, and Brian (not Brian McKee, but Brian, the young priest who traveled with us and said some of our Masses) said that Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein and rumored onetime IRA member, had arrived. He asked me, mindful of my political interests, "Would you like to meet Gerry Adams?"

I was nonplussed, and mindful of being one of many, so I gave (I thought) a safe answer, "No, I'm sure he's a busy man who doesn't want to be interrupted at a concert." So the matter should have ended - until, five minutes later, Father Brian tapped me on the shoulder and says, "Let's go." I looked up, and standing with Father Brian was a balding man in a brown suit. I've been around politicians often enough to instantly realize that he was Gerry Adams's body man. "Whoo boy," I thought to myself, "this is the real deal."

The two men ushered me out a side entrance to Clonard Cathedral and through a long wood-paneled hall to the doorway of a VIP room. Father Brian whispered into my ear, "Bishop Donal will introduce you."

We entered the room. Father Brian tapped Bishop Donal on the shoulder. The bishop broke off his conversation with another person, turned, said a few words of introduction, and I was face to face with Gerry Adams. We exchanged greetings and pleasantries; then, to my delight, he consented to have Father Brian take a snapshot of the two of us. I have a huge, goofy grin on my face, but I didn't care - I, raised in the Catholic church, had met the leader of the struggle for a Catholic and united Ireland.

Amazingly, I nearly forgot my encounter in the wondrous music we enjoyed that evening. Colin Reid, an exquisite, melodic classical guitarist, opened for the twelve-person acapella choir, Anuna. Their genres ranged all over the map, from Latin chant to traditional Gaelic to contemporary folk songs. I can't do justice in words to their voices. Ethereal, wispy, haunting music wafted through the candlelight as the choir members glided to different positions in the dimmed cathedral. It was unlike, and better than, any choir I had ever heard. It was the final blessing in a day full of blessings.

August 11, Part 1: The Strenuous Life

2006-11-26T17:19:00.001-08:00

On the morning of August 11, we went to Woodhill, an outdoor activity center deep in the County Antrim wooded countryside. We Americans and Germans were older and more able than the usual crowd at Woodhill: middle-schoolers and handicapped students. Therefore, the activity directors there prepared a full day for us.

We began with whole-group team building games, such as bouncing a football from one end to the other on a giant parachute, funneling a golf ball through short lengths of PVC pipe without dropping the ball, and running, 20 people across, under a jump rope. Then, we broke up into small groups of six or seven people and performed mental and physical feats of strength, such as advancing from one stepping-stone to another on a wooden plank, or stacking used tires in a Tower of Hanoi puzzle.

I helped barbecue a mountainous stack of hamburgers and hot dogs for our lunch, but our wackiest Woodhill activity was yet to come: banana-boating. The River Bann, a wide and deep (albeit not long) stream, separates County Antrim from County Derry. Even in early August, the water was no warmer than 50 degrees Fahrenheit. We put on hideous-looking, skintight wetsuits, life jackets, and borrowed old shoes. Fortunately, I can't see five feet without my glasses, so I was spared the sights. The teens were highly amused to see each other in such ridiculous outfits.

When we drove two kilometers from Woodhill to the river's edge, we had a choice: patter about in individual canoes, or go banana-boating. I was scared out of my wits, but the teens talked me into banana-boating. This involved sitting on a long, bright yellow inner tube-like object with six seats, leaning with the boat, and generally hanging on for dear life. We did this for three or four minutes; then, our guides dumped everyone off the banana boat into the icy waters and we had to dogpaddle back to the dock.

I felt great after it was all over and we had changed back into our clothes for the bus ride back to Belfast. I was petrified at the thought of banana-boating, but overcame my fears and had a rollicking good time of it!

To Be Continued...

2006-11-26T17:19:00.000-08:00

For those of you eagerly awaiting my next post, please wait patiently! August 11 and 12 will appear in a special double post on Tuesday.

August 10: Following Giants' Causeway

2006-11-25T11:28:00.000-08:00

Adulthood is an achievement, not a birthright. Turning 18 is a biological event. Adulthood comprises much more: first, the ability to decide what is important and what isn't; second, wholehearted commitment to your goals, even when momentary pleasures and temptations distract you from the task at hand.

Very few people realize these facts with ease. Most of us waste our time doing trifling things and realize the tawdriness of temptations before we become adults. Some people, regrettably, take most of their lives to discover the truth. I was luckier; for me, everything changed when I crushed my ankle.

