beyond the pale

So the other evening, My Beloved was trying to tell me about his day. I was upstairs; he was down.

I called out, “Wait. I can’t really hear you. Let me come down.”

MB kept talking. I tried my best faraway listening. Forget it. I came to the top of the stairs and stopped him.

“What’d you say? ‘Everything went wobbly-eyed‘?”

He stared at me in disbelief.

“Nooo. I said, ‘Everything went horribly awry.'”

Oh.

Hmm. (I think I like mine better.)

Today is the kind of day that reminds me why, back in my “serious acting” days, I said no to the inevitable lure of Hollywood. The slimy game playing, the skewed worldview, the moral and spiritual poverty. The Arts are not about art. We know that. That art still happens is utterly incidental to the business of art. That art still happens, I believe, proves a Creator who put His creative fire in every heart, regenerate and unregenerate alike. But … if you care about the art of art, care about that pursuit, you’ll most likely have your heart broken by the business of art. But, enough about, uh, me … maybe another day.

“The Passion of The Christ” was soundly snubbed at the hands of The Academy during this morning’s Oscar nominations. Mel Gibson’s transcendent masterpiece garnered no nominations in the “biggie” categories”: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay. It did receive nominations in the more technical categories of Cinematography, Original Score, and Makeup. So I guess all that sobbing and sniffling heard in all those darkened theatres was because of that darned Original Score. Funny. I thought it was from something else .

But those of us who loved this courageous, inspired film shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, what could Hollywood do? Too popular to ignore, too truthful to applaud, “The Passion” must have created a bona fide conundrum for The Academy. I mean, really. These poor, well-meaning people just want to bless themselves, but how could they do that with “The Passion” — and the passions it stirred — standing in their way? Ah, I know. Extend the olive branch of lesser nominations to appease the film’s rabid fans. You know, some nice, piecemeal, technical nods. Who could argue with that? But certainly nothing founded on content. Nothing that could possibly signal a warm embrace, a holistic grasp of the film. Ohhh, nooo. Too big a nod could be dangerous. Too big a nod could break Hollywood’s neck, leave it paralyzed. Because too big a nod is a nod to Truth. For this is Hollywood, after all, our glittering Left Coast Babylon of boobs, braggarts, and blind men.

And truth is for suckers … dudes …

Okay. Go now to Angry Alien Productions. There, you’ll find some movie classics re-enacted in 30 seconds with … bunnies, naturally. What’s not to love ’bout that? It’s good stuff, Maynard. Have yourself a li’l fun. I took a shine to this one. I tell ya, my childhood bunny Hopscotch never did any of that stuff. Feel kinda ripped off now.

Tip: My friend The Anchoress , who liked this one.

Congrats, Dubya. You sounded great today. You *looked* great today. I, for one, am proud to have a man of deep, unshakable conviction as the leader of our nation.

I thank you, President Bush. And my family — for whom the terror issue is personal — thanks you.

I posted this story a few months ago, before the election. It’s the story of my aunt and uncle’s deaths in a pre-9/11 terror attack. (So, I guess, technically, it’s a “rerun,” but not if you haven’t seen it, right?)

We need to be ever mindful of what we face.

I thought I’d take advantage of these few lucid moments my computer’s wheezing out to say: I’m having some dratted computer problems. And because I’m sure this cooperative computer moment won’t last forever, just thought I’d let y’all know. Be back later this week.

I’m not strong of late. I’m struggling. I’m finding it too hard to offer up anything new right now, anything coherent. Perhaps if I were stronger, but I am weak.

So how ’bout this instead? Some Thackeray:

“When you think that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a piece of gingerbread, and that a plum-cake was a compensation for the agony of parting with your mamma and sisters; O my friend and brother, you need not be too confident of your own fine feelings.”

And here’s more:

“Thus, my dear and civilized reader, if you and I were to find ourselves this evening in a society of greengrocers, let us say, it is probable that our conversation would not be brilliant; if, on the other hand, a greengrocer should find himself at your refined and polite tea-table, where everybody was saying witty things, and everybody of fashion and repute tearing her friends to pieces in the most delightful manner, it is possible that the stranger would not be very talkative, and by no means interesting or interested.”

And more:

“For which of us can point out many such in his circle — men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant, and not only constant in its kind but elevated in its degree; whose want of meanness makes them simple; who can look the world honestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made, and a score who have excellent manners, and one or two happy beings who are what they call in the inner circles, and have shot into the very centre and bull’s-eye of the fashion: but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper and each make out his list.”

