Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Things I Feel I Feel (aka Putting CPE to Good Use)
I told my mom today that sometimes I feel like I belong to a civic organization like the Kiwanis Club, more than I belong to a church. She didn't quite know what to do with that, I think. I'm not sure I do, either.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Movie Review: Juno
This column over at First Thoughts, the apparent First Things staff blog, got my dander up last week, and it's not even about the main point of the column. I pretty much think the author is right, in general, about the point he's making, but that's not what I'm talking about. I found it interesting that "those people who think children are a choice" are the same people who "thought Juno was a pro-life film."
So...
I'm one of those apparently crazy people who did in fact think Juno was a pro-life film. I worked at a crisis pregnancy center for a few years in college (before the movie came out), and aside from the weird emotional-adultery thing with the adoptive father, the movie is one I think I would generally recommend to many of the girls who came into our office.
The main plot of the story is that Juno is a high school girl who has a one-night-stand with her best guy friend, and thereby becomes pregnant. After telling one of her girlfriends, and contemplating an abortion (she changes her mind when the one lone protester outside the abortion clinic, a classmate of Juno's, informs Juno that the baby already has fingernails), she decides to continue the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption. Throughout the movie, we see Juno gain self-confidence in her role as mother (even just for the time while she is pregnant). We see her family being shocked, and then generally supportive, and even a little challenging and confrontational when is appropriate. We see her friends try to be supportive, but we also see the situation at school change a lot, and Juno not quite knowing where her place is anymore. We see Paulie (the dad) trying to be helpful and supportive, but not quite knowing how. And for Juno's part, she seems to not really be able to communicate what kind of help and support she wants or needs from him. And we see the Juno-Paulie relationship grow and evolve.
The reason I liked the movie so much is that I found it to be pretty realistic. Life is hard, especially when you make bad decisions, and the movie has no qualms about making that clear. But what was most needed by a lot of the girls I saw at the pregnancy center was hope, the idea of a "future story." Many of them couldn't see beyond the next 5 minutes, let alone imagine a scenario 9-12 months down the road where things would be "not perfect, but ok." That's what I liked about the film - for girls who are already pregnant, I think it sends the message, "You can do this. It's going to be hard, and it's not going to be perfect, but you can do this."
Granted, not every pregnant teenager has a great family or supportive friends or a boyfriend who tries to be helpful. Some are all-but-forced into abortions, or carry the pregnancy to term and then are given little to no support from a family who either disowns them, or considers the situation to be so common that no one bats an eye. Life is messy. But Juno shows one plausible scenario of a way that this situation can work out to being "okay." Because the reality is that having an abortion is no less emotionally messy than keeping a baby or placing it for adoption. And by highlighting to its viewers the reality of the baby (it has fingernails) and then setting up a reasonable way life can play out over the next several months, this movie gives hope to teenagers who might not be able to imagine it otherwise.
That's why it's a pro-life movie.
So...
I'm one of those apparently crazy people who did in fact think Juno was a pro-life film. I worked at a crisis pregnancy center for a few years in college (before the movie came out), and aside from the weird emotional-adultery thing with the adoptive father, the movie is one I think I would generally recommend to many of the girls who came into our office.
The main plot of the story is that Juno is a high school girl who has a one-night-stand with her best guy friend, and thereby becomes pregnant. After telling one of her girlfriends, and contemplating an abortion (she changes her mind when the one lone protester outside the abortion clinic, a classmate of Juno's, informs Juno that the baby already has fingernails), she decides to continue the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption. Throughout the movie, we see Juno gain self-confidence in her role as mother (even just for the time while she is pregnant). We see her family being shocked, and then generally supportive, and even a little challenging and confrontational when is appropriate. We see her friends try to be supportive, but we also see the situation at school change a lot, and Juno not quite knowing where her place is anymore. We see Paulie (the dad) trying to be helpful and supportive, but not quite knowing how. And for Juno's part, she seems to not really be able to communicate what kind of help and support she wants or needs from him. And we see the Juno-Paulie relationship grow and evolve.
The reason I liked the movie so much is that I found it to be pretty realistic. Life is hard, especially when you make bad decisions, and the movie has no qualms about making that clear. But what was most needed by a lot of the girls I saw at the pregnancy center was hope, the idea of a "future story." Many of them couldn't see beyond the next 5 minutes, let alone imagine a scenario 9-12 months down the road where things would be "not perfect, but ok." That's what I liked about the film - for girls who are already pregnant, I think it sends the message, "You can do this. It's going to be hard, and it's not going to be perfect, but you can do this."
