Daily Life Notes
Winter break begins for the kids today, and we are all anxiously awaiting news about Amy's college auditions. I begin rehearsals tomorrow for Taproot Theatre's upcoming production of Voice of the Prairie, and Anjie's work schedule continues to be fairly intense. I watched the NBA All-star game last night, which is the first of those games I've seen in many years. What amazing athletes these men are...in Lebron James we are watching the emergence of one the long-term greats in the game. I remember as a child following the exploits of the UCLA Bruins in their long string of NCAA championship titles, and being really impressed with a kid named Lew Alcindor. Hard to believe all the years have passed.
After I returned from my trip to Rochester College and to the University of Cincinnati (a scholarship competition trip I took with Amy), I promptly came down with a pretty mean bout of upper respiratory something. I've been hacking and coughing for over a week now, but thankfully, the voice is returning and I'm feeling much better in general. Even slept through the night last night.
Two films I've seen recently that impacted me: The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Scott Derrickson's recent horror/courtroom flick, and Sometimes in April, a 2005 French release about the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The Exorcism of Emily Rose didn't scare me particularly, but I was fascinated by the compelling performance by Jennifer Carpenter as Emily, as well as the earnestness of the narrative. These people were taking this notion of demon possession seriously, and though the reviewers at www.rottentomates.com gave the film a "rotten" rating, I found the film compelling, one that I kept turning over in my mind during the days the followed. Emily's demise was forceful and explicit, maliciously evil, pretty far removed from the everyday sorts of temptations that we pedestrian Christians put up with. But still, it made me dwell on the fact that evil really does destroy, that the most benign of temptations can, in the end, create what are--in fact--vicious consequences.
And then there's the evil of man to man, as we used to say in English class, seen so clearly in Sometimes in April. The story of a man's journey through that hellish year in Rwanda, when in the span of 77 days over 800,000 people were slaughtered in a concerted effort by the Hutu of that country to wipe out the rival Tutsi. His loss is stunning, as is the brutality and evil of the oppressors. The will to power is on full display in this film, and how humans ever come to the point where they can, with full knowledge, mow down innocent children (not as collateral damage in a declared war) but with the announced intent to exterminate a particular group of people, calling them "cockroaches", is beyond me.
I hope it always is...
4:54:20 PM
