Film Review: Columbus (2017)

Director Kogonada’s debut film Columbus is a love letter to art, architecture, nature, and the universal human quest for meaning.  It’s a very deliberately paced and careful film that may turn off a wider public audience – an audience that is currently engulfed, according to one of the film’s protagonists, not in a crisis of attention, but a crisis of interest.  The long (almost unsettling) shots of trees, buildings, and human faces communicates that this film is fundamentally a story of spiritual odyssey.  Cassandra (played masterfully by Haley Lu Richardson) is just a simple Hoosier girl who longs to leave town, but feels compelled to stay in Columbus, Indiana to care for her mentally ill mother.  She providentially meets Jin (John Cho), a Korean-American visiting town due to his father’s sudden illness, and the film centers around the unlikely friendship that forms around these two souls adrift and how their friendship sets both on a new trajectory. 

Jin, an ambitious yet broken out-of-towner with a deeply unhealthy relationship with his father, tends to drown his sorrows in alcohol.  He laments that he cannot appreciate architecture since his father was an expert on the subject and, in Jin’s words, “you grow up around something and it feels like nothing.”  Yet he sees within this young stranger Cassandra an almost mystical, spiritual love for the beauty and order of architecture.  Her mysticism intrigues him, all the more so since he is a wandering soul without any relationship to the spiritual realm.  For Cassie the seemingly mundane, ordinary places of her hometown – two different banks, a church, her elementary school – have taken on a sort of healing power in her life that she does not understand and cannot explain.  Speaking of a bank building, Cassandra attempts to explain to Jin the significance of where they are standing, “I’d probably seen it thousands times before, but one night I looked up and just saw it.”  (I cannot help but think of what John Wesley called the spiritual sensorium, which awakens within those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.)  Jin, always the skeptic, isn’t sure he even believes in the healing power of architecture or holy places so he chooses to ignore Cassie’s testimony.  It is a story of spiritual sight vs. spiritual blindness, yet neither is fully in the dark nor fully enlightened.  Both are on a very complicated journey.  The realism of this is very refreshing.

Throughout the film, Cassandra seems to be lost and yet she also catches glimpses of profound beauty, glimpses that gives her a sort of orientation to life when she doesn’t know her life’s purpose.  Though there is plenty to contrast between Jin and Cassie, they do share some important commonalities:  both wandering souls are given clarity and direction by the other.  Jin seems to begin to gain “sight” thanks to his serendipitous encounter with the odd Hoosier girl.  And Cassie received the answer to her question about where to go in life (isn’t the choice to leave one’s home and family one of the most difficult and universal choices we all have to make?) from this odd and unhappy sojourner.  

“You need to stop feeling bad,” Jin tells Cassandra near the end of the film.  She simply replies, “Yeah, so do you.”  Neither of them are able to extend such grace to themselves and so they give it to one another.  This is a healing, salvific moment for them both.

I loved this film since it wrestles with questions that consume my own mind these days:  Where should I go in life? How does one determine where to go?  And what does all the damn beauty around me mean?  As my friend Bill recently told me around a campfire in Wyoming, for Plato the beginning of all religion is in the pure appreciation of beauty because when it strikes you, there is no denying it.  Beauty becomes a sort of self-evident principle upon which many people choose to orient their lives.  When the architect builds, when the painter paints, when the hurting and lonely dance out their pain under a starry sky, when a child gets lost while looking at a flower, when two strangers become friends – all of these are acts of worship and surrender to beauty.  

The film ultimately challenges us all with a haunting question: Do you appreciate the beauty that is all around you or do you just let it all pass you by?  The answer to this question is, I believe, the difference between living in heaven or living in hell.

