What Little Miss Sunshine taught me about Church
Marcel Proust is someone I know nothing about. I feel like I should because he is acclaimed to be a rather well known author who wrote about memory in a seven part series, entitled Remembrance of Things Past.
In fact the extent of my knowledge of Proust is what I learned from Steve Carell's character in Little Miss Sunshine.
With that said, I encountered this line from Proust not too long ago about memory:
"(Memory) would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being".
Each week the Church gathers together for a number of things, but in part to remember.
When we remember the Story of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we are given once again a rope to draw us up out the the abyss of not-being. Each week we come together to discover again, for the first time, what it means to be a "being".
While it is an interesting story, it would be hellish to never have a memory. Movies like 50 First Dates or Memento are great to watch but I would not wish my enemy into that state of memory limbo. Amnesia is a horrible thing to witness and if you do not believe me just ask anyone who has witnessed a loved one suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Or just ask Clive.
The Church comes together each week to stave off group amnesia or collective Alzheimer's. We remember and we are pulled from that abyss. We remember and we are once again home. We remember and we are no longer alone. We remember and we are found.
In fact the extent of my knowledge of Proust is what I learned from Steve Carell's character in Little Miss Sunshine.
With that said, I encountered this line from Proust not too long ago about memory:
"(Memory) would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being".
Each week the Church gathers together for a number of things, but in part to remember.
When we remember the Story of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we are given once again a rope to draw us up out the the abyss of not-being. Each week we come together to discover again, for the first time, what it means to be a "being".
While it is an interesting story, it would be hellish to never have a memory. Movies like 50 First Dates or Memento are great to watch but I would not wish my enemy into that state of memory limbo. Amnesia is a horrible thing to witness and if you do not believe me just ask anyone who has witnessed a loved one suffer from Alzheimer's disease. Or just ask Clive.
The Church comes together each week to stave off group amnesia or collective Alzheimer's. We remember and we are pulled from that abyss. We remember and we are once again home. We remember and we are no longer alone. We remember and we are found.
Top Ten Googled words
Google released their top search words for 2011. Here are the top ten:
10- iPad 2 (if you are 37+ years old and reading this blog, you have a 64% chance of having one)
9- Steve Jobs (genius)
8- TEPCO (Japan reactor that melted down)
7- Adele (musician)
6- iPhone 5 (have you heard of this phone that Apple has?)
5- Battlefield 3 (video game)
4- Casey Anthony (Florida mother accused of murdering her child)
3- Ryan Dunn (From Jackass who died in a car crash of all things)
2- Google+ (mostly searching for invites or digital migration steps from facebook or "is this another social network I have to learn? Crap."
And of course the number one most Googled term of 2011 as released by Google -
1- Rebecca Black (had a viral hit video called "Friday")
I am sure you can catch the irony of people using Google to discover information about Apple (a competitor of Google).
50% of this list are people. For some reason this made me think of this line credited to Eleanor Roosevelt, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
10- iPad 2 (if you are 37+ years old and reading this blog, you have a 64% chance of having one)
9- Steve Jobs (genius)
8- TEPCO (Japan reactor that melted down)
7- Adele (musician)
6- iPhone 5 (have you heard of this phone that Apple has?)
5- Battlefield 3 (video game)
4- Casey Anthony (Florida mother accused of murdering her child)
3- Ryan Dunn (From Jackass who died in a car crash of all things)
2- Google+ (mostly searching for invites or digital migration steps from facebook or "is this another social network I have to learn? Crap."
And of course the number one most Googled term of 2011 as released by Google -
1- Rebecca Black (had a viral hit video called "Friday")
I am sure you can catch the irony of people using Google to discover information about Apple (a competitor of Google).
50% of this list are people. For some reason this made me think of this line credited to Eleanor Roosevelt, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Man bites dog...
"Be careful. People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things... well, new things aren't what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don't want to know that man bites dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds . . . Not news but olds, telling people that what they think they already know is true. "
—Terry Pratchett, through the character Lord Vetinari from his "The Truth" a Novel of Disworld.
This might help explain why so many people can become offended by alternate theologies.
—Terry Pratchett, through the character Lord Vetinari from his "The Truth" a Novel of Disworld.
This might help explain why so many people can become offended by alternate theologies.
Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.