Public and Private Grief in Jackie (2016)

Director Pablo Larraín’s new film exploring that infamous week of Jackie Kennedy's life is a highly unusual biopic.  It uses a variety of film stock, shooting styles, and moods to peel away the various images that Jackie created for herself to reach her inner life. It's also a profound film about grief and features a truly remarkable performance by Natalie Portman. 

I caught the film last week and reviewed it for Reel World Theology. I'm really happy with the review and I hope you take the time to read it and to watch this fine movie. 

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Preparing for Easter Through Black and White

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip

Their wings in tears, and skim away.”

— Alfred Lord Tennyson in 'In Memoriam'

For the third time now, I switched my iPhone's camera to black and white and underwent the rigorous challenge of posting black and white photos during the 40 or so days leading up to Easter. 

Initially, my plan was to post a photo every day except for Sundays. (Sundays are days of feasting; days of rest.) But this challenge wore at me. It took away from my spiritual walk instead of adding to it. The images lacked the care and craft that I'd grown to see in my work. So I slowed it down towards the end and was largely happy with the result. 

In previous years, I've labelled the photos as a Lenten fast, which they are. But Lent carries negative connotations, both for my secular-raised-Catholic friends and my staunchly-Evangelical-bare-bones-liturgy church. And although it has been a fast from colour, the practice is an addition to my life, rather than a cutting away. (Although it is a sacrifice of time, to be sure.)

There is an element of mourning and austerity to the photographs. I hope they, and my life during that season, took on an aura of repentance, seriousness, and grief over sorrow and sin. 

But ultimately, I do this so I would long all the more for Easter. I better celebrated its implications: the rest Christ's victory over sin brings, as I now rest from my photo labours. The joy of the Resurrection colouring everything, including my current post-Easter photographs. The redemption of my world, changed forever. 

During Advent, I read the Cambridge poet-priest Malcolm Guite's anthology of poems, Waiting On the Word. It was excellent. His fine selection of poems were such a pleasure, as was learning how to read these poems through his insightful commentary. An added bonus, he recorded a reading of each poem on his blog. Listening to them was an education in itself, a daily private poetry concert.

This year, my photos' captions come from excepts of the poems in his Lent book, The Word in the Wilderness. You can pick it up on iBooks, or order a hardcopy. And his recordings are posted on his blog.

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Some year, I would love to post a photo in colour for everyday of Eastertide, for the resurrection deserves extended celebration. But I've always been too worn out by the end of the 40 days to attempt more creativity. I also hope Malcolm will write an Eastertide anthology, soon!

Enjoy this gallery, and please click on each image to read the accompanying text, indispensable to that image's interpretation.

Job: Reflections on a Suffering Servant

This post was originally written in February 2014. 

I just finished reading through Job, a chunk of scripture found towards the middle of the Bible. Job is fascinating from a literary perspective. Forty chapters of rambling Hebrew poetry sandwiched between two chapters of sparse narrative. It's an unusual context. Job, an ancient Middle Eastern patriarch, was 'blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil" (1:1) and God blessed him with offspring, livestock, possessions, and respect from his community. He was utterly exemplary in his behaviour but in verse six the curtain to the heavens is pulled back and we, the audience, are given a rare glimpse into the heavenly courts. "The sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them." Satan, ever the accuser, challenges Job's exemplary behaviour. "Stretch out your hand" he says to the Lord "and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face."  God gives Satan permission to do this and in swift, relentless strokes, Job is stripped of his servants, oxen, donkeys, sheep, and camels (struck down by Sabeans, fire from heaven, and Chaldeans respectively). But before the news-bearer has finished giving a report of this to Job, another runs up announcing that Job's children, having gathered together in celebration, were killed when the house they were in collapsed. Soon after, Job's health falls apart, his wife urges him to curse God, and he is left covered "head to toe" in sores in an ash heap and scraping himself with broken pottery. But "in all this Job did not sin with his lips."

The narrative portion of the book ends when Job's three friends come to weep over him. After a weak of weeping, "for his suffering was very great," Job opens his mouth and forty chapters of poetic dialogue begin. The contrast is immediately apparent. Gone are the swift strokes of storytelling and the heavenly perspective. What follows is verbal violence and mud-slinging between the grieving Job, who upholds the claim that he did not sin and that's God's actions towards him are unjust, and his friends, who maintain that God is just and Job is guilty of sin.

The fact is, both these human opinions are incorrect. Job is not being punished for his sin (we know this from the prologue) and yet God's actions are always just. Endless chapters of back and forth dialogue, in which these opinions are hashed and re-hashed, end when God Himself answers Job "from the whirlwind,” accosting Job's understanding. "Where were you when

I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding" is the thrust of his argument. God uses examples of his awesome and intricate power demonstrated in his creation that literally leaves Job with his hand over his mouth. In the face of such intimate and transcendent power and knowledge and such management of the world of nature, what response can Job give? In two short speeches he demonstrates repentance and humility. 

There is plenty to learn from the book of Job and many of written on Job's response to both suffering and the character of God. But there were two aspects of the book that really stood out to me this time through. 

The first was how the frustrating and messy dialogue between Job and his friends, despite the many wrong ideas and outspoken temper, still resulted in progress in Job's thinking. Much of what Job says is wrong. But through it all, he makes more and more statements that are humble instead of arrogant and express humility and faith in God's fairness. He begins to become aware, especially in chapter 28, that he himself cannot solve his problem through his own reasoning but rather "the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom."

The takeaway for us? Conversations with friends over important issues are worth having, even if wrongheaded ideas are frequently spouted. Working through these issues may grow and mature our understanding, but nothing like the perspective of God himself. 

Yet there is a second thread running through the book that gives even more hope to the reader who notices it. Hidden between the long and often arrogant speeches are phrases that sound extra familiar to our ears, none of which are as explicate as 19:25-36 when Job declares "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God." 

These are hints and foretastes (especially chapter 22) of the Redeemer that Job does not see and yet will one day sanctify him. Christ is the one who suffered unjustly far more then Job did, for Job was still conceived in sin and Christ was not. And it is Christ's suffering that makes ours bearable. In the words of George Macdonald "the Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His." 

Not only is God's wisdom so much higher then ours, but his empathy is routed in the suffering that Christ himself received on our behalf. And if we can learn this from an ancient book of Hebrew poetry, reading it is worth our time indeed.