I got nuttin’. Nada. Well, I got somethin’, but it’s just a whiny baby moan about my poor car. And that’s this: It’s raining biblical here in So Cal, and naturally, my little car has a leak. I’m hoping to blame it on the recent incompetent bunglery of the goobers who painted it. Can’t find where it’s coming from. Fashioned a really-stupid-looking-obviously-done-by-a-girl visqueen “panel” on the driver’s side door because I was sure that was the culprit. Drove around looking like a MORON — and still had water on the backseat floor, so clearly, my groovy makeshift panel didn’t work. Maybe God meant it as a “lesson in humility.” (I say that as an homage to something a verrry wealthy friend of mine once said: “Yeah, my dad wouldn’t give my little sister a Mercedes as her first car. She had to drive a CAMARO as a lesson in humility.” Oh, please. The poor baby. I laughed out loud and snorted — I think I really did snort …. well, it IS pretty snort-worthy — “Oh, yeah? How’d that work out?” — BEFORE bothering to look at her face. Once I did, I stopped laughing. She was dead serious. Oh. Uhhhhh … oops.)

So I’m gettin’ really chapped with this. Car stinks like a thousand ratty sponges AND steams up like a sauna when I drive — and not in that smooth, snooty “oh-Lovey-let’s-have-a-spa” kind of way. Nope. It fogs like a dozen hormonally crazed teenagers are loose and makin’ out in my car. And hey — if the windows are gonna fog, I want it to be from something fun I’M doing, not because there’s some freakin’ encroaching wetlands in my backseat! I’ve repeatedly, obsessively destroyed the marshlands with sponges and Lysol and anything else I can get my hands on. But only under cover of night lest some pinchy environmentalists catch me and call the wrath of the EPA down upon me.

Although, maybe I should just cave in and get me some fishies.

All right. This has bugged me enough over the past several days that I’m gonna write about it. Yep. (And it’s not even the thing I’m “stewing” about as mentioned in a recent post. That’s still a-stewin’ and a-brewin’.)

Two things of late. First, I heard this from a Christian acquaintance: “Do we really have to keep hearing that we’re all sinners?” Okaaay …. Maybe I should’ve said something, but I’m actually trying to keep my mouth shut more …. which is why, I guess, I have a blog. Seems there’s only so much I CAN keep my mouth shut. Anyway, the comment sorta stuck in my craw.

The second craw-sticking comment came on the heels of my recent post, “some straights and some homos.” The comment was posted over at The Anchoress, not here, and in it, the author — who I think rather missed the point of the post — asserted the idea that, after 2,000 years, the notion that we’re all sinners is a “fairly banal” one.

Am I crazy? Is something wonky and wrong here? (Or maybe it IS just me?)

Is the very reason for which Christ died, robbing sins, shattering history, becoming a bore, a “no biggie”?

“Yeah, yeah. Jesus died the most brutal, torturous death on the cross for my sins, actually IN MY PLACE and …. uhh …. whatever …. (*yawwwn*) …. hey, what’s on TV?”

Are we as Christians so numbed and so succumbed to our culture that our Savior’s sacrificial death is becoming just a tiresome, quaint tale to tell our children? A story of no greater import than the dreary old bedtime variety told to induce sleep? Are we becoming so slyly yet thoroughly seduced by the world’s siren call of self-sufficiency that the truth of our sinfulness is an offense — even to us?

Certainly there are times in this Christian life when we feel we’re alone in the landscape, forgotten by the Lord, but that’s never the truth. Certainly there are times when we become achingly weary of the journey, our hearts fainting, our feet stumbling, our minds crying, “O God, I can’t do it anymore!” But please tell me we can’t truly behold our Lord’s bruised, battered body, our sins heaped upon it, with dulled hearts and glazed eyes.

We are frail. We can be tired forgetters and petty forsakers. WE can be banal. But not our Lord, His precious sacrifice, or the reasons for it. The whole world stands on wobbly legs of sinfulness, united in its need of a Savior. Our sin was our lost cause, but Jesus Christ was its champion.

In the wake of the tsunami in South Asia, I’ve wondered how many of the over 150,000 dead had even heard the beautiful, blessed, banal truth of our sinfulness and the Savior who died for it.

And I’ve wondered how many of them, in their roiling, thunderous deaths, surrendered as lost causes, never knowing their Champion.