Granted, not every pregnant teenager has a great family or supportive friends or a boyfriend who tries to be helpful. Some are all-but-forced into abortions, or carry the pregnancy to term and then are given little to no support from a family who either disowns them, or considers the situation to be so common that no one bats an eye. Life is messy. But Juno shows one plausible scenario of a way that this situation can work out to being "okay." Because the reality is that having an abortion is no less emotionally messy than keeping a baby or placing it for adoption. And by highlighting to its viewers the reality of the baby (it has fingernails) and then setting up a reasonable way life can play out over the next several months, this movie gives hope to teenagers who might not be able to imagine it otherwise.
That's why it's a pro-life movie.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Help! I Started Blogging and I Can't Stop!
I must be a writer at heart, because now that I've gotten into this whole blogging thing, I really flippin' love it.
It occurred to me today, though, that it might be good if I said something nice about the ELCA. After all, I'm still here, so it must be for a reason, right? Despite its current trajectory of sacrificing the faith once delivered, I will have to say that being here has edified me in certain areas. First of all, I used to be a big, conservative jerk. I was totally sold on ridiculously far-right political positions, and really was one of those people who equated the Republican Party with God. (I know, leave me alone, ok?) It's really pretty embarrassing to talk about some of the organizations I was involved in, and things I used to believe, not to mention the things I thought and said about other people. But I'm also one of those people who has a strong sense of loyalty, and at some point I figured out that I was going to be part of the ELCA for the forseeable future, and so maybe I should be less judgy about them. This dovetailed with what was going on in my life on another front, when I jumped on board the Straight Talk Express. About 3 or 4 years ago, God got a hold of me and rather violently (it seemed at the time) got me on my knees about some positions I had on issues and the way I treated people who disagreed with me.
The ELCA tends to focus a lot on what we are supposed to "do" - support this, write letters for that, get involved here, give money there, etc...I don't always agree with the specifics - the object or the method of our "doing", but I will admit that thinking through the things the national church body supports has made me get serious about being aware of others around me. Too often, one of the critiques of conservatism is that it is not very compassionate. For most politically conservative individuals, if you probed deeply, I don't think you'd find a lack of compassion, I think you'd just find it expressed differently. But, because of how we think about the role of government, we can come across as kind of cold-hearted, particularly given how the mainstream media tends to frame the debate. (Of course, there are the occasional complete jerks who don't care about anything except themselves... they're on the left, too, though.) And the thing is, the Bible tells us that we're supposed to be compassionate. It's easy for Lutherans to talk a good game about "justification by grace through faith," which is totally true. But we still have to deal with, for example, Matthew 25 or Matthew 19. Or even the fact that Romans, Martin Luther's favorite book, seems to have as its theme that "faith is a way of life." Indeed, "the just shall live by faith" but then again, "faith without works is dead." So, you know, there we are. However, because I tend to disagree with the object and method of our "doing" in the ELCA, we've now bumped up against another problem.
It occurred to me today, though, that it might be good if I said something nice about the ELCA. After all, I'm still here, so it must be for a reason, right? Despite its current trajectory of sacrificing the faith once delivered, I will have to say that being here has edified me in certain areas. First of all, I used to be a big, conservative jerk. I was totally sold on ridiculously far-right political positions, and really was one of those people who equated the Republican Party with God. (I know, leave me alone, ok?) It's really pretty embarrassing to talk about some of the organizations I was involved in, and things I used to believe, not to mention the things I thought and said about other people. But I'm also one of those people who has a strong sense of loyalty, and at some point I figured out that I was going to be part of the ELCA for the forseeable future, and so maybe I should be less judgy about them. This dovetailed with what was going on in my life on another front, when I jumped on board the Straight Talk Express. About 3 or 4 years ago, God got a hold of me and rather violently (it seemed at the time) got me on my knees about some positions I had on issues and the way I treated people who disagreed with me.
The ELCA tends to focus a lot on what we are supposed to "do" - support this, write letters for that, get involved here, give money there, etc...I don't always agree with the specifics - the object or the method of our "doing", but I will admit that thinking through the things the national church body supports has made me get serious about being aware of others around me. Too often, one of the critiques of conservatism is that it is not very compassionate. For most politically conservative individuals, if you probed deeply, I don't think you'd find a lack of compassion, I think you'd just find it expressed differently. But, because of how we think about the role of government, we can come across as kind of cold-hearted, particularly given how the mainstream media tends to frame the debate. (Of course, there are the occasional complete jerks who don't care about anything except themselves... they're on the left, too, though.) And the thing is, the Bible tells us that we're supposed to be compassionate. It's easy for Lutherans to talk a good game about "justification by grace through faith," which is totally true. But we still have to deal with, for example, Matthew 25 or Matthew 19. Or even the fact that Romans, Martin Luther's favorite book, seems to have as its theme that "faith is a way of life." Indeed, "the just shall live by faith" but then again, "faith without works is dead." So, you know, there we are. However, because I tend to disagree with the object and method of our "doing" in the ELCA, we've now bumped up against another problem.