The Good Life and Living with Irrelevance

I was first challenged to think about the idea of living a life of irrelevance by Henri Nouwen, who has been a constant spiritual guide for me since college.  Nouwen, as many know, left a life of great success as a professor at an ivy league university in order to work in a home for the mentally handicapped.  Through this experience he discovered his true self and became a mystical, spiritual writer who has helped millions.  Ironically, it was only by leaving the academy that Nouwen became a true teacher to us all.  He found that "thrown in on the side" if you will.

I confront a similar choice in my life at this point.  I once believed my life was set out before me quite clearly:  I was going to finish my Ph. D, get a job as a professor (since I have always loved teaching), be a good husband and father, and die holding hands with a soul named Courtney Coates.  Up until the end of January of this year, I still thought that was my life.  Now all bets are off.  In some ways, I am a deeply broken man whose life has been wrenched from his tightly clenched fists and, utterly against my own will, I am starting to experience salvation.  The usually silly 90s CCM band Audio Adrenaline describes my condition in life right now remarkably well.  Laugh at the source if you will, but I think this song articulates some deep spiritual truth:



So now I live in my parents' home and smoke pot.  I have become as irrelevant as I think I can, but who knows?  Just when I think I have lost all I can loose, I sometimes learn that I can still surrender over more to my Maker.  "Pain has been the catalyst to my heart's happiness."  And so I thank God for the pain, I thank her for the struggle.  I seek to repent of the "toxic masculinity" that has invaded my life, practice, and thought.  I am abandoned to my Father in Heaven and my Mother in Earth, to whom I will quite readily and joyously surrender my body for good in her perfect, good timing.

What the Monks Taught Me

This weekend I had the honor to be the recipient of Benedictine hospitality.  For 48 hours I stayed in the guest house of the Abbey of Gethsemani in the rolling hills of Eastern Kentucky.  The monks have all taken a vow of silence and they ask their guests to do the same while present.  Even the communal meals are eaten in silence.  I came away from this experience with a deep appreciation for the rich varieties of the Christians faith and having drawn close to God in a new way.  While at the Abbey, I took the time to write down some of these insights and thought I would share them with you for your own edification.

Reflections from Gethsemani:

1.  Monks see their silent, prayerful work as missional.  This may strike some as rather odd since they are literally cloistered off from the rest of the world.  Indeed, I've heard many evangelicals criticize the monastic life because it seems too self-focused and neglects the duty of all Christians to "Go, therefore, into all the world..."  So it was quite eye-opening for me when I heard a monk claim that their work is not for themselves, but for the sake of the world.  How so?  Through prayer.  If we truly do believe that prayer changes the world and that God literally acts in the world in response to human prayer, then we must conclude that the prayerful life of this abbey is missional.  Thomas Merton, the most famous of the monks of Gethsemani, once compared the work of monks to trees.  Trees just stay put and remain silent, but they give oxygen to the world.  I see the work of monks this way now and it is spectacularly beautiful.

2.  Unsurprisingly, my time here has reminded me that I do not often quiet myself before God.  I am literally addicted to distractions.  The silence can be fearful for a distraction-addict.  Like a cigarette smoker trying to break his habit, I find myself reaching for my iPhone or a book or music or the TV or food in order to take my mind off of the deafening silence around me.  I thought that choosing to remain silent for one weekend would be a piece of cake for me, being the introvert that I am.  But it has been far harder than I expected.  Language can be one more form of distraction.  But when I truly am silent, I begin to hear things that oft go unnoticed:  the crunch of leaves under my feet, the flutter of birds in a bush, the ripple of water in a creek, the silence in which God makes His dwelling.  It is a bit frightening in its own way.  All things that are holy inspire a sense of dread, awe, or even fear.