For two St. Colette's teens, everything changed when their good friend, Dane, slipped going out of a hot tub and got gashed by a glass drinking cup. Both of them shared my disgust for blood and wounds, but they rose to the needs of the moment. One applied pressure to the wound with a towel, thereby preventing Dane from going into shock. The other made her first-ever 911 call, ensuring that EMS arrived on the site in minutes and saving Dane's life.

Corrymeela, the place where we ate our boxed lunches, saved many lives itself. It is a retreat center and sanctuary on a hill overlooking the town of Ballycastle and the Irish Sea. During the Troubles, it was a safe haven for both Catholics and Protestants. Now, Corrymeela sponsors interfaith programs for summer campers and teens with a record of legal troubles. We took fantastic pictures looking down from the hillside to open water.

I kept thinking of adult duties at Giants' Causeway that afternoon. There are two routes at Giants' Causeway: the low route, where you can climb among the hexagonal basalt formations, or the upper route, where you climb along a cliff edge and look down on the geometric patterns of the rocks. About a dozen of us took the upper route. Irish afternoons are notoriously windy; on an exposed cliff, it was brutal. It was hard to stand or walk upright. Conversations had to be shouted over the howling, gusting gale.

We made our way down, and the weather calmed by the time we reached Portstewart (passing the famous Royal Portrush golf links on the way). Fr. Raymond, one of the several Irish priests who traveled with the Americans and Germans, extended the open hand of Irish hospitality to us that evening. We celebrated a simple Mass at his parish, then walked through the streets of Portstewart to his own home for supper. There, inside and outside his house, volunteers from his parish cooked and grilled food for about 60 people.

After the meal, on a day when I learned about how to be an adult, I got to be a kid again: Fr. Raymond called for a football match between the Americans and the Europeans (the Germans and our Irish hosts). We played in Fr. Raymond's long, narrow backyard beside his beautifully kept garden; I was astonished, but his grass was lusher and his plants hardier than any garden in Michigan. During the game, we fought to a 5-5 tie, but Brian McKee, playing with the gusto of a schoolboy, won it on a brilliant diving header.

Day 4 is coming tomorrow!

August 9: Murals

2006-11-24T16:23:00.000-08:00

It seems daffy that Catholics and Protestants would hate each other to the point of murder. Ramesh Ponnuru, a zealous editor for the National Review, recently wrote an uncharitable book calling the Democratic Party The Party of Death, but so far as I know, Democrats walk the streets of Washington, D.C. safely at night. Sadly, the rhetorical in our own culture became all too real in Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1998.

Briefly: the Irish War of Independence (1919-22) ended with the partition of the island into the Republic of Ireland, consisting of 26 of the island's 32 historical counties, and Northern Ireland, consisting of six counties in the northeast with a Protestant majority. For 45 years, the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland lived as second-class citizens. In 1968, they had had enough and began a non-violent civil rights campaign, modeled after Martin Luther King Jr.'s work in the American South.

The British army, which also policed Northern Ireland through the Royal Ulster Constabulatory, clubbed the marchers and looked the other way when Protestant thugs brawled with them. Two cold decades followed of suicide bombings, gun battles, segregated neighborhoods, and glorified "war heroes" who were no better than butchers. At last, both sides tired of the bloodshed, and by 1998 they were ready to make peace.

The uneasy peace has held, but we took a bus tour and saw the legacies all around Belfast - the dozens of wall murals that dot the city, some with images of IRA heroes like hunger-striker Bobby Sands, some with ascerbic political commentary, and - yes - some old, not-yet-washed out paramilitary murals with hooded men and weapons. One particular mural, a beautiful painting of Oliver Cromwell, contained a scroll with the words, "There will be no peace in Ireland until the Catholic Church is crushed!" I found it funny; however, the teens were badly shook up.

After the bus tour, we went to Stormont, the Northern Irish seat of government (now going unused while the Catholics and Protestants struggle to hash out a power-sharing agreement before the December deadline). Our hosts fed us a lavish lunch and allowed us to sit in the parliamentarians' chairs. We took some fantastic pictures on the steps of the snow-white granite building and looking along its mile-long, downsloping driveway.

