Love Is Strange: More thoughts on 'Blue Valentine'

After watching Blue Valentine for the third time tonight, something hit me: love is strange. Complicated. Messy. And probably more than anything, disappointing. Similar to what every Yasujirō Ozu film would tell us about life.

Each time I've watched Blue Valentine, I've seen it differently. The first time, it was all about the highs and the lows. Smiling from grin to grin, heartbreaks going up and down. Left to right. Fits of rage, sexual passion, dancing to a song titled, 'You & Me.' It was all there. And I felt it. Everyone did.

The second time, I noticed it was a story about dealing with (and accepting) relational brokenness. Like the doomed fate of a child who still believes in Santa Claus (e.g., one day, that belief will be dropped), love is (sometimes) all about disappointment. Going from the honeymoon of dating to the throws of a difficult relationship, there are more than just a few bumps along the way. People tell me, 'it's not all bad. It's really worth it.' So why are there so many movies like this out there telling us how sticky, tricky, and just-plain-horrendous marriages can be? Isn't it because it's but a reflection of what see? Or is it just what we choose to see? Or is it just our selfish desires getting in the way of making the other happy? Is it happiness for us, first, that gets in the way? Or do we all just want to feel special and that's when things start to go south?

The third time seeing Blue Valentine, I kept noticing how in the first act both characters talks about 'feelings.' This was the feeling they had, and so, they went with it and 'poof!' what happened? Their risk failed. Their love failed. Their feelings, failed. Like a Greek tragedy, like Romeo + Juliet, it was all lost. And the two people standing face-to-face by the film's end looked more like strangers than former lovers. What happened? Don't they remember? The beginning? The past? The journey along the way? In their attempt to take the risk of love, they end up seeing just how unfortunate (and painful) love can be. They see how loves sometimes turns us into strangers. Strangers to the people we once were, to the people we once loved. But is it really all lost?

As the song by Mickey & Sylvia goes: "Love. Love is strange. A lot of people take it for a game. Once you get it you never want to quit. After you've had it, you're in an awful fix."

In Blue Valentine, both characters were in more than just an 'awful fix.' For them, the stars failed to align. Instead, clouds came, fireworks blasted off, and the burning blues of their future (room) was the only thing made clear. This was their clarity. And not surprisingly, they both couldn't face it.

Sitting in the audience, we want to believe that hearts would soften, minds would be cleared, and their lives would change. Some way. We plead, silently, from the inside-out and hope. A hug. A kiss. A touch. A glance. Something. Something to (maybe) make the other person--and maybe even the person, themselves--change. Do we believe that love changes? Or is it merely that the feelings do? Can we find our way back into love? Or is it like trying to find your way back into being a kid again? Achievable on days when you're at Disneyland or on the playground or coloring with crayons but seemingly impossible anywhere else.

Perhaps this is why Blue Valentine is so rare, so pure, so good. For it presents us with two people, two dreamers, two kids, essentially. Kids trying to grow up in a very broken, very difficult world. Are they ready for love? Maybe that isn't so much the question as is this: are they ready to receive love and not only give it? This is, perhaps, the biggest thing no one tells you about getting into a relationship. It's not just about what you give, what you take, what you're willing to sacrifice. It's also about what the other person is willing to receive. And, also, what they're not willing to receive. Are the two souls in Blue Valentine willing to let themselves be loved? It's hard to say for certain, but I'm doubtful (that's why they seem so insecure, so self-protective, so distant in times of pain, confusion, and loss).

A song can bring them together but it can't keep them from falling apart.

Maybe this is part of the film's power, its mystery, its wonder, and tragedy. For two hours, we get to see the evolution (and destruction) of a relationship, played out as if time ran parallel--the bad running alongside the good. The only problem is, the music has stopped and the couple (may be) beyond repair. Are they?

I guess that depends on who you are and how you see it.

Atheism for Lent: Ash Wednesday (Day 1)

Why atheism for lent?

Karl Barth once wrote that it was the Church and not the world (or the Jews or Romans) who crucified Christ. Such a statement is a powerful philosophical and doctrinal assertion. Since the Church was wrong about Christ, can the Church be trusted? Should we ever allow the Church to dictate what a community must follow or must believe? Ask an everyday Christian this and I'd be curious to hear their answer.

"But God loves the Church! Christ loves the Church."

Really? Then why the hell did the Church turn on Christ? I mean, really. Why would people do such a thing way-back-then? How could they do something to their so-called Creator, or even, to a Rabbi who brought about good news and great joy to those who had ears to hear? What kind of Church is this?