3.  The monks pray corporately seven times each day (or eight if you count the mass).  Each gathering for prayer lasts almost exactly 30 minutes.  This means that they spend three and a half hours of every single day in communal prayer -- most of it praying the Psalms.  They take no breaks for the weekend, no holidays, no vacations -- ever.  365 days a year the monks join to pray at 3:15 a.m. (Vigil), 5:45 a.m. (Lauds), 7:30 a.m. (Terce), 12:15 p.m. (Sext), 2:15 p.m. (None), 5:30 p.m. (Vespers), and 7:30 p.m. (Compline).  This means that a monk will never get more than six hours of uninterrupted sleep.  They awaken in the middle of the night to pray for the world as it sleeps.  Last night I woke myself up to join them and was deeply moved by their humble prayers uttered in the middle of the deep darkness.  They are praying for me.  They are praying for you.  They are praying for the lost, the orphans, the widows, the sick, the elderly, and the poor.  And they simply do not stop this prayer.  I feel as though I have been given the greatest gift I could be given to have forty men pray for me at in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep and am filled with anxiety, as I rise in the morning to face a new day, as I care for the poor in our food pantry, as I study for my sermon in the middle of the afternoon, as I return home to eat dinner with my family, and as I lead challenging board meetings at First Church in the evening.  Through it all, these forty men dressed in white gather and pray for me and for the world.  Who knows where I would be without their prayers?  Who knows where the world would be?  The two Cistercian monks who came to this part of Kentucky in 1848 arrived on one day and began prayers the very next day.  Every day since 1848 without exception the monks have prayed for the world seven times.  These prayers will continue, according to one monk, "until the end."  They will not cease. 

4.  Protestants don't do a good job of using their bodies in worship.  A simple practice that I have found very helpful during my time here is to regularly bow at different intervals during worship.  This act of bowing felt odd to me at first.  It reminded me of the time I visited a mosque and watched as hundreds of Muslims packed into a small room bowed in unison.  But, not wanting to stand out in the midst of these devout Catholics, I chose to bow with them and I am so glad that I did!  Now it is my favorite act during Vespers, Compline, Vigil, and so on.  It is a way that we all physically communicate that we are not lords, but servants of the One True Lord.  We face the front of the sanctuary and bow because we have a King and this King demands our full allegiance, obedience, and submission.  The monks have taught me that what I do with my body does matter -- it shapes the way I think, what I believe, and the way I behave.  May I never stop bowing regularly to my Master.

5.  For an evangelical like myself, the monastic form of worship strikes me as very formal, rigid, and structured.  I cannot picture a brother or sister in Christ running up and down the aisles here after "getting blessed" or even raising their hands and shouting "Hallelujah!"  And yet there is here a genuine aura of worship albeit rather reserved (critics might say "repressed").  I have found the structure of the liturgy, the formality of dress, the cold stone architecture, and the monotone chants to awaken me to a fresh appreciation of the transcendence of God.  Christianity has always held in tension the transcendence (otherness) and immanence (nearness) of God.  And although I do believe that if I had to choose one over the other I would choose to focus on the mystery of God's immanence, this can easily become unbalanced.  The Roman Catholics have reminded me that God is beyond me, above me, and mysterious -- He transcends me.  I needed this balance.  Too often evangelicals treat God like He is their buddy or pal.  They speak to God like they would a friend down the street.  But when I see God on His throne, I'm not going to say, "What's up, man!?!  Gimme some skin."  Rather, my utterance will echo that of Isaiah: "Woe is me!  I am undone!"  I once had a friend in college who playfully (and perhaps sacrilegiously) changed the words of the popular worship chorus "I Want to Know You."  He would sing, "I want to know you; I want to kiss you; I want to make out with you."  Being college guys we all laughed, but I understood the point he was making:  in our enthusiasm to focus on God's nearness to us, we have lost a sense of awe, reverence, respect, and, yes, fear when we enter God's presence.  The Trappist monks have reminded me of God's transcendence and I am deeply grateful for it.