As the day yielded to twilight, we enjoyed Mass and dinner at St. Colmcille's Parish, near Stormont in southern Belfast. Afterwards, a troupe of Irish tap dancers, between 5 and 16 years old, put on a show for us and our German friends. I watched the performance with Brian McKee's daughter, Fiona, whom I asked, "Is this like piano lessons or ballet in the U.S., something parents make their kids do until the kids get tired of it?" At once, my table broke up in laughter, and Fiona told me I was on the mark.

Day 3 is coming tomorrow!

August 8: We Arrive in Belfast

2006-11-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

Editor's note: this is the first of an eight-part series.

I went to Northern Ireland as an adult volunteer with St. Colette Youth Group from August 7 to August 16 this year. The eight days we spent in fellowship - from the 8th to the 15th - were the most eye-opening and enriching days of my life. We worshiped together, learned together, and relaxed together. We met as strangers and parted as friends.

We weren't sure what to expect when we came to Northern Ireland. The idea began with Brian McKee, the director of YouthCom (the youth ministry office for the Belfast diocese), who had known Laura Piccone Hanchon, St. Colette's youth minister, for many years. He brought together Laura's group, a German youth group who had housed Brian's young people at the last World Youth Day in Cologne, and YouthCom's own youth.

When we stepped out of the Dublin airport terminal, it felt unlike anything we had ever known. The early morning sun blazed down and blinded us as we loaded our suitcases into two rickety, pint-sized buses for the road trip to Belfast. We all felt tired; we had barely slept on our trans-Atlantic flight, and a full day of activities awaited us after our two-and-a-half hour bus ride.

Just past 11:00 a.m. Irish time (five hours' difference from Michigan), we reached St. Malachy's College, a combined K-12 Catholic school and minor seminary in north Belfast. We unpacked and ate a simple lunch with our German fellow pilgrims and our Irish hosts. The bright morning sunshine had yielded to steady rain, so we carpooled across town and became tourists. We explored the Ulster Museum, which included dinosaur skeletons, artifacts from the nearby wreckage of the Spanish Armada, and a frank exhibit about the Troubles. Adjacent to the museum is Queen's University, the best-regarded of Belfast's three universities. We took a leisurely walk through its world-renowed botanical garden and snuck a peek into an ornately decorated, high-ceilinged Victorian lecture hall.

All of us Americans were dragging from fatigue by now, but we returned to YouthCom and gamely held on through a scrumptious dinner and a lively welcoming Mass. After Mass, the American and German teens mixed as an Irish folk band entertained us. Our long first day in Ireland had ended.

Day 2 is coming tomorrow!

Daily meditation

2006-06-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

Psalm 91: 1-2

You who dwell in the shelter of the LORD,
who abide in the shadow of the Most High,
say to the LORD, "My refuge and fortress,
my God in whom I trust!"

May these words bring peace. Amen.

Daily meditation

2006-06-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

Acts 2:16-21:

Peter proclaimed to the assembly: "This was what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

"It will come to pass in the last days, God says, that I will pour out a portion of my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams."

"Indeed, upon my servants and my handmaids I will pour out a portion of my spirit in those days, and they shall prophesy. I will work wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below: blood, fire, and a cloud of smoke."

"The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the great and splendid day of the Lord, and it shall be that everyone shall be saved who calls on the name of the Lord."

May we heed God's command to prophesy out of the fullness of his Spirit, alive in each of us. Amen.

The life and death of Doug Hoekstra

2006-05-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

[Bill Clinton's] formal powers are intact, but his informal powers - the ability to establish the policy agenda and to set a moral tone - are seriously compromised as he fights allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a White House intern and urged her to lie about it.

"It may be one of the most surreal State of the Union addresses we have ever seen," says Doug Hoekstra, a political analyst at Michigan State University.

-- Linda Feldmann and Skip Thurman, "Statecraft From Under a Cloud", Christian Science Monitor 27 January 1998.

Doug Hoekstra taught the last course of his life in horrible pain. He could not walk up the stairs to Case Hall's second-floor seminar room. Instead, he took the elevator up to the third floor and shuffled his way down a flight of stairs, grimacing. No doubt he envied my freedom to buy a cup of coffee in Barista Cafe below and dash up the stairs ahead of him, but he hardly mentioned his own pain during class. Small hurts never bothered him.