Many fundamentalists would defend the Church saying, "they were deceived" or "they knew not what they were doing". Well if that's true, who's to say the Church knows what it's doing now? Who's to say people won't be defending the bigotry that passes for right doctrine and right belief today in many churches, 100 years from now? Can we trust the Church, today? When pastors tell us that gay marriage is wrong, today, is that unlike the rabbis and priests and religious leaders and temple players of Jesus' day telling us that Jesus was wrong? Jesus, a heretic? Jesus, a blasphemer? With the Church's track record, shouldn't we have (more than enough) reason to be a little suspect? A little uncertain? A little doubtful?

The story of Zacchaeus always fascinated me as a little child. To me, it was told (and taught) as a story about a small man, a seemingly insignificant man, being heard and noticed and acknowledged by Christ, when no one else would acknowledge him. Now, I understand why people of that time wouldn't acknowledge a man like Zacchaeus. For he was a modern day homosexual. A flaming gay Christian, so to speak. His evil tax collecting ways were shunned by the most religious of society. So when Jesus said, "Zacchaeus, I'm going to your house today," (that time, the equivalent to standing alongside gay advocacy groups or clubbing at the Abbey in West Hollywood), the crowds (full of religiosity) cringed.

When you examine this story closely, it's peculiar (and fascinating) to note the language used in the Scriptures. Particularly in verse 7 of Luke 19, where it reads (following Jesus' insistence on staying over at the chief tax collector's house): 'All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”' To break it down pretty simply, Jesus basically went against everyone. 'All the people' were wrong. And remember, all these people were church-goers (or at least, the majority of them were). If they weren't, why else would they comment on Jesus going to 'be the guest of a sinner?'

Therefore, on this Ash Wednesday--where we're reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return--perhaps atheism becomes the only lens by which we can see Christ--the Christ crucified by the Church--clearly. This is why, I think, atheism is so important, so helpful. And this is why I'm so excited to be starting this journey. A trip into the dark where the Church is wrong and the excluded, outsider, "lost ones" are finally seen as right.

Atheism for Lent: The Day Before the First Day

In the preface to his book, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism, Merold Westphal writes that he's writing to the church. To the pastors. To the laity. To all Christians who've grown complacent, swirling and circling in a faith that serves the self more than it serves others. Wesphal ends with a hope that his book will prove to be "edifyingly disturbing" to its readers.

I like that concept: to edify by/through disturbing. In light of this, a small group of Fuller friends and I are embarking on what many people our age are thinking about, thanks to a gentle prodding from Peter Rollins, and that is "Atheism for Lent."

Now, some of you may be wondering: 'I thought Lent was about giving something up? About sacrifice?' And you'd be write. But here, Rollins explains how atheism for Lent is an act of giving something up that in turn, can deepen and mature one all the more. He also suggests 'atheism' is part of Christian belief, Christian faith, and in fact, lies at the very heart of Christianity.

Rollins claims, "Every concrete theism creates its negative, its atheism. There are as many atheisms as there are theisms. All affirmations create their negations. Whenever a concrete religion is faced with its own negation, one of two things generally happens: either the church rejects those who reject it, pushes those who question it and who deny it outside the fold, pushing them away; or they listen to those who question, they listen to what they have to say, they consider it and they attempt to use it in a way to deepen their faith. However, there's a third position and it's where one attempts to integrate the negation into the very affirmation, itself. In other words, one takes the critique and sees it as an integrate part of faith. This is something we bear witness to at the very heart of Christianity itself. For in the cross, when Christ cries out, 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?', we see that the absence of God, the felt absence of the Divine, is brought into the very heart of the faith. Instead of seeing it as some kind of test that we have to endure, or the result of our sin and our finitude, what we see is God experiencing the absence of God. Therefore the absence of God is seen to be apart of the life of faith. If a Christian is to participate in the crucifixion, to stand with Christ, then part of the Christian experience is that absence, itself. In a similar way, when we are confronted by the atheism that is generated by Christianity, perhaps we should not see it as an enemy that we need to fight, or as a stranger that we need to listen to, but rather we should view it as a friend and a comrade, that we must embrace and welcome as our own."

So with the help of Merold Westphal, myself and four other friends will be embarking on a friendly existential journey into the minds of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, daily, for the next 46 days. Hopefully, we'll come to a place close to where Kelly James Clark came to, after reading through Westphal's book. In the forward she writes:

"Their [Marx, Nietzsche, Freud] deep insights startle us, find us out, shame us, catch us up short, claim our assent, and damn our pretension. We realize, to our benefit, that we are not as good, faithful, just, and humble as we thought before we started this book."

Here's to 'damning our pretensions' and letting the absence of God make room for the possibility of God, and the gift of suspicion and faith.