6.  Structure is our friend.  Living in the inner city, I see a community which is in utter chaos.  There are no routines.  People stay awake all night and sleep all day.  They eat whenever they feel like it and rarely take time to sit down together to share a common meal.  Toddlers fall asleep in front of a TV at 2 am with a bottle of kool-aid in their mouths.  Is it any wonder why people surrender to ghetto nihilism?  I must confess that such chaos has infected my own life at times on the days that I am conformed to my world rather than transformed by the renewing of my mind.  But the monks show me that structure and routine is my friend.  The bell rings as I type this to call the people to prayer once again, just as it has six times before on this day.  This repetition of order is a reflection of creation.  God made the world to operate in cycles -- the sun and the moon alternate places, the moon waxes and wanes, the seasons switch from summer to winter and back again, the breath in my lungs moves in and out, and the monks keep eating at precisely 7:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. -- no variance, no exceptions, no snacking!  Just as the ancient Hebrew people recited the liturgy of Genesis 1 in their worship, so the Trappists cycle through the Scriptures -- the whole Bible in three year cycles and the 150 Psalms every two weeks.  Repetitive?  Yes.  But so is the cosmos.  Perhaps we would do ourselves a tremendous favor to embrace these structured cycles in our own lives.

7.  Father Damien invited us to join the monks for prayer during the 3:15 a.m. vigil.  He said, "You may come, but you don't have to.  That is our struggle and our vocation, not yours."  He said it with a genuine smile and with not an ounce of resentment or judgment in his heart.  If only I would bear my own vocational crosses with such grace and humility!  If only I could learn to be awakened at night by the knocks on my door of people asking for food or money with as much grace as Father Damien awakens each night to pray for me!  If only I could be interrupted during my studies with such patience!  If only I could accept verbal abuse and insults without complaint or bitterness!  Thank you, Fr. Damien, for modelling for me a joyful attitude in the midst of vocational struggles.  I am simultaneously convicted and inspired.

A Prayer to the God of Ebb and Flow

Dear Lord, today I thought of the words of Vincent van Gogh: “It is true there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea.” You are the sea. Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life; by your love I am sustained; and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love.

My only real temptation is to doubt in your love, to think of myself as beyond the reach of your love, to remove myself from the healing radiance of your love. To do these things is to move into the darkness of despair.

O Lord, sea of love and goodness, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know that there is ebb and flow but that the sea remains the sea. Amen.

- Henri Houwen in "A Cry for Mercy"

The Day In Between

What am I supposed to do now?  I was sure he was the One.  My life is ruined.  I had invested everything in Jesus -- I left my family, my job, by community, EVERYTHING in order to follow him.  And for three years I was certain as I saw him perform miracles and heard his amazing, authoritative teaching that this was finally the one to bring us liberation from our oppressors.  I admit I didn't understand everything he said.  When he talked about suffering and dying, I dismissed it.  It just didn't make any sense to me.  I thought maybe he was speaking another one of his really confusing parables or metaphors.  I was still sure that he'd lead the crowds in an uprising and overthrow Herod and Pilate and even Rome itself.  But now they've all killed him.  And now I'm all alone.  I don't even know where the other followers are.  That night we all just kind of scattered.  It happened so fast.  I couldn't even think.  My deep-down instincts for self-preservation led me to get out of there as fast as I could.  I've got to admit I admire Peter for trying to defend Jesus despite the odds.  That at least showed more courage than I had.  But then Jesus scolded Peter and told him something about putting away the sword.  I just seriously don't get it.  How are we supposed to overthrow our oppressors without the sword?  Frankly (and I hate to admit this)... sometimes I think Jesus was just too idealistic and not practical enough.  He always had his head in the clouds.  He wasn't willing to recognize the dirtiness and seriousness of our enemies.  Instead, he just kept telling us to pray for them and love them.  That's all real nice, but how does that overthrow Caesar?  You're not going to liberate Israel with a bunch of love and prayers.  But what do I know?  I guess it all boils down to nothing now.  He's dead.  There's no changing that.  Maybe I made a huge mistake in believing things could actually change.  As I woke up this morning, my first thought was that maybe yesterday was all a bad dream.  But it wasn't.  It was real.  And now all is darkness.  No hope.  I guess I should just go back to fishing and try to move on...