Dr. Hoekstra's faculty bio on the James Madison College web site, http://www.jmc.msu.edu/faculty/show.asp?id=12, reads: "He is currently working on changing models of the presidency and the practices of presidential statesmanship, as well as on the relationships between presidential beliefs and actions." The relationships between beliefs and actions - among Presidents of the United States and the humblest students - inspired Dr. Hoekstra's teaching. For 36 consecutive academic years, from fall 1969 to spring 2006, he taught that belief without action was valueless.

Dr. Hoekstra's creed made him a stranger and outsider in an academic world that valued pure intention more highly than what was done. But when this academic disease infected the world of politics, when two presidents of immaculate pure intention, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, lapsed, one into sexual immorality, the other into a bloody mess of a war, Dr. Hoekstra talked!

He talked to the Christian Science Monitor and other national publications, but he also talked with his students. I was one of those students. I took three of his courses: a MC 201 discussion section, MC 374 on the American presidency, and MC 492, a PTCD senior seminar about war, elections, and democracy.

He spoke to me in a finely balanced blend of praise and criticism, doling out either according to my actions. On one of my MC 201 essays, which earned a 3.7, he wrote: "As usual, [you] write with some grace. See marginalia on where you need to say more." During a March rough patch when I tried to justify a late paper, he cut off my blather in mid-sentence. I paraphrase him: "Jason, I have seen what you have done in the past, but good students hand in their work on time." It struck me like a dagger and changed my behavior. I finished all my assignments in all my classes on time from that moment forward. It was much like what my Dad would have said to me.

The last time I met Dr. Hoekstra was the day before graduation. I was about to enter the Case Hall cafeteria for lunch when Dr. Hoekstra, casually dressed in Bermuda shirt and khaki shorts on that warm day, entered the building. I greeted him, asked if he had read and graded one of my papers (he had), and wished him a safe surgery. He stepped into a south-side elevator and said something to the effect of "Thank you - you never know how these things will turn out". The elevator doors shut, separating us for the rest of my earthly life.

Daily Scripture lesson

2006-05-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

Proverbs 21: 25-26

The desire of the sluggard kills him,
for his hands refuse to labor.

All day long he craves and craves,
but the righteous gives and does not hold back.

As many men are, I am prone to bouts of laziness. This passage identifies what it is about laziness that sets it against God's will. The lazy one wants others to give to him, but the righteous one wants to give to others. The second route is the surer path to joy.

Daily Scripture lesson

2006-05-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

: John 15: 12-16; This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
: You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends,because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
: It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.

This was the Catholic gospel lesson this past Sunday. Our parish priest, Fr. Henry Roodbeen, preached an effective sermon on what "love of neighbor" - a hard concept to pin down - means in our daily living. Fr. Henry elucidated three points:

1) Love of neighbor comes from intimately shared experience. Love founders when the lover cannot feel empathy for the beloved. This does not mean that we must do the exact same deeds as our neighbors, and vice versa, for love to flourish; instead, we need to share whatever we do fully and truthfully for love to flourish.

2) Love of neighbor is local. There is no intimacy in spiritual distance. Nor can we love our neighbors in a detached, Stoic manner. Love flows from human interaction - a one-on-one encounter, a small group with members aflame in the Spirit, and a phone call or letter from a far-away friend.

Being kind to our most beloved - our family and dear friends - and to the people we meet in our daily living is more important than loving the whole world with shallow roots.

3) Love of neighbor brings joy to both the lover and the beloved. Love does not tear down; it builds up. It does not want; it contains everything it needs. First Corinthians 13 suffices on this point.

I pray this lesson brings strength and inspiration to its readers.

Tennis

2006-05-07T15:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, as daylight dwindled, Nathan and I drove the half-mile to Bicentennial Park for a set of tennis. Nathan has played junior varsity tennis for Churchill High School for two months now. In spite of that, I thought I could give him a close game.

Gosh, I was wrong. Nathan ran me all around the court. I lost the set 1-6; even worse, I was not competitive at all. Nathan's big serve had always been a formidable, if erratic, weapon. He has greatly improved his accuracy, and he scored several aces in the set.

Nathan has developed these "kill shots" that punish my tendency to keep the ball in play rather than attempt a fancy shot. He can hit a ball down the baseline that skids no more than six inches above the ground, or he can hit a drop shot, make me run up to the net, and then lob his return volley over my head.

One particular game, on my service, stood out to me. I double-faulted (first serve into the net, second serve long): 0-15. Then we volleyed back and forth a few times until he hit a hard, low shot down the baseline: 0-30.

