Movies About Connecting

Last night I watched a double bill of - wait for it - very similar movies:  Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and Safety Not Guaranteed.

Seeking a Friend has Steve Carell, Keira Knightley, and Britta from Community, but it's not really a comedy. There are a few funny bits, but really it's about how different people cope with the world ending.  It is, however, very touching.  It's really an improved remake of Last Night (also billed as a comedy).  It also reminded me a lot of Melancholia - and relatively speaking it's hilarious, but Melancholia is a tragically depressing film.  In Seeking, people find various ways to manage beyond looking forlorn and weeping.  Some go for destruction, and others maintain a strict routine in a massive bid at denial, and many more leave on a widely hedonistic note.  That's actually believable to me.  Sure people will be distraught or desperate, but many will be wasted for those final three weeks.  The couple we're following have a quest to find their loved ones in the last days, and they develop a relationship of sorts over the course of their road trip.

For some reason, that part of it reminded me of The Sure Thing.  Weird.




Safety Not Guaranteed is about a trio of magazine writers (well, one writer and two interns) tracking down a man who put out an ad seeking a friend to go back in time with him in his time machine.  And, like Seeking, the intern and time machine dude develop a relationship of sorts over the course of putting the finishing touches on the machine.  This one is quirky and sweet and hopeful.  It leaves lots of questions, but they don't really matter in the end.




Both films are about the importance of making connections with anyone we can.  Life is short.  What makes both films work, I think (because neither got consistently good reviews), is the actors. The movies are full of plot holes, so it's not about the stories.  If the Earth is about to be knocked off its axis, then how will it help to be in a bomb shelter - at all?  How could three bumbling reporters uncover dirt on a guy more efficiently than the FBI who's been following him for years?  But these things don't matter here.  Carell and Knightley were spectacular.  Right now it's my favourite film for both of them. They're crass but tender, and very real.  And in Safety, Aubrey Plaza, Mark Dupless, and Jake Johnson were all compelling to watch.  It was lovely.

B+ for both.

Unrestricted Love

My Afternoons with Margueritte is a lovely film about a an uneducated man and the three women in his life:  his bus-driving girlfriend, his abusive mother, and a well-read older woman - much older.  It's no Harold and Maude though.  I think it's better.

It's not at all contrived that someone who couldn't manage in school could suddenly pick up on nuances of literature and connect them to life.  I've seen struggles with literacy prevent kids from having a useful education, and it's curious that we focus so much on the written word when we're moving beyond that in real life such that people can get all their news from YouTube.  But that's not really what the film's about.

It's about love and connections and kindness unrestricted by artificial social constructs that create boundaries around who we should spend our time with.*  It's another reminder to fight the pigeonholing that sticks us in roles that just don't work for us.  But, unlike The Graduate, the characters here actually get somewhere with their personal rebellion.

It's also about education and arrogance.  Germain is well-loved because he is kind and funny and wise.  Some reviewers find his relationship with Annette, his lovely young girlfriend, unbelievable, but I think that just reveals an attitude of rigid and arrogant conformity to social expectations.  They get what they need from one another, and they clearly have a bond in the film.  In fact, it's the whole point.  Similarities in age, education, and/or aesthetics are not what really connect us - that's all just superficial crap.  We connect when we have a profound respect and admiration for another's ideas or actions.  This is different than being impressed by them, as the characters do don't anything spectacular, but how many of us do.

And it's about rising above your beginnings.  We don't need to be taught love from our parents; it's in us already if we're brave enough to share it.

Okay, it's sentimental, but it works.

A-

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*Grammar point:  This bothers me a bit.  I know it should say, "with whom we should spend our time," but that feels awkward and pretentious.  Nobody talks like that.  Personally, I think it's time written language cleans out its closet of some archaic rules that only affect marks on student essays and little else in the world.  I'm taking the first step by largely ignoring them.

The Future

I love quirky.  And I love honest insecurity and authenticity and weird realism and absurdity.  So of course I loved Miranda July's  The Future.


A couple decide to take the first step towards commitment by adopting a cat, but it's sickly and can't come home for a month.  They see this month as their last bit of freedom and treat it as if it's their last month alive.

