Dick Bolles' Hope & Faith Blog

For Diana

On Saturday, September 8, 2012,  a Memorial Service was held at Grace Cathedral for Diana W. Young, beloved wife of George Young, beloved mother of Melinda and Mollie. I was asked to say a few words during the Service.  Here is an edited version of what I said:

 

I have known George Young for some thirty-five years; so of course I have known Diana that long, as well.   As I was thinking about her this week three words came to my mind:  cherished,  human, and grace.

Cherished.   Psalm 90 was written during the Old Testament period of history, perhaps when Josiah was King, to comfort those facing a series of great calamities.   Flash forward to the eighteenth century,  when Isaac Watts was alive, in England, and they were facing a similiar series of calamities.  Isaac was inspired to paraphrase Psalm 90, to comfort his Age, and—— set to a tune from the organist at St. Anne's Church there—— it has become one of the great hymns for all Ages.  in fact, in England, it has become virtually a second national anthem, played at all kinds of memorials:  "O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come..."    The hymn has a stanza which runs:  "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away;  they fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day..."    They fly, forgotten...   That was the Old Testament picture of death:  the duty of the living is to forget the dead.   

Christians overturned that idea, and said the duty of the living was to remember the dead.  So was born the Christian calendar,  remembering events, remembering its heroes,  year after year, remembering, remembering, remembering.   And at the center of its liturgy, the Church enshrined Jesus' own words,  where he took bread and wine and told them to "do this, so as to remember me" or, in the more ancient words, "do this, in remembrance of me."   

So, this service today is not the end of our remembering Diana.  It is but the beginning.  Our lovely task: to remember everything about her,  and to remember it again and again and again. The question is, what in particular should we strive to remember, about her?  For me, it is that she was cherished, that she was human, and that she was filled with grace.

Human.   What I remember about Diana is how completely human she was.  We often give awards to people for extraordinary accomplishments,  but I think we should give awards to people who are just real good at being a human being.  Warts and all.   Diana was that.   She was wonderfully, completely, human.  And she was good at it.   That is what I will always remember about her.   Along with her smile.

Grace.   On the bedrock of that humanness, however,  comes into the life of every Christian——(and Diana was a Christian; she was baptized in this very Cathedral)——something mysterious and wonderful called "grace."   That is, God's presence in everyday life, radiating love and creativity.  And oh!  was Diana creative!   She could gild everything, with silver and gold  transforming the ordinary in everyday life.  She not only had the soul of an artist; she was an artist.  Exhibiting grace.  Exhibiting love. 

We are not a Forgetting tribe;  we are a Remembering tribe.  So today, we begin our remembering. Think about her.  Talk about her.  Never forget her.  Diana was and is:  Cherished.  Human.  Filled with Grace. 

RULES FOR DEALING WITH GRIEF

Rules for the Family, in Dealing with Grief Over The Death of a Loved One

(My Beloved Son Mark Died of a Massive Cerebral Hemorrhage July 11, 2012)

As a parish priest (Episcopal) for many years, I dealt with one or two families each week, who lost a loved one. And then my only brother was assassinated, and I wept myself (off and on) for two years. So here is all that I have learned about healthy grief:

 
1. Tears will come, for almost all of us. They are a natural part of being human. But they come like the tides of the sea. Tides in, tides out. Long stretches without tears, then suddenly, often in the midst of laughter, the tears will spring, flowing down our cheek. Welcome them, when they do come; they are part of the cleansing of the soul, robing it in white celestial garments. 

 
2. You will cry in public, ruining your image of yourself (and your makeup). Others will see that you are crying. So what? We live in the midst of a stupid culture with its stupid little goals ( "Oh good, I didn't break down!") Now, just why "I cried" is held to equal "I broke-down" I have no idea. In grieving times, the medal belongs to the one who allows the tears to flow, when they come, proving they are human, not to the one who chokes them back, trying to be unhuman. Indeed, I have seen grief last much much longer in the lives of those who set as their beginning goal "I will not break-down". You are human, and it's just fine if others see that.

