Transformation in Film (a seminary project)

For one of my classes this semester I was asked to do a project that helps lead people in transformation. I love movies, and I believe there are some incredibly transforming moments in film. So for my project I chose to write reflection questions for a few of the films that have been most influential in my life. I would like to invite you to participate with me in this project.

There are three movies involved in this reflection, Unbreakable, The Incredibles, and Braveheart. The intention is for them to work together. Ideally you would watch and engage in all three of the movies and reviews over the next couple weeks, but if you are crunched for time you could certainly engage in one or two of the films. You can do it alone or as a group, but however you do it engage with your whole heart. When you have finished, please leave a response on the blog. This will allow me to use your responses as a part of the project. If you are nervous about putting yourself out there, you can leave an anonymous response.

I pray that the Father will meet with you as you engage, and that you will experience his presence more and more as he transforms and fills your life with his love.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Emotional Wasteland

I remember times when I was younger desiring to feel something. For the most part I think I was and am well in touch with my emotions, but there were times when I had this desire to feel. It was almost like a hunger, like I hadn't felt any emotion in a while, so I wanted to... needed to… feel something.

I remember thinking it was an artist thing. I took great pride then thinking that I was an Artist, capital A. I thought the desire for emotion was somehow connected my love of writing poetry. I don’t write poetry much anymore, but I wrote a lot in those days. My poems were almost exclusively love poems. More appropriately love lost or love can’t have or yuck you’re a not my type get away from me poems. I don’t remember writing any happy love poems. I honestly don’t think there was a single happy poem in the bunch. I recognized that the good ones came from a place of deep emotion, so I thought the desire for emotion was for the sake of “my work.” I saw pain as my muse and I guess at times I even felt rejected by her.

I’m realizing as I type that there are two consistent themes in this story, a desire to feel and a desire for love. There were two important desires going on in me in those moments, but they both had root in the same event. When I was about three years old my parents got a divorce. This instilled in me a desire that I suppose we all have, but I suspect it was/is less a healthy desire and more a broken obsession in my life, the desire to be loved. I know my parents love me in their own way, but when you’re a kid of divorce (isn’t it interesting that we refer to ourselves as children of divorce as if divorce is our parent) there is always an underlying question about your parent’s love. They stopped loving each other, could they stop loving me? Didn’t they love me enough to stay together? Am I unlovable?

The other thread is the need to feel. Like I said, at the time I thought the desire was more for the sake of the poetry, but I think now that my soul was crying out to feel what I didn’t or couldn’t feel when I was three. No three-year-old is capable of dealing with the pain of divorce. So you don’t feel it; the feelings are too strong for your little spirit so you stuff it way down until it comes out sideways. You get angry at other things. A generally peaceful kid punches another boy on the playground at his daycare (interestingly, a place he felt abandoned) because he got on his tricycle. Eventually when you are older you begin to realize that you don’t feel deeply. Or maybe you feel deeply and it scares you.

I think those poems were incredibly helpful at the time. They helped me to get in touch with some deeper emotions and do something about them. Now as a thirty-year-old I understand myself a little better, so those feelings of grief and loss aren’t as easy to deal with in an abstract way. Or maybe it’s just that the time has come to deal with it head on. I don’t know. I’m sorry for the rambling post this time, but maybe with this perspective it make a little more sense why I have such difficulty engaging with my story.