Posts filed under "Sabbath Reflections"
Selma: A Bracing Tonic for Troubled Times
By Craig Detweiler from The Hollywood Journal It has been a rough year for race relations in America. The corrosive effects of bad religion have also made far too many headlines. Selma arrives as a refreshing tonic for our troubled times. It offers a feature length portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that rises [...]
Ed’s Story
I always wanted to meet Job. His story is well-known to the Bible-literate and then some. A good man, inexplicably and undeservedly stricken with illness, loss, and pain – (un)helpfully told by his wife to curse God and die. I may have met him in Ed’s Story: It’s Not Over. Ed, in this slow-moving and [...]
Our Own ‘Little Red Planes’
For me, it’s a black motorcycle. When I conjure up an image of my father, I see a tattooed, leather-clad biker hurtling down an empty highway on a midnight-black cruiser. As he pursues that elusive freedom promised only by the open road, he is somehow able to tame the asphalt by channeling the power of [...]
A Small Change
There’s a Christmas song about it. Families preserve their own unique script telling children what to do when it happens. A winged character with magical dust and a wand is usually involved. And a few bucks are on the line. Small Change is a deep and moving story of loss couched in the universal childhood [...]
Companionship
The story of Driftwood follows a young woman by the name of Blaire who works for a “wish” granting agency. Wishes in Driftwood come in a single form: companionship. We witness the miraculous healing of a single mother’s terminally ill daughter; a love interest for a lonely, young blind man; a son from an aging [...]
To Do Justice
Sooyoung swiftly and passionately strikes the canvas with his brush, wiping away tears and pain. Lights suddenly flash upon his hand and paintbrush, followed by angry shouts and threats. Quickly he gathers his tools of rebellion, slipping into the shadows of the urban night as the angry voices give chase. If they catch him he [...]
All Too Human Heroes
As a young child, my father went back to school to obtain a graduate degree. Because he enrolled as a full-time student, he started working the graveyard shift as a security guard for a local business complex. Both the hours and the undemanding nature of the job made it a perfect fit for a graduate [...]
I Have a Nemesis
Nemeses. The people that get under your skin. The people that are always one step ahead of you. The people that are always in your way, obstructing you, prohibiting you, frustrating you. Or killing you. The world of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian “relations” is complex. Both sides lay claim to a piece of land that has [...]
The Storms of Life
The storm has passed, the world is calm, but everything has been destroyed. The farmer, hunched and beaten, shuffles back into his home. My walk through life most often resembles the farmer’s shuffling. I plan, I plant, I pray, and then weather patterns too complex to be called anything other than “random” pick up my [...]
Positive I.D.
Banjo chords. Twangy vocals. Japanese face. *record scratch* An Asian man playing bluegrass?? Director Oscar Bucher opens his documentary short, Waiting for a Train, by throwing us into a moment of cognitive dissonance, then spends the rest of the film getting acquainted with its paradoxical subject, Toshio Hirano. Hirano fell head-over-heels with bluegrass music as [...]
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