 
3. Don't try to rewrite the play called "Life." Set aside the "oh, if only I had"s, or the "what if"s. The play, with him in it, is done. The curtain has come down. Turn your face toward the future, not the past. Whatever you admired about him, try to put into your own conduct and life, in the days to come. Did he see the funny side of things? Try to do more of that, yourself, from now on. Was he generous? Be more so, in your own life, from now on. Did he bring beauty into people's lives? Set that, as your goal, henceforth. Let the light that was in him now shine from your face.

 
4. Finally, in your thoughts and reminiscing, try to hold on to two streams of thought at the same time: what it is you've lost, what it is he gained. You lost: a ton of future encounters and times together that could have been. He gained: freedom from pain, suffering, and further insults to the human body, that might have been. In Mark's case, his body was always aching and wracked with pain, after five operations on his spine, earlier in life, steel rods up his back, serious cardiovascular disease in his arteries and finally, in his brain. Now he is free of all that. Let the tears mingle: tears of loss, for ourselves; tears of gratitude, for his release.

      WE DO CHURCH !

Well,  if there is one thing that could get me started writing a regular blog again, it was that February 18th  four and a half hour service "singing Whitney Houston home" to heaven and her Lord.

The black Baptist community there in Newark New Jersey, where Whitney grew up and first sang, stated their custom:

This isn't a funeral.  We don't do funerals.

This isn't a memorial service.  We don't do "memorial services".

No, when some member of our community dies, we do what we do every Sunday.  We do Church !

And so, the service—for that is what it was—celebrated and talked about two people throughout,  and not just one:  it was all about Whitney.......and Jesus.  

Of course I was touched.  You'd have to be made out of stone not to be touched.  My IQ is allegedly in the top one percent in the country,  but I have never been an intellectual.  I have always been "an emotional,"  if there is such a word.   I grew up on the Bible; and the one Biblical injunction I have never had any difficulty in obeying, is "Rejoice with those who rejoice; and weep with those who weep."   I feel so deeply what others are going through.  

And so, I wept on and off,  throughout.  Particularly when some of those who spoke or performed, were visibly struggling with their tears.   Handkerchiefs were a required accessory that day.   I also laughed, of course, with some of the stories Kevin Costner told.

I was thinking, as I watched:  you know, I love the black church.   At an earlier time in my life, and for a long time, I was an ordained minister;  and I was the pastor of both blacks and whites in a large Episcopal church in Passaic New Jersey.  So, last week, the refrains I heard were old familiar ones:   the earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is.  The heavens also.  And our true home was and will be in heaven with Him.  Our life on earth, then, is essentially a life at a hotel;  and when we die,  we check out of this hotel and go home,  to Him,  His Love and His Mercy.  We gather, then, today,  in order to "sing Whitney home."

I didn't know much about Whitney.  I saw her (four times), and loved her, in The Bodyguard.  She gave me my all-time favorite love song.  

Then, over the years, I kind of lost track.   I heard, dimly,  about her battle with drugs beginning in the mid-90's,  and her career going off the tracks,  and her performances where she disappointed her fans greatly.

But I didn't pay much attention.   Of course, it all got trotted out by the media upon the news of her death.   So I was quickly brought up to speed. I discovered her joyous Star Spangled Banner on YouTube.   By the time they "sang Whitney home"  I  could understand why the ministers kept emphasizing during that service two themes:  that Whitney was incredibly gifted, and that God was a merciful God, and a forgiving God.   Whitney truly needed that mercy, and that forgiveness.   Along with the celebration of her gifts.

My favorite moment?  When it was time to take the body out of the church, at the end, someone up front said simply:  The Voice! !   And as the pallbearers surrounded the casket then lifted it up and marched in close formation down the aisle,  holding it only on their shoulders,  that voice rang out throughout the church,  "I will always love you......"    

As Clive Davis, the man who discovered her said,  "This is a voice that comes along once in a lifetime." Amen,  brother.  Amen.    

 

Our Annual Christmas Message 2010

Every year, for ages, I've written a Christmas poem, sent to all my friends and family. Here is this year's (in response to requests from people whose address I don't have):

Christmas 2010 At The Bolles' House

We spin through space, yet drive our car

As though on straight, flat ground,

What great illusionists we are:

We're really upside down.

