Castaway is on tonight. I love this movie. The reason I started a blog is just so I can talk about this movie. Am I obsessed? Well... who isn't obsessed with Tom Hanks' natural charm and talent?
Seriously, I believe that God speaks to me through this movie. It has all the big ideas of Christianity; forgiveness, salvation, redemption, freedom, and my favorite... fellowship. How does this movie convey so much? I think part of it is in the silent, lonely meditation that Chuck, the main character, has to go through in order to find himself. It is through the forced loneliness that he discovers his will to survive and live. And also through that loneliness he finds that he cannot live without his Wilson. He creates a relationship and that relationship becomes so important. I always cry when he loses Wilson. I cry when he realizes that Kelly can't love him anymore. I cry when the only sound he hears is waves. There is something so awesome about the drive to keep living when all other hope is lost.
I think no other scene demonstrates this more than the scene when Chuck talks to his friend about why Kelly saved him on the island. He knows that the thought of Kelly kept him alive and that he was meant to live. And even though he couldn't be with Kelly, he knew she saved him. He had to keep breathing, keep living, keep spearing fish. Then one day, this port-a-potty wall came floating up onto the beach and he knew he had a sail and the means to get off the island.
Anne Lamott said two things about hope that I am clinging to right now. They are written on my mirror and etched into my consciousness...
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”
“When hope is not pinned wriggling onto a shiny image or expectation, it sometimes floats forth and opens.”
We aren't always forced into deserted island situations, but we often feel like we are on a deserted island. That is when I believe God comes into our lives and reminds us that we keep breathing, we keep living, we keep loving others. This day, this perfect day, is exactly what God means for us right now. There may not be a boat on the horizon and there may not be a rescue near in sight, but the sun continues to rise and set, we continue to breathe and live and love. Who knows what the tide will bring tomorrow.
2 comments:
Thanks for writing this. - Dan
Sarah, I was reading about hope this morning, too! I found and liked this quote by Victoria Safford: "Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope - not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of "Everything is Gonna Be All Right." But a different, sometimes lonely place, of truth-telling about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we're seeing, asking them what they see."
(sorry that just made this comment very long!)
-Rebecca
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