soul training
Our Favorite Stories
Watch your favorite movie or read from your favorite book, and ask yourself, “Why do I like this?” Listen to what the characters do and say. Follow how the plot unfolds and the different positive and negative turns it takes. Identify the protagonists and antagonists and the conflict that exists between them.
If you would like, share your favorite story on our class blog and respond to these questions:
1. What makes this story compelling?
2. How do you relate to it?
3. Who narrates this story?
4. What is the overarching narrative or where does this story lead?
prayer
Jesus is called Immanuel, “God with us.” By living with us, He taught us how to live. Ask God to discern the narratives that lead you life. Whether false or true, ask that the LORD show you the narrative that Jesus lived by, and therefore, lived with us.
My favorite movie is Rudy. The story is one of a young man trying to earn the respect and admiration of his father and others. He sets out to try to prove to all that he's tough enough to overcome economic challenges, size/strength deficit, and an average academic background to realize his dream of playing football for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team.
ReplyDeleteThe story compels because of the humility and humanity portrayed through Rudy Rudiger, the main character. Seeing his earnest perseverance and desire for something that most would say is an impossible proposition; something that most wouldn't have wanted as bad as he did. It reminds us that really living and realizing your dreams will take sacrifice, perseverance, faith, luck, and an occasional helping hand from others.
I relate to this movie for many reasons. The easy one is the fact that I walked on at UGA my freshman year. I know how hard that particular aspect was. I remember feeling so separated from my friends and how hard it was not enjoying the traditional college experience. I also came from a family situation where praise and encouragement were in short supply. It was always very hard to get my stepfather to give me either. I've always been pretty scrappy and tougher (in some ways) because of this. I, like Rudy, have relied on other father figure types and on spiritual leadership to help me fill that void.
The story is not really narrated audibly. The story is sort of told through the eyes of all of those around the main character. His friends and fellow athletes, a maintenance tech he meets and befriends, and a priest he visits throughout the story.
The arch of the story ends with him finally realizing his dream of actually playing for the Irish. Even more importantly (and most emotionally) he wins the respect of his father and older brother - who doubled as the antagonists of the movie via their persistent skepticism and insecurity.
One of the most memorable quotes from a spiritual perspective (for me) was when Rudy was very discouraged and he asked the advice of the sage priest. I've carried this quote with me as a good reminder when in the thick of challenging and uncertain times:
"Son, in 35 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard incontrovertible facts: there is a God, and I'm not Him."
My favorite book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It tells the story of a journey by a father and his young son several years after an unexplained cataclysm has destroyed most of civilization and life on Earth. They travel along a cold and vacant highway, towards the sea, trying to find warmth and more ‘good guys’ like them who are ‘carrying the fire’ of humanity. The story, mostly written in the third person, relates the father’s love for his son and his overwhelming desire to protect him from the dangers of an inhospitable world. My favorite line from the book is when looking at his son, the father says, “If he is not the word of God, God never spoke.”
ReplyDelete-Tuck
This week, I watched "Fried Green Tomatoes" in bits and pieces. I have watched this movie several times, but this time I found something that affirms why I love it so much. "Fried Green Tomatoes" focuses on the narratives of two women--Evelyn Couch and Ninny Threadgood. Evelyn is trying to patch up many false narratives in her life when she meets Ninny at an assisted living center. The main ones are her relationship with her husband, her issues with her weight, and the reluctance to move on to another stage in her life. As time passes on and Ninny tells her the story of the goings on in her old hometown, Evelyn is being coached how to do away with those false narratives and take initiative to change the things in her life that she does not like. She tells her husband the truth about how she feels about their marriage; she starts eating healthy and exercising; and she copes with meeting a new stage of life by getting a job and starting to do things she enjoys. In the meantime, she learns that Ninny is the person that her stories have revolved around--Idgy Threadgood. The fact that Ninny kept herself out of the story until the conclusion of the movie is what I find to be the most fascinating. She separates herself from her own life narratives until the point where it comes necessary to reveal herself, sort of like how God does. This also shows how important narratives are to us and how they define us, because Evelyn suddenly realizes the person that she really is and how much more special Ninny is in her own life. In the end, the movie depicts two beautiful women, satisfied with life and filled with purpose.
ReplyDeleteJessica Johnson
It's not my favorite movie (selecting a favorite is hard for me) but I jumped at the chance to watch "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" as a part of a Bible class. I prefer Douglas Adams' book, but I didn't have the time to pour through that this week, so I opted for the movie.
ReplyDeleteThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a sci-fi exploration comedy that is wrought with slap-stick humor but has enough intelligence to assert that "to love" in the purpose of life. The story itself, however, isn't the most compelling thing about the movie. I quite enjoy the way that the movie is told and the characters who carry it. I appreciate that many of the characters are beyond eccentric and that the story artfully uses surprise and irony to keep the audience interested as it presents the series of events.
I think that the use of irony and surprise in the story underscore an important theme in the movie. The movie assumes (correctly) a shared narrative of its audience: that humans have a firm handle on reality. A main aspect of this story's irony is that it creates an alternate narrative of humans being the third most intelligent species on Earth (after mice and dolphins) and that we are FAR more clueless about the universe than we think.
The protagonist, Arthur Dent, consults the book frequently as he encounters all sorts of events that force him to realize how wrong he was about the universe. Thus, the entire movie is narrated by the book "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" which helps to make some sense out the eccentric alternate narrative being presented as reality.
I believe that this movies narrative leads to two ideas. 1) We have no clue how clueless we are about things. And 2) Love is the purpose of life. I can relate to these two ideas but I am very intrigued with the first. I think a central part of the human experience is being wrong. I've been musing lately over how being wrong feels exactly like being right. (If anyone else is intrigued by this idea you may try reading "Being Wrong" by Kathryn Schulz. It's on my summer reading list.) I believe that we as Christians should handle being wrong with far more grace and care than others because our value doesn't come from being right or wrong...it comes from being God's children.
All that said, I am excited to have found a spiritual purpose for watching such a silly movie.
Solomon