What Movies Do Best: Thoughts on _Selma_

On hot button issues I tend to follow the example of Mary: "But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19).  It's a matter of self preservation.  In most issues you are damned if you do or damned if you don't.  I used to find a good flame war invigorating, but now I can't stand the taste of bile.  Aware of what I don't know, I hesitate to draw a line in the sand.  It seems, too, that there is a deep chasm between the two sides of any issue.  Knowledge and understanding are not acknowledged as malleable and progressive.  You choose a side and view everything through that lens.  The word "ignorant" is hurled back and forth like it was a cardinal sin rather than a universal fact.  I am ignorant.  Love me anyways (as I love you, in your ignorance).  Educate me without rancor (and I will try to return the favor).

With that preamble, I will uncharacteristically share my thoughts on a one such issue (with fear and trembling for the personal ignorance I am sure to reveal).  I didn't really learn any big new facts from the movie Selma.  I am somewhat educated and know my history.  The power of the movie for me was the power of the medium: perspective, empathy, emotion.  Watching the movie with my father I was struck with the realization that he, too, was in his 30's in the 60's--living in the same world and yet in a very different world.  If this struggle was in my immediate background, as close as the man sitting next to me, how would that affect my initial response to the death of a young black man at the hands of a policeman? 

I know this all sounds like Empathy 101 or Things You Learn When You Are Twelve but there is a difference between knowing something intellectually and having it really land emotionally.  The struggle depicted on the screen was not far away at all.  It was right here, within the scope of my immediate family, nearly within the scope of my lifetime.

And as I think of my family's history unfolding alongside these seminal events and yet not seemingly touched by them, I don't have to wonder what it would have been like to experience that.  I'm currently experiencing that.  How much pain is outside the scope of my daily influence?  How many moments are there where I would stand up and be counted if I had any real awareness of them?  This is not to say that my sphere of influence does not contain pain or moments of truth and courage.  But, oh, how I would like to take a stand for truth in all instances.  How I would like to view life from all perspectives, even if only briefly.  How I hope to keep being emotionally educated.  And how I hope we can always do this for each other with love.

[And, yes, I know I promised some musings on a current hot button issue but that mostly got the ax.  That's not my bag, folks.]

Here is a poem I wrote a week or two ago that seems particularly relevant to my musings tonight:

Maps

I’ve been high on life, drunk on love, and addicted to soap operas, but I couldn’t tell you what alcohol tastes like or how random pills you haven’t been prescribed feel when they slip into your brain.

That’s not my path.

No judgment.

It just isn’t mine.

That’s on Main Street; I’m on Center.

If you want a tour guide, I can’t help you with that street.

It isn’t a personal failing not to have first hand, intimate knowledge of every street in town.

That’s what maps are for.  Guidebooks.  Blogs.

Because I’ve been beaten down but never beaten.

I’ve begged for seconds but never for rent.

But I have listened to enough travelers to know that no roads are without rocks.

We all have bloodied feet, even if it isn’t apparent when observed from a distance.

So instead of throwing stones between the blocks, perhaps we should work together on a more comprehensive and detailed atlas.