I like to watch movies once in a while. Sometimes, I watch them more than once. Maybe you've done that too.
When watching a movie or reading a book for the second time, we are frequently confronted with new thoughts and impressions. Depending on mood or circumstance, it seems that we analyze the same images and words in a different light.
The motion picture Fast Color brought new insights to me this past week.
A man tells a story about a second date. He had planned for a perfect night. He made the reservations and dressed in his best. He arrived on time. He brought flowers and he opened the car door for his date. Dinner was spectacular. All went as planned.
But, on the way home, a tire went flat. His date expected (as most of us would) a ‘normal’ reaction of anger and frustration. But all he could do was laugh and say, “Good timing. Costco is having a tire sale!”
Season 4, Episode 4 of The Good Doctor, features a patient that exhibits an incredible acceptance of all types of bad news while being treated in the hospital for cancer.
Here is the way the conversations went.
I am guessing that inside each of us, we carry a wild tempest of emotions right now. I am choosing to ignore them today. You have yours. I have mine. My job is to love you – no matter what. In my mind, that is the primary definition of life in Christ. You might feel differently about that too, I suppose.
Today, I look for peace.
Today, I look for joy, celebration, and maybe even some contentment.
"Stars, keep the watch. When night is dimLyrics Credit: Stanza 4 from People Look East written by Eleanor Farjeon
One more light the bowl shall brim,
Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the star, is on the way."
Perhaps this article would have been best served a few weeks ago, but I didn’t know that “East” would be my ‘Word of the Year’.
Let's begin.
Recently created family art-work, a Spanish painter named Antoni Tapies born in 1923, and a hymn written in 1871, were all factors that inspired today’s musings. Intertwining these seemingly unconnected elements will be my goal this morning.
Hope is “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” That sounds reasonable. We all hope for things to get better, right? We all hope for change that matters to us, our family, and even the world itself.
There are lots of reasons to hope. A staple of writing for me seems to be a little research tool called Google. If you ask the algorithms to search this topic for you, you might find 726 million results like I did. I did not read them all.
A short synopsis reveals that people find hope in different categories.