At 0-30, I hit a weak second serve, and I saw Nathan set up for another one of his baseline skidders. I turned and ran to the back right corner, determined not to be beat along the baseline again. But, like LeBron James driving past Antawn Jamison on the baseline in Game 5 of the Cavs/Wizards series, Nathan's shot landed in about a 3-inch gap between my right ankle and the chalk: 0-40.

I managed to reach 30-40, but lost the game. It's not as if I stunk it up out there; Nathan's game has grown to the point where he's that much better a tennis player than I am.

Earl Woods

2006-05-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

Earl Dennison Woods died this past Wednesday at age 74.

He ranked high on the list of "People I Wish I Had Known." His long and varied life included two feats of supreme mental strength. In 1951, as a 19-year-old, he integrated college baseball in the Big Seven conference (now better known as the Big 12), playing catcher for Kansas State University. Then, he served two tours of duty in the hellish Vietnam War - as a Green Beret, no less.

In this time when the United States is at war, my utmost respect goes out to all our soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places; even more so, to our most distinguished soldiers, like Earl Woods was.

For further enjoyment, read this gem of an interview that was published in the February 2004 issue of Golf Digest. Earl Woods shares his opinions on everything from collard greens to male menopause. His life in sports spanned from catching Satchel Paige to watching Michelle Wie.

Still, I have one nagging question about Earl Woods' life. Before he married Tiger's mother, Kultida, he had three children - Earl Jr., Kevin, and Royce - in his first marriage. I wonder what those three people (Tiger is 30 years old, so they must be pushing 40) are doing now. How hard it must be to know that Tiger Woods is your half-brother! Even more so when your dad comments that all of you were just a "training family" in preparation for the childhood of the god-king, Tiger.

None of us, though, are without our own sins and faults, and this blemish does not mar the fact of Earl Woods's extraordinary life.

Zechariah

2006-04-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

I have been cultivating the habit of reading daily from the Bible. Sometimes, I can only read for a few minutes; other times, I have read for a full hour.

One man who has made a strong impression on me is Zechariah. He appears in Scripture only in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Yet his role in God's plan, though small, is a weighty one. In Luke 1:11, Zechariah is the first person to hear the Good News of the New Testament.

Perhaps due to my Catholic upbringing, the scene is easy for me to visualize: the aging priest, alone, burning incense on a barren altar ("all the worshippers were outside", reads v.10) when the angel Gabriel appears before him:

"Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord."

For disbelieving in God's power, Zechariah is struck dumb. Both he and Elizabeth were descendants of Aaron the high priest (v. 5). Zechariah's muting seems senseless (Mary questions Gabriel because she is a virgin, but is not condemned) unless we interpret it as stopping the mouth of the Aaronic priesthood. Zechariah will beget John, who will herald Jesus, the True Priest whose sacrifice on the cross saved us from sin and death.

Let's look at a book written specifically for Jewish Christians, Hebrews 10:11-14: "Every priest stands daily at his ministry, offering frequently those same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But this one offered one sacrifice for sins, and took his seat forever at the right hand of God. Now he waits until his enemies are made his footstool; for by one offering he has made perfect forever those who are being consecrated."

So it is entirely befitting that the New Covenant should manifest itself first to a Jewish priest of the old covenant. The same, that Zechariah the priest should be struck dumb - both a physical fact and a metaphor for Jesus's soon-to-be abolishment of the Aaronic priesthood. The same, that the angel Gabriel presents Zechariah's paternity as a trustworthy sign to Mary (vs. 36-37): "Even Elizabeth your cousin will bear a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For all things are possible with God."

Most Christians have some recollection of the Magnificat, Mary's wonderful hymn of praise to God upon the occasion of her visit to Elizabeth (vs. 46-55). Hardly anyone knows Zechariah's song of praise after his son, John the Baptist, is born and named, ending his period of muteness (vs. 67-79):

"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come and has redeemed his people.

He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace."

To Zechariah's song, I say: Amen.

Match Point

2006-04-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

One week ago Friday, I saw Woody Allen's film Match Point at Wells Hall. I had never seen a Woody Allen film before, and this one was every bit as thought-provoking as I had hoped.

Spoiler alert: Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a good-looking former pro tennis player who gets hired as an instructor at an exclusive London tennis club. Chris befriends his first student, Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), the son of a moneyed businessman. The two men share a love of opera, and Chris meets and falls in love with Tom's artistically minded sister, Chloe.