What would you do if you knew you only had a month to live?  They ditch the internet because they realize how much time it saps from any authentic experience.  And they both quit their jobs and explore what it is to be totally free.  But, of course, we're never really free if we're constrained by social obligation or expectations.

And it makes a bit of a mess of things if you really act like this month is your last.

It's curious how quickly morality goes out the window in this movie and in other films where the end is nigh.  If we're about to die, money doesn't matter, so stealing might take on a different nuance. (I'm thinking of all the looting in Last Night).  But why does harming others directly no longer matter as much?  To have total freedom, how important is it that it includes total freedom to have sex with anyone?  De Beauvoir and Sartre, proponents of freedom, kept things open to have no constraints on one another.  That can be tricky.  And I wonder if we just don't know what to do with freedom when we find it so we resign ourselves to sneaking base pleasures and feel like we're really pulled one over on the world.  But we're really just being dicks.

I love how they talk.  The couple gets each other, so we really want them to stay together.  What works is that they're each willing to play whatever game the other starts.  This reminded me of the rules of improv - something I read decades ago, but was recently made popular by Tina Fey:  always say "yes" to whatever your partner starts.  Their relationship is tender and heart-wrenching.

She decides to do a dance a day for thirty days and put each on YouTube.  She's told everyone.  But it's scary to begin.  It's anxiety-inducing as each day just slips away without a dance.  I'm in a similar freedomy place as my littlest just went off to camp for 21 days.  Can I write for 21 days straight?  Or will I get sucked into Facebook trivia and watching even more movies or puttering around the house and garden fixing every little thing for that triumphant feeling of accomplishment illusory in its intensity?   It's a lot of pressure to do something in this little corner of time I've got.  But can I actively and authentically take advantage of my little slice of freedom?  Can I accept the burden that comes with all this freedom?

We'll see.

A-

Elling and 50/50

Two beautiful films for today on the friendship between a struggling man and his loud, horny friend. I swear I don't look for similar films to watch back to back.  It just keeps happening.  Weird.

Elling is such a delight.  The two leads meet in an institution.  Neither can live on his own, but they decide that maybe together they can take on the outside world.  It's a Felix and Oscar union but so much kinder - and more violent.  Things get shaken up as they each meet someone on the outside, and it takes a bit of reassurance that their friendship is still a top priority before they can enjoy themselves again.

They're fearful of many commonplace things and activities.  It's a reminder of how much courage it can take for some people to cross the floor of a restaurant alone or to talk on the phone.  It's a reminder to be more understanding of all the stories we don't know about the people we meet.

It's a must see for the hidden poems and the Christmas presents and the gregarious exclamations!  The trailer would just spoil it.

Then I watched 50/50.




It's a movie about friendship disguised as a movie about cancer.   It's painfully realistic in places, yet still light-hearted overall.  I'm not sure why I keep gravitating to Joseph Gordon-Levitt movies lately, but here he is again.  And I've liked Seth Rogen since I watched him fall in love in Freaks and Geeks.



I love that both films include a woman who is neither bitchy nor cloying, doesn't get in the way of the friendship by toying with the other guy, and isn't hated by the friend.  That's a nice change.   There are a lot of buddy movies out there, and in so many of them, if there's a central female at all, she's that same irritating character.  She's in the first bit of 50/50, but they soon get rid of her.  That plot element loosely reminded me of Office Space actually:  a guy has a horrible girlfriend, he goes through a pivotal transformation and then finally is able to connect with a nice girl.  Apparently it took having cancer before he could insist on being treated kindly.     

Hanna and World's Greatest Dad

Most people know about Hanna. It's been reviewed all over the place and gets full or almost full star-age from everyone.  The film is really exciting and fun. That's it. And that's why I'm a blogger and not a world-renowned film reviewer regardless my penchant for watching 5 or 15 movies each week! It's about a girl of 14 or so being trained by her dad to be a killer much like Kick-Ass and Leon the Professional - both excellent movies. It's not particularly thought-provoking. It's nice to have a friend. We can never be too sure who we can really trust. Typical fare, yet done in a very edge-of-your-seat way. The ending left us with a LOT of questions, and is a perfect set up for a second film.



