Our reflection this week comes from our High School movie group who kicked off their new season by watching Smoke Signals, a story about two young Native American men from the Coeur d'Alene reservation. Each has experienced hardship. Thomas Builds-the-Fire lost his parents in a house fire when he was an infant. His friend Victor Joseph lost his father in a different way. When Victor was yet a young boy his father Arnold left the family and moved to Phoenix, ending a relationship which was warm and intense but also full of drinking and abuse. The movie chronicles the journey of the two friends to Phoenix to pick up Arnold Joseph's ashes after Victor gets the news that he has died.
Though the two friends take the same journey and share much in common they couldn't be more different in the way they explain and approach life. Victor is direct, pragmatic, honest. He remembers his father as the one who abandoned him. He counsels his friend Thomas to be cautious of other people, lest they take advantage of him. Thomas, on the other hand, views the world with wonder shared through his frequent (and often ridiculous) stories. He sees Victor's father in a different light...regaling his friend about the time Arnold took him to Denny's to get the most glorious breakfast in the world: two eggs, two links of sausage, two strips of bacon, and two pancakes. Somehow when Thomas tells it the Grand Slam breakfast becomes a transcendent miracle.
Naturally Victor is annoyed by Thomas' grandiose stories. He constantly asks his friend to stop talking. He calls him a fool, a liar, out of touch with the real world. But a funny thing happens when the two get to Phoenix. Victor can't manage to take his dad's ashes. He doesn't have the strength or any solid footing to do so. Thomas has to hold them for him. Naturally Thomas continues to tell stories about how amazing Victor's dad was. Victor just can't reconcile the things he's holding onto with Thomas' perceptions. So he stands apart from his friend and his dad's remains both. The whole purpose of the trip was to reclaim his father and put him to rest and he cannot do it.
Oddly enough, Thomas' stories show Victor the way. When the two of them question a lady in Phoenix who knew Victor's dad in his later days she asks whether they want to hear the truth, or lies. Thomas, the storyteller, says that he wants to hear both at once. In other words, sometimes the literal facts of a situation doesn't reveal its true meaning. You need a new, interpretive story to get at the whole truth. So she tells them the story of Arnold Joseph. She tells them some terrible secrets that Arnold revealed to her. She also tells them that his one, overwhelming desire was to love his son Victor, that as long as he was gone he never considered Phoenix home. Home was always where his son was. He never intended to stay away. No matter what had driven him forth--and the ghosts of his past were substantial--his eyes were always back upon his family.
Hearing this, Victor had a choice. Did he believe in the father he knew...the abandoner, the one who had let him down? Or did he believe in the father of this woman's story...a flawed but ultimately loving man caught up in things he couldn't control and wishing only to love his son? Both explanations of Arnold were accurate. Which one was more true?
Victor's decision, ultimately to forgive his father and to tell his story in a positive light, allowed him the strength to carry Arnold's ashes and memory himself and also to let go of the resentful, suspicious child he had once been and own the beauty of his new existence.
It's a good movie. It's also a good message, much along the lines of the devotion on the Eighth Commandment we did a couple weeks ago. Never forget that how you explain the things of your life affects their ultimate truth and power. If you look for bad in people or situations you will find it. Nothing is perfect in this life. If you explain things kindly, looking through eyes of faith and trust, you will find a kinder and more faithful truth even in the most difficult of circumstances. Telling a story of an event or person binds the things contained within that explanation to your heart. If you explain with resentment, fear, jealousy, suspicion, and anger those things will be bound to you. Maybe there's good reason for that kind of story. Maybe that is part of the truth of the event. But be cautious how much or how firmly you rely on those feelings in your interpretation of life. If, on the other hand, you explain with charity, grace, love, forgiveness, and the best possible construction you will also find those things overflowing your heart.
Even though each event in our lives gives us opportunity for both, we're going to have to choose one or the other of those paths as our strongest truth. Ultimately you're either going to find your stories bringing good into the world or pain.
Never forget that Jesus died precisely so God could see his children through eyes of forgiveness, charity, and love. Any halfway serious reading of the Bible will show you that human beings mess up everything they put their mind to, no matter how noble their impulses. The Bible also tells us that even though God knows this, he ultimately chooses to see us as his own, beloved children. His purpose is to save us by superseding our imperfect story with an amazing tale of his own...salvation. We are saved precisely so we can look at a Grand Slam breakfast and be thankful, look at an all-too-human neighbor and be loving, look at the mistakes of our fathers and the ashes of death that consumed them and still be strong and hopeful, look at the oppression of this world and still be free.
What kind of story are you going to tell today? No doubt it will be laced with sad and happy moments, pain and joy together. Those words will provide opportunities for both suspicion and trust. Which one of those is more central to you and your life of faith? I hope it's the trust. And I hope all of our stories and words together reflect that.
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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