'Twas Shakespeare said it first, I think,

"What fools these mortals be,"

We hold the world is only what

Our earthly eyes can see.

We think A World Invisible 

Just simply can't exist.

So, "what you see is all you get,"

On that this Age insists.

Bunk!  there is Mercy -- can't see that!

Forgiveness, too, and Love!

And true, the world's not flat, but round,

And heaven's not "above",

Yet God surrounds us, everywhere,

As though we're in His womb,

Yes! Christ was born. Lived. Died. Rose. There!

He killed death in its tomb.

 

Illusionist!  come, close your eyes

And lean on Faith, not reason,

Man's experience testifies

We really need this Season:

When Unseen World sings out its Joy

Despite This World's bad news:

"Look up! for He, the baby King,

Was sent to be your Muse."

Dang!  light the trees!  Dance!  Sing the songs,

And hang the mistletoe;

Do what we can to right life's wrongs,

And let our souls just know

Things aren't as bad as they may seem,

God triumphs,  in the end.

So, Marci sends her love, and I

Add hugs, to you, dear friend.

  R.N.B.

 

Street Sweepers at Midnight

I'm something of a night-owl.  I guess a lot of writers are.  I stay up late; I sleep late. I like to work in the middle of the night.  I saw a study the other day that claimed when someone is interrupted at a task, it takes them 22 minutes to get back into their creative mood.   I don't know about that "22 minutes";  but for sure interruptions can play havoc with a writer's concentration, during the day. Ah, but then there's night time.  Night time is glorious.  No phones ringing. No knock on the door.  No appointments to keep.  No errands to run.   'Just the chill, still, of the night."   (Cole Porter)

And yet, there is one interruption I welcome, one sound I listen for, when I'm working late. It comes between midnight and  2 a.m.    It's the sound of the street sweeper, coming up the street.   I assume you know what a street sweeper is.  It's a truck, usually white, with big brushes sticking out from beneath the truck, that are whirling, spinning,  parallel to the ground, kicking up, then sucking up, the debris and waste that has accumulated in the street, right near the curb.  

                                               

You can tell its distinctive sound,  while the truck is still a block or two away.  It's a low hum from the truck's engine, as the street sweeper moves slowly up the street, married to the sound of the soft swish of spinning brushes, on the street, up against the curb.

I get irrationally happy when I hear that sound, first in the distance, then coming closer and closer. I run to look out the window. When it comes into view, I always get a big grin on my face. 

 And along comes this hulking white thing, with its high beams piercing through the darkness.  It looks like some mechanized beast. 

Often, for no reason I have been able to discover,  the sweeper pauses, and then comes to a complete stop,  right opposite my house.  It stays there for several minutes. Of course, I am aware the truck has a driver, and for all I know, he is just stopping to have a smoke, or eat a sandwich.   Still, in nighttime, when a writer's fantasy imagination is at its height,  I am always struck by an irrational fantastical thought: did the sweeper stop, just here, because it knows that I am the one house within two miles that is so happy to see it? And hear it.   Looney tunes!  But I like the universe my head lives in.

__________________________

For a history of street sweepers, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_sweeper For street sweeping in my town, see: http://tinyurl.com/29xf8gg         If you're curious about the town overall, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danville,_California

Marci turned fifty

Just got back from Hawaii. Marci turned 50

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

Writing is two parts:  thinking and setting pen to paper.   Everyone assumes that writing begins the process; no, it is the end.  Turning ideas over in your mind, seeing relationships, building webs in the mind,  this is what makes the writing worth reading.  Without this prior Thinking,  the writing is dead. 

There's A Meanness Abroad in the Land

This is a criticism of critics. Just a tiny bit of irony, in that!

I was reading Newsweek today,  and found a review of war films, written by Caryn James.   She is a well-known movie critic.  I don't want to pick on her, she's probably a very nice woman, but she does serve up food for thought about all critics.   She was reviewing the new series about World War II,  by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.  And she had nothing good to say about it.  She also had little good to say about The Hurt Locker, the film which just cleaned up at the Oscars.   She said that Kathryn Bigelow's dazzling filmmaking "doesn't pause to let you realize that suspense and bravery are everything here."  I thought the film was about nothing else but. I went to watch it twice, because I was so entranced with her examination of the virtues and defects of such bravery.  ("War is a drug.")