I think most people (I'm guessing based purely on my own ignorance here) don't know about World's Greatest Dad though. It's a couple years old. The title and the fact that it stars Robin Williams might throw people off if they think along the lines of Mrs. Doubtfire. WAY off. The only similarity between the two films is it's about a dad. This one has a pushover single-dad struggling to connect to his son who is a total douche bag played by Daryl Sabara. (Who? He's Juni from Spy Kids!) The son is into asphyxi-masturbation and obsessed with obnoxious porn, but of course has never touched a real live girl. What would Mrs. Doubtfire say about that?! Even worse, the dad teaches high school English at his son's school, so getting a call from the principal about your son being obnoxious again is more profoundly embarrassing because it's your boss. I relate to that one first-hand being a teacher at my kids' school, but, touch wood, my kids are generally delightful.

This is a funny, light-hearted, and very thought-provoking, movie about teen suicide, sort of. That makes it sound crass and offensive, and it is a bit, but in a way that actually works. The characters are stereotypes of people we all know, and it's relatable in that sense, if a bit over the top in places. We immediately know whom to like and hate, but it's a comedy, so two-dimensional secondary characters are allowed.

The dad makes some bad decisions and gets swept up into a web of deceit, but we can at least understand his motives. What do you do if you really can't find anything to like in your kid despite trying very hard for years to connect, and then he's suddenly dead. You grieve, yet it's also a bit of a relief. We're not allowed to think and say things like that though. We're supposed to have unquestioned unconditional love for our little ones. But what if they're total jerks? (Doris Lessing does an excellent job of tackling this issue in The Fifth Child, by the way.)



SPOILER ALERT

The son doesn't actually kill himself; he dies accidentally while masturbating with a tie around his neck. The dad makes it look like a suicide to give him a somewhat more honourable death, and he writes a note as if from his son. The dad writes novels on the side that nobody will publish; all he wants in the world is to be read. Suddenly, with the publication of this profound suicide note, everybody's reading him. So he writes his son's journal. And it just snowballs from there.

And I wonder to what extent we judge the morality of his actions by the extent he benefits from them.

There's a sub-plot about the dad's relationship with a female teacher. At the beginning of the film, he worries about being alone. By the end, he says, "The worst thing in the world isn't ending up alone. It's ending up with people who make you feel alone."

Exactly.

Barney's Version

Barney's Version is a great film, but I question the way the wife is characterized by some reviewers as "a saint" rather than a doormat.

Barney pursues this woman who he claims he loved at first sight. He's so excited by his own reaction to her that he doesn't really care that much that it's not reciprocated. She tells him to leave her alone because it's his wedding day. He persists, and eventually wins her over. They dote on each other, but tensions erupt, well... bubble a bit, when she has some successes and he ignores them. When she does her first on-air interview, he misses is because he's busy watching hockey. She clarifies to him his actions, and he offers to sleep on the couch. She refuses - they will always sleep together. When she goes away for a few days, he's lost without her. The film suggests that shows just how much he loves her. She tolerates him being drunk and offensive to her friends and ignoring her successes. Then he makes a fatal mistake with another woman, and she ditches him. She's never exasperated with him. She's given in to the myth of love means never having to say your sorry - or some such nonsense. She accepts him for who he is. I suppose he's good company.

I hate that he has an affair because I wanted to see if she'd ever leave him without that one catch. To me, it was an easy out. The relationship sucked for her, but she was committed until he broke his vow. That gave her an opening. It's similar to one character's backstory in Adaptation in which the character's wife left him after a car accident. It gave her an excuse, an exit strategy.

I don't think this is love. This is a guy who needs arm candy, sex, and a caretaker. He has no interest in giving back to her. He'll buy her roses, but he won't be kind to her friends, nor will he stay sober to catch the highlights of her burgeoning career. Once he wins her over, he won't make the smallest efforts at kindness or let her shine. She's more of a pet he keeps than a partner he loves.

I wonder if the people that think this woman is the ideal wife just want to be able to have this type of one-sided relationship in which they get it all. They can be boorish and cruel yet get the girl because she's convinced to love means to tolerate crap. Male reviewers want to believe they can be out of shape and drunk and still be loved by a woman who takes over the boring parts of their lives for them. It's an ideal relationship only superficially. You can't really feel love without giving and being their for them and doing for them. Sure it's great to get a Christmas present or a bunch of them, but it's even better to have your own gift to another opened and appreciated - for someone to know they are loved and respected, not just wanted.