Tom's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Hewett, welcome Chris into the family like a son and set him up in a lucrative job in which Chris excels. He and Chloe marry. Everything seems splendid. Then things fall apart.

Tom's girlfriend, Nola Rice (Scarlett Johannson), is a young, sultry American would-be actress who catches every man's eye, including Chris's. Yet, in contrast to Chris, Nola was not an acceptable spouse to Mr. and Mrs. Hewett. In a climactic scene, Nola runs out of the Hewetts' country house in tears during a rainstorm, Chris follows at a distance and overtakes her, and the two begin a torrid affair right then.

Here, Woody Allen taught me a disturbing lesson: It's easy for a married man to cheat on his wife and rationalize away the consequences. Leaving aside who Chris's partner was (I joked with my roommate, Cody, "I'd cheat on my wife if it could be with Scarlett Johansson"), Chris had two distinct moral choices. The first and simplest would have been to not initiate the affair at all. The second [after the affair has gone on for a few months and Nola tells Chris she is pregnant] would have been for Chris to admit he loved Nola more than his wife, divorce Chloe, accept the loss of Mr. Hewitt's patronage, and take responsibility for his child. Instead, Chris makes an immoral choice. I'll spare the gruesome details.

Woody Allen generates a lot of power from telling the movie from Chris's stream of consciousness. Even when I knew Chris was making monstrous choices, they don't seem so bad on the screen because Chris gets ever more proficient at lying to himself.

As a side note, the scene in which Nola tells Chris she will not abort their child is breathtaking. Having already aborted one pregnancy as a high-schooler and a second at Tom's demand, Nola says she darn well won't make the same mistake a third time. I could write another whole entry about that one scene.

Another interesting facet of Match Point is Woody Allen's use of opera throughout the film. In the beginning, it brings Tom and Chris together. Chris and Chloe's first date is a double-date at the opera with Tom and Nola, and his first gift to Chloe is an opera recording.

During Chris and Nola's affair, Chris still maintains the trappings of respectable married life, including going to the opera with Chloe - but the arias seem effete and neutered vis-a-vis Chris and Nola's steamy sexual encounters. It turns full circle at the end, though, when Chris hears arias from eminent composers Donizetti, Bizet, and Rossini as reminders of lost innocence and as condemnations of his hypocricy.

I highly recommend this film and will be watching more of Mr. Allen's films this summer.

Facebook

2006-04-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

For you young and hip readers who keep Facebook profiles, this blog has become my personal Web page on my profile.

Also, please pray for a close friend of mine whose uncle died earlier this week. When I last saw her, she was typing a poem she had written for his upcoming funeral. Death comes to everyone, often unexpectedly - so watch and pray!

Lying

2006-04-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

Until I admit that I am weak, I will never become strong.

I remember well my bad choices during the past 18 months. How could I persist in error for such a long time? I vainly searched outside myself for an answer, but the truth laid within me.

I have made a habit of lying - to my loved ones, to my friends, to myself, and to the world - and it stings to reveal it. I believed in error that only malicious or unprincipled people could be liars. Gosh, I was wrong!

Satan loves to take our gifts and turn them into vices. I am no exception. I turned one of God's great gifts to me, my intellectual ability, into an instrument of conceit. I puffed myself up into thinking that I could delay, delay some more, go hear a guest lecturer or waste time surfing Wikipedia, and finish my assignments in unrealistic time frames. I turned in assignments late because I wanted to write "the perfect paper", instead of doing my best in the allotted time.

I have been full of carelessness and cowardice. I have made promises that I knew, in my inmost heart, that I could not fulfill. I have lied many times over.

I cannot fulfill God's plan for me until I repent. The Good News [Mark 1:4] says: "John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins."

In Luke 3:7-8, John the Baptist tells the crowds who come to hear him preach: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham."

The specific claim - fleshly descent from Abraham - is not relevant; what matter is the wider message that God admits no claim based on human strength. God could, if he willed, take away my intellect or my life in a flash. That he has not testifies only to the redemptive sacrifice of His Son, Jesus, on the cross.

Please pray for me as I endeavor to tell the truth from this moment forward. Please also pray for my Dad's cousins. One of them, Paul Michael, is donating a kidney to another, Gail, this evening. I ask for a speedy recovery for both of them.

First post!

2006-04-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

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