In many of the reviews I read daily, on a whole range of subjects besides filmmaking, I am so struck with the underlying view the critics seem to have about intelligence.  Review after review bespeaks the idea of "look how intelligent I am, I can see – more than most – everything that's wrong with this."  (Whatever the this may be.)  I was raised with a very different view of intelligence: it valued "look how intelligent I am,  I can see – more than most – all the things there are to appreciate, about this."   

In our day, and perhaps in other days as well, it is a far rarer soul who makes appreciation the defining motif of his or her life,  than those who make criticism their defining goal.  Criticism is easy; it takes no brains to say what's wrong with something. Appreciation however, is difficult;  you sometimes have to fight to see things to appreciate, digging for example beneath ugly surface impressions,  to see some shining beauty underneath.  That's why prejudice flourishes.  It takes brains to see what there is to appreciate in every man and woman who was ever born.  Which should be the goal of every intelligent man or woman.  Civilization never decays or vanishes because of a lack of criticism in a society;  it decays or vanishes because of a lack of appreciation in that society.   As a direct consequence of this, that society tends to preserve the commonplace, while it casually throws away treasures. And criticism causes more meanness to be abroad, in the land.

Every critic begins with assumptions, usually unexamined, that they use to justify their hammering the thing they are examining.  For example, Caryn James' assumption here, in reviewing historical war films like The Hurt Locker, is that such films must have "a cultural resonance today," and feel "relevant." She has no patience with "outdated ideas" that were dear, she says in the past,  like "justice is on our side," or "warfare was about turf,"  or "platitudes about heroism."   She criticizes The Hurt Locker for "ignoring the urgent question of whether the war should be fought at all."   In other words, if she had been making that film, she would have been sure it dealt with that question. Fortunately, no such obligation was laid upon Kathryn Bigelow.  She was free to make her own film, not Caryn James'es.

In critics' articles or blogs, there's always just a little bit of "Ah, if I were king....(or queen) this is what I would have done."  The one notable exception to this is Roger Ebert, whom I read devotedly, just because he looks for things to appreciate in films that other critics dismiss out of hand.

Now, about history:  just because the past was different from the present, with different values and assumptions, doesn't mean it shouldn't be depicted.   Our history is what defines people, and nations.   Show me only a man's present circumstances,  and I may be bewildered by his actions.   But tell me that man's history and I will understand him much more completely, and find much to appreciate in him.  Our past is important,  and so are nations' pasts. We didn't just come into this world fully-hatched, and fully-born. We came into a context,  a family,  a community, a country, with traditions and values that were important to them, then;  and therefore important to us now.  In a word, show us our past, and make us really feel our history vividly,  and then we will find much more to appreciate about the present.  That is what the producers of The Pacific have done, and that is what Kathryn's The Hurt Locker has done, magnificently.

There's no way around it:  we need more "appreciators" in our society: men and women who, from the beginning, set out to make their lives all about appreciating others, even if it requires some hard thinking. And who think it takes more brains to appreciate than it does to criticize.  We need more men and women to make appreciation the goal of their whole career.  These are men and women to admire.

As the great composer of beautiful music, Jean Sibelius, famously said, "No one ever erected a statue to a critic."

 

 

Why the Job Hunt is Ruining America

Needless to say, I am not a politician.  I'm only an expert about "the job hunt."   But this does cause me to stay riveted on all that goes on in our nation's capital, because I've never seen a place more obsessed with The Job Hunt, in my whole life.

It's breathtaking to watch how, in the interests of their next job hunt, they will do almost anything: they will say one thing when they're trying to get the job, say the opposite thing once they have it.  They will even say No to everything, if they think it will help them with their next job hunt. 

They all have what we in our industry call "contract jobs" -- jobs that are only for a set amount of time, and then have to be renewed.  This keeps their eyes riveted on the people who have the power to hire them again,  and if they think  it will improve their chances of getting rehired, they will completely reverse their decisions on the job, from week to week:  they will even sponsor a bill one week,  vote against that bill the next week.   If they think it will help them with their next job hunt.