The Kids are All Right? Not So Much

The Kids are All Right is not to be confused with the excellent movie, The Kids are Alright. So, first of all, I don't really get the title. What makes the kids okay?  Or is it that they have moments where the kids come up with an intelligent idea or two? The kids in the movie each hung out with a bullying best friend, which isn't "right." So they're clearly not right all the time. The moms worried about the son being gay, but he wasn't, so is that what's "right"? Or is the right-ness that he knows he's straight, he's correct about his sexual orientation whereas the moms were clearly in the wrong on that one. I'm confused. Anyway, some spoilers below but, really, nothing you couldn't guess from the trailer.



What's the hoopla about this movie? Maybe I'm being too hard on it because I was really really looking forward to this film, and it just didn't meet my expectations. I worry a bit that people think it's amazing just because the moms are lesbians and everyone wants to celebrate that. It's great when LGBTQ relationships are depicted as regular folk in movies, but it can't be enough to carry the film. Because if you take out that one ingredient, it's just about a couple who are getting stale, who connect with their donor who sleeps with the wife, which shakes up the marriage and upsets the kids, but they all live happily ever after. There wasn't a moment of clever dialogue. There weren't intriguing ideas presented that I had to go away and really think about for a while. There weren't unusual or intense characters presented. And there weren't, really, amazing acting skills being showcased here except, maybe, Mia Wasikowska. Bening is cute as a button, and she does a reasonable job, but I'm always conscious that she's acting. I never get lost in her performance. Look, she's doing cold and uppity. Now she's doing upset. Now she's doing sad. But maybe that's just me. Is she getting kudos just because she was able to kiss Julianne Moore convincingly? I've kissed worse.

Their daughter is leaving home for the first time, and the grief that could bring to some parents was barely registered. I know it's a light-hearted film, but comedies don't work when they gloss over pain. Their son is hanging out with a total jerk and the obsessive parents are practically oblivious. They mention disliking him, but they do little else even though they seem controlling in most other aspects of their lives. Everyone seemed a little flat in their performances.

I understood Ruffalo's character most. He's a player who suddenly realizes what he could have had, but doesn't, and he attaches with some desperation. But the family's reaction to this bothered me. There wasn't an ounce of understanding. He got full blame for the affair, and they wrote him off. So long as he's not there, they're all fine, right? There wasn't any resolution of any depth here. They held hands at the end - big deal. I predict Bening's character will go back to being controlling and Moore's character will meet someone else pretty darn soon.

If you want to see a good comedy about people having affairs and the problems that brings, check out Hannah and Her Sisters. I'm not a Woody Allen groupie, but this one is very good. It's hilarious, yet Allen has a way of still showing the grief and heartache and anxiety an affair can cause. It makes us react. Or, even funnier in my eyes is Play It Again, Sam. Remember that scene where Linda's getting into bed with her husband, but she's looking at that little skunk Allan got her. I know exactly how she was feeling. I wasn't watching her; I was right there with her.

If, on the other hand, you want to see a marriage in crisis acted beautifully in a way that gets you so involved you want to hug them and you cry for them and you really feel for each of them, and you cheer for them when they work through their crap and actually begin to get to the other side, then watch Rabbit Hole, and give this tripe a pass.

If what you're really after, though, is a excellent film with a lesbian couple at the centre of it all, I wish I could recommend one. Better Than Chocolate almost gets it. The story line could be so good in someone else's hands, but, like The Kids..., it's superficial and flat which is such a shame because it's so close to being really good! But I'm a Cheerleader is hilarious, but it's campy. It's not a realistic portrayal of a relationship, but it's still a lot of fun. The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love is cute, but by no means an excellent film. Actually, I loved the family in that movie - the main character's two moms were exceptional, but there's not enough of them. Go Fish has got to be one of the worst movies ever made, but it's still on top ten lesbian film lists because there's just not enough good lesbian films out there. There are others I can think of with a lesbian couple in the background, but not at the centre presented as normal, regular folk just going about their lives.

One that works better than most, actually, is Kissing Jessica Stein.  It's sort of about a lesbian couple, but one party is reluctant to fully embrace the identity.  It touches on some realistic issues though.  