There is great wisdom in the ancient Christian tradition that reminds us to live through Saturday before getting to Sunday.  Today is "the day in between."  It is often overlooked.  We fail to pause and soak up the total despair of this moment -- our hero has been defeated, the enemy has won.  We cry out with Job on this day, "As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so mortals lie down and do not rise again." Death seems the victor.  And although today we know the Story, we know what's coming tomorrow morning, we know that soon we will be dressed in white surrounded by springtime and Easter lilies and shouts of praise, nevertheless today we wear black.  We veil our faces with Mary and Thomas and John and the rest.  Today we stare into the face of Sheol and ponder the words of Ecclesiates, "Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless."  The dark existentialist takes a strange comfort in this black Saturday because this, too, is part of the Christian year, part of our Scriptures, and part of life.  Without experiencing the pain and shock of Friday followed by the emptiness and despair of Saturday, we'll never fully appreciate Sunday.  So let's not rush there... although we might want to.  Instead, let's live out this black Saturday as the first disciples did.  Maybe then we will appreciate what happens very early in the morning tomorrow...

The Activist Mystic

I'm hoping to get back to blogging more frequently now that I'm finished with the first draft of my project for Wesleyan Publishing House. Also, I made a conscious decision to stop blogging when I feel really depressed. I don't want my blog to be a downer for everyone who reads and so part of the reason for the infrequency of my entries is because I have been wrestling with depression quite a bit lately.

I write a lot about ministry in the inner city. I don't do it to impress anyone. I just do it because it's my life right now and because I hope I will offer something that might cause someone else to pause and reflect for a moment about the mission of God in the world, about the Christ among the least of these, and about the kingdom coming down. If nothing else, perhaps I provide a voice that someone else in similar circumstances can relate to.

Last night I read a wonderful chapter from Henri Nouwen's book Here and Now: Living in the Spirit. Here is a short excerpt:

"The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of impotence and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace that they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims. I have to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus and on those who followed him and trust that I will know how to live out my mission to be a sign of hope in this world" (46-47).

I can relate perfectly with what Nouwen has written here. Sometimes the level of need around me is so great that I literally begin to feel a weight around my shoulders -- an intangible oppressiveness and heaviness that I cannot shake off. The lack of beauty, the desperation and despair, the violence -- it all has a cumulative effect of making me lose sight of hope at times. What can I do in the face of such overwhelming problems? Am I really so naive as to think I can make a difference here? And if I'm not making a difference, then why not just get out and live a more comfortable life? When these questions enter my mind (and they do almost daily), I must sit and just breathe and realize that I cannot allow myself to become "paralyzed by feelings of impotence and guilt."

This is why I am more convinced than ever that an activist (by which I mean a Christian who lives out his or her spirituality by trying to make an impact on the political, social, economic, and spiritual struggles of mankind) must first and foremost be a mystic (by which I mean someone who regularly practices contemplation, meditation, silence, solitude, prayer, study, and an inner craving for the heart for God). Often the two seem divided: the former are the do-gooder community organizers or social workers and the ladder are those monks hidden away in their cloisters. Yet I am convinced that to remain an activist (and I consider myself to at least be an aspiring one), I must first be a mystic. Otherwise, I run out of gas and have nothing to offer. To rest in the infinite love of God -- that is the source for all outward action and all social justice. The second that I forget that, I become no more than an ant struggling to free himself from a gallon of syrup.

Make me a mystic, O God. And from that inner life with You, help me to flow outwardly as one of Your agents in the world. Amen.

Snow

A fresh blanket of snow is falling in my neighborhood today. I'm seeing something I rarely seen in the inner city: beauty. I am convinced that humans were made for beauty. It gives us reason to live and enjoy life. Fine music, quality artwork, innovative architecture, an exquisite cup of coffee, a well manicured garden -- these can be sources of great inner peace and contentment.