Why do they like this job so much, why do they want this job so badly?  Well, for one thing it has a great health plan.  For another, they get some mouthwatering special benefits and favors.  And, probably most importantly, the job gives them a lot of power, for as long as it lasts.  In an organization with 100 employees, one man (or woman) can thwart the will of the other ninety nine.

They don't need to take a Dale Carnegie course; this job, from beginning to end, depends on their being able "to win friends and influence people."  That's the skill that most determines whether or not they are successful in their next job hunt. It is the sine qua non of the job. 

The job hunt is their obsession.  They try to conceal that simple fact by giving it a more high-falutin' name.  They call it "re-election."  But beneath the facade of that language,  it's still the job hunt.

So, what does all this add up to?  Simply this: their obsession with their own job hunt is ruining America. It's causing things not to get done that should be done.  It's causing things that should not get done, to be done.   It's corrupting the fight to make this a better and more compassionate country, toward its own citizens.

I know what you're thinking, of course.  You think I'm talking about a particular political party. Nope. Wrong.   I'm talking about the whole Congress and the Executive Branch, decade by decade.  I'm talking about the hallowed tradition of the beast. Most of the policies, decisions and votes are based on their next job hunt.

So, as a job hunting expert, of sorts, I have this comforting thought for you: if you are unemployed, and worrying about how to find your next job,  don't worry. You have a friend in Washington, who is in the same boat as you are.  Make that: a lot of friends in Washington.  They may be employed temporarily right now.  But they're just as worried about their jobs as you are.

Friends?  Well they would be, if they ever saw any connection between their situation and yours. But I wouldn't hold out much hope that they'll ever change.  They are obsessed with their next job hunt.  They're not that worried about yours, except as it affects theirs. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if they ever saw a connection between your job hunt and theirs?  And moved beyond self-obsession to compassion?    Oh well, we can dream, can't we?

P.S. In the interest of full confession, my grandfather was a congressman.  He was a noble man, and never worried about his job hunt.  He died peaceably, while he was still in office.I know of course there are other noble men and women in office, to whom none of what I have said above, applies.   I hope their tribe increases. 

Going to College As Fun -- With God

I had the sweetest college education anyone could ever dream of.   I decided to attend college in Cambridge Massachusetts, because that is where my high school sweetheart, Jan, was also going to college.  The first two years there I chose M.I.T., looking forward to being a chemical engineer.  But every Sunday we went to church in Boston, and one time there I heard a sermon about how many Episcopal churches were going to have to close, due to a shortage of ordained ministers.  Believing in the old saying, "If you're not part of the solution, you're probably part of the problem," I pondered the obvious dilemma as it applied to me personally: does society need more faith, or more technology?  I opted for faith, and decided to give up chemical engineering, and go into the ministry -- in spite of the fact that I was the shyest man I ever knew.

And so, for my final two college years I decided to transfer out of M.I.T. and go to a liberal arts college. I wanted to stay in Cambridge (for reasons you can guess),  so the obvious choice was Harvard.  And that's when I experienced college as I wish everyone could experience it.   You see,  because of my course credits from M.I.T. I had "a major" already fulfilled --  it was "Physics," which I greatly disliked, but it required no further course work. 

So, each semester I was at Harvard I just opened up the catalog, looked to see what subjects intrigued me, and went and enrolled in that class. I ranged all over the lot.  I took Psychology with Gordon Allport.  Anthropology with Clyde Kluckhohn. The world's religions with Arthur Darby Nock.  Atomic physics with Einstein's successor at the University of Prague.  The development of the English language, with Dean Kirby-Smith from Radcliffe.  And so forth. The names may or may not mean much to you, but they meant everything to me.  For these two years at Harvard, I don't think anyone ever had more fun going to college than I did.  With nothing I had to take, I just studied subjects that intrigued me, guided by some of the best minds in the world.  It felt, well, so Plato-ish.

Ah!  and what exactly is the reason that all these memories came flooding back, this week?  Well, the February 22nd issue of Newsweek magazine had an article about Harvard.   It was called "Harvard's Crisis of Faith", and in it Lisa Miller discussed a proposal "that undergraduate students should be required to take at least one course in a category called Reason and Faith." Harvard's Louis Menand, and others, were for it;  Harvard's evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, and others, were agin it.  It was an interesting article, but I think they got the whole frame of the debate wrong.  It was all about God in  "courses."

What I learned from my time there, is that the courses you enroll in are only a small part of a college education.  That's because there are three steps, it seems to me, in the evolution of an educated person.  The first is, you begin by getting fascinated with information, or "data."  The Internet furnishes a fine example. The very nature of the beast is that it exists in packets.  Packets of data.  Mastering it, as you make your way through all the data that is out there, involves listening for silences as well as sounds. Listening for what's missing, as well as for what's there.  For what "they" don't tell you, as well as for what they do. Only then can you claim you're "an information specialist."

The next step in the evolution of an educated person is you move on.  You get fascinated now with courses and knowledges.  This is still data, of course, but now it's data that has two new characteristics:  the data is organized, and it is applied.  Mastering knowledge means you see how discrete packets of information are linked to each other,  by some internal logic or intuition;  and you see how this now-organized knowledge applies in real life situations, with real life problems. With this, you can claim you have mastered a field or body of knowledge. 

But there is a third step, in the evolution of an educated person.  You move on, eventually --  at age 22 or 72 -- to what is in essence a larger concentric circle,  encompassing all that has gone before, but now with an added outside circle or dimension.  That added dimension is called wisdom.  Wisdom has all the previous characteristics mentioned above -- sound, silence, organized, applied -- but with two new characteristics:  context, and weight.   With mere knowledge, mere coursework, you can start to think after a while that all ideas are of equal value and equal weight.  But with wisdom you try to look at things in the largest context possible,  and with that you realize that some ideas just matter more than others.  Some ideas simply carry more weight.  Wisdom lies in knowing that, and in knowing which ones.  And that, in turn, depends on always looking for the largest context possible, in which to set things, ideas, people, history, exploration, growth, and so on.  The impulse for doing this lies in the fact that  the largest context for everythng has always inspired in humans awe, dumbfoundedness, speechlessness,  and adoration -- such as those beautiful photos, lately,  of the heavens and the cosmos inspire in most of us.     

So, what is religion?  Well, at its best it has always been simply our search for the largest context in which to set everything. And, with one important discovery:  that as you move from information, to knowledge, to wisdom, you are moving to things that become more and more alive, as you journey. Knowledge is more alive than mere information.  Wisdom is more alive than mere knowledge.  And context -- the largest context imaginable -- is the most alive of all.  So we call that Context  "God." And feel, prior to any revelation from above,  that He or She has personality:  is sentient, alive, thinking, and -- above all -- creating. 

Over the course of this evolution of the educated person,  something odd happens. At the beginning, it is we who go looking -- for information, and then for  knowledge, and so forth.  But  when we find context -- the largest context imaginable, God -- the tables are turned. The history of religions has not been "Man's search for God" but "God, coming looking for us,"  seeking to fill every inch of our life with  His (or Her) full nature, life, and Being:  a process we call "grace"  (amazing grace! ).  

As I put down the Newsweek article, I found myself thinking:  God at Harvard?  Of course.  But not as a course.  Rather, as the context for the whole Harvard catalog, the beginning and end of both education and Wisdom.    

Fireworks in the Brain

I've noticed something startling these past few months:  my brain has been experiencing a sprint of new ideas in almost every area of interest, that I have.  For a long time, I simply noticed this,  and enjoyed it.  I mean, my brain has always been active, but now it's superactive. And creative.  I'm coming up with new ideas, a mile a minute. If thoughts once came like an occasional firecracker in the brain, now it feels like continuous fireworks.

Yesterday, it occurred to me to wonder why this was happening.  I am, after all, 82 years old; isn't the brain supposed to go into a slow decline by this point, with brain cells flicking off into space at an increasingly alarming rate?   Well, evidently not.  So, pondering why, I found myself talking to myself:  "what is different about your life, now, from, say, ten years ago?"  Instantly I knew the answer.  