A part of me wonders if one of the causes of systemic poverty in America is simply the lack of beauty in the poor man's world. Seeing half of the houses boarded up and abandoned with yards untouched in years, noticing the piles of litter -- rusted beer cans, smashed glass bottles that once held cheap vodka, cigarette butts, even ammunition shells -- scattered in ever conceivable place. This is a world of concrete where everything is grey. Life does not thrive here. Green is a rarity. We in the city have paved paradise and put up a parking lot, as the songwriter says. I have friends who have never seen a lake or a farm or a mountain. And it makes me wonder what kind of person I would be had spent ever waking moment of my life trapped within the concrete jungle.

But today the ugliness is covered by pure white. Mounds of trash have become pristine and untouched knolls of soft clouds. Even the ugly abandoned houses next door have a sort of romantic, mysterious aura to them as they hide beneath a white blanket. It is almost as if the near Eastside has been made new -- even if only for a few hours. For a moment our cracked and weed-ridden sidewalks are as smooth as those of the suburbs. Our potholes disappear. And our collective poverty subsides for a moment as people gather around their cracked windows to catch a rare glimpse of beauty coming down from the sky.

Thank you, God, for snow. Thank you for beauty. And thank you for saying, "Behold, I make all things new." Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Saving Words

The Lord has rearranged my life this week. I hit bottom and was in the pit. I couldn't look up anymore and felt overwhelmed. But, thank God, I saw a little Episcopalian chapel, walked in, and prayed the evening prayers with the two priests who were there. As we prayed, I was struck by two verses which have now come to control me:

Psalm 27:13-14 Yet I am confident that I will see the LORD's goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD.

I have no profound theological insight for my blog at this point. I have nothing to offer at all. Except I wish to give witness to the fact that ancient words still speak and that God knows what we need to hear and when we need to hear it. I'm thankful for these simple words which I cling to like a life raft in the middle of the stormy sea.

Words from Mother Teresa

"It is not a sin to be rich. There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. But I tell you this provokes avarice, and there comes sin. Richness is given by God and it is our duty to divide it with those less favoured.

Some time ago, a Hindu gentleman was asked: 'What is a Christian?' And he gave a very simple and very strange answer: 'A Christian is giving.' And right from the beginning we find that it is really just giving. God loved the world so much that he gave his Son -- the first great giving. Being rich he became poor for you and me. He gave himself totally. But that was not enough. He wanted to give something more -- to give us the chance to give to him. So he made himself the hungry one, the naked one so that we could give to him.

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money; money is not enough for money one can get. The poor need our hands to serve them, they need our hearts to love them. Let us give, not from our abundance but until it hurts. Let us make ourselves poor for him."

(Taken from "Life in the Spirit" 53)

Resolution of Repentance

I have heard the call to repent which came from God through the lips of people I love -- the lips of my wife, my father, and some close friends. They bravely rebuked me for something I knew deep down was a problem to be faced, but didn't want to face it. Here is what they have said:

Greg, in your fervor for solidarity with the poor, you have become judgmental to those who do not have the same passion as you. You have chided rich Americans for being rich Americans and refused to meet them where they are. You have spoken loudly and boldly against the dangers of hoarding wealth, but people will not respond to anger. People will only respond to a life well lived and messages given in love.

I have taken this advice to heart. It was not easy to hear. Rebukes never are. Nevertheless, I needed to hear this as I have become yet another one of those angry, envious do-gooder liberals. And so I repent. I resolve here and now to keep my big mouth shut for a while and just live my life according to how I read the gospels. I will try to preach my sermons without words.

Forgive me, blog readers, for being so vitriolic at times. While I do believe that the grossest of injustices in this world need to be prophetically condemned, I have not done so in love. I hope this to be a new beginning for me and for this blog which is a reflection of the inner soul of its author.