My beloved wife and I have been watching movies.  No, that's not exactly something new.  I've been a movie buff all my life. What's new is the frequency.  Courtesy of Netflix, we've been watching movies every night. Think what that means:  graphic images flooding the brain for two hours every night. Without fail. And graphic images stimulate, as is common knowledge now, the right side of the brain.  This right side, in most people, is the creative, exploring, designing side of the brain.  It's the side that looks at old things in new ways,  familiar things with newly-found wonder, unexplored mental territory with new curiosity, sees patterns where no patterns were noticed before. The late Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness (1979) was one of the first to notice that images could make a big difference in a person's life.  Suffering from what doctors said was a terminal illness, he healed himself by playing Marx Brothers movies day by day.  It was images (and belly laughs) that did it. 

So, watching the movies every night lights up the mind.  I then wondered, is that enough to explain this burst of fireworks in my mind?   It occurred to me, after pondering, that there was something more.  And that was, the choice of movies.   I chose movies I remembered from different eras of my life, and most particularly the young years.  We chose to watch a movie I remember seeing when I was in tenth grade: Action in the North Atlantic, with Raymond Massey and Humphrey Bogart.  And the movie I remember seeing on my eighteenth birthday: Objective Burma, with Errol Flynn.  And so it has gone:  I've delved as deeply into my past as I can remember. For the sake of the curious, I have listed some of the movies at the end of this post.

But what is the point, and what does this have to do with stimulating the mind?  Well, it goes back to a belief of mine about dreams.  In my chequered career I used to do a lot of personal counseling with people in trouble. Some 6000 hours I would guess.   And I particularly delighted in helping them with understanding their dreams.  I noticed that when not much was stressing people out, in their present lives,  their dream-maker seemed to go back during their sleep to Unresolved Issues from their past -- not yet completely digested experiences if you will ––  and try to bring them to some kind of closure and peace. In other words, looking back at the past freed these people up, to do more in the present.  And what was I doing, but going back to the past every night with Netflix?   

When Frank Sinatra died, someone over forty wrote, "We have lost the soundtrack of our lives:  the music to which we fell in love, to which we proposed, to which we tied the markers of key events in our lives."  That's how I think of old movies, in my life at least:  they were the soundtrack of my life.  Going back and viewing this past, via movies, has freed me up to do more in the present.

Of course, I could be all wet. Maybe this new burst of thought and creative energy has more to do with age, the stars in their courses, God's grace descending,  wisdom arising - - who knows?  It still feels like fireworks in the brain. And I do believe it is a continuous diet of graphics and visiting the past that has something to do with it.  But, either way, it is a wonderful time to be alive.

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For the curious: The soundtrack and sighttrack of my past:

During the past six months, we have watched  Gunga Din, with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr, Sam Jaffe; Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston; Beau Geste, with Gary Cooper; Cabin in the Sky, with Ethel Waters; The Barkleys of Broadway, with Fred Astaire;  It Happened One Night, with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert; The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Errol Flynn;  Drums Along the Mohawk, with Henry Fonda; Alexander's Ragtime Band, with Don Ameche; Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman; Suspicion, with Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine;  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, with James Stewart; Yankee Doodle Dandy, with Jimmy Cagney; Roman Holiday, with Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn;  Dr. No, with Sean Connery; Citizen Kane, with Orson Welles; The Maltese Falcon, with Humphrey Bogart, Pete Lorre; The Third Man, with Orson Welles; The Captain's Paradise, with Alec Guinness; The Big Heat, with Glenn Ford; Stormy Weather, with Lena Horne; To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant, Grace Kelly; On The Waterfront, with Marlon Brando ("I coulda been a contender"), Eva Marie Saint;  Run Silent, Run Deep, with Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster; My Favorite Wife, with Cary Grant, Irene Dunne; The Bridge on the River Kwai, with William Holden; Bad Day at Block Rock, with Spencer Tracy; The Sea Chase, with John Wayne, Lana Turner; River of No Return, with Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe; From Here to Eternity, with Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr; Inherit the Wind, with Spencer Tracy, Frederic March; Let's Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand; Cool Hand Luke, with Paul Newman, Strother Martin ("What we've got here is failure to communicate."); High Society, with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra; The Graduate, with Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft; The Enemy Below, with Robert Mitchum, Curt Jurgens;  The Man Who Would Be King, with Michael Caine, Sean Connery; and every Fred Astaire or Cary Grant movie ever made.