I think this all means we're not far along enough to treat lesbian relationships as part of an excellent movie instead of the main focus, the special effect that will draw in enough of a crowd that the rest of the film can be painfully mediocre.

Any other lesbian film suggestions? Any truly excellent ones out there that aren't about the lesbian-ness of it all, but about life in general?

Escapes

I'm always amazed when I come across similar ideas over and over in various places. I was in a bookstore and just flipped through a book that caught my eye: Anti-Cancer. Because of my family history, I have an on-going interest in new cancer theories or discoveries. But that wasn't what caught me. It was this:  Three groups of mice had tumours grafted on to them.

"One month after the graft, 63% of the rats that had received shocks but had learned to avoid some of them by pressing a lever had rejected the tumor. The rejection rate in this group was higher than in the control group (which had not undergone shocks), in which only 54% of the animals had rejected the cancerous cells. On the other hand, only 23% of those animals subjected to electric shock with no means of escape managed to over come their cancer. The helplessness of their situation had, it seems, hastened the tumor's spread....It isn't stress itself that promotes cancer development; it is the persistent perception of helplessness the individual has that affects the body's reaction to the disease."

So we're actually better off to be stressed out, but sometimes see an avenue out, than to never be stressed at all. So the fact that we're in a doomsday scenario these days what with the environment, the economy, and the proximity to 2012 and all, isn't a problem if we can see a direction to move in that will benefit our situation.

My question is, with situations much more complex than a shock that can be avoided, do we actually have to be able to help ourselves, or is it enough to have the illusion that we can help ourselves? Is believing that we're doing something the same as escaping the problem? And what if we just stop caring about the problem? Do mice ever acclimatize to the shocks? What if the shocks were minor at first then gradually increased?

And if I escape the problem by watching movies regularly, is that triggering the same cellular activity as if I actually escape the problem by avoiding the pain in the first place perhaps by no longer reading or watching the news?

I thought of these questions as I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It's a gorgeous film. Several of the characters are trapped. An older woman is in a dead relationship but decides it's too late to move on, so when she meets a younger woman just starting a sparkless marriage, she tries to convince her to end it now. The older woman is being shocked and trying to escape by focusing on the other woman, projecting her pain elsewhere. The younger woman is being shocked but tries to get used to the pain. The others are in a triad that works well, a new member is a buffer muting the shocks betwen them. But when she leaves, they have to escape one another. And she is naturally restless so escapes all experiences before they get too painful, but thus endures a different kind of pain. Do all methods of escape count??

Until I just IMDB'd the film, I forgot it was written by Woody Allen. The dialogue made me think it was written by someone whose first language wasn't English. Everyone speaks in a very formal, grammatically correct way - how we might write to one another, but not how anyone I know ever speaks. That felt awkward, and I'm not sure what effect he was trying to achieve there. It's not something I've noticed in any of his other films. Beyond that, I could watch it over and over. But I'm a sucker for Woody.

Interpretations

I typically lean towards the side that insists authorial intent is neither here nor there. It doesn't matter what the artist was trying to say; what matters is what the viewer gets from the artwork. In fact, I think authorial intent is often a red herring distracting us in our quest for some Truth in this world.

When I'm looking at any piece of art, I don't research it to be able to appreciate it. If it speaks to me, and says something important to me, then I'm taking away something important. I recently re-watched American Beauty. When that movie first came out, I saw it twice in a row. I'm at the age to really get what Lester and Carolyn are going through, and I've always been the kinda weird girl you might grow to like after a while, never the perfect one everyone's lusting after.

But it was the larger messages that compelled me to spend another $7 for the late show: wake up and pay attention to all the beauty in the world, follow your own path with integrity, remember that death is just around the corner, and don't get sucked into the routine assembly line that is the average automaton's life. It's all the same message really. But even as I type this I can hear someone out there about to comment, "No, you've missed the real message of the film." My response: "La-la-la, I can't hear you." I'm captivated by the film because of what it's saying to me, not because of what the author meant for me to get from it.

And really, since art (poetry, paintings, music, film, etc.) can be interpreted by so many in different ways, isn't it sheer arrogance to suggest your interpretation is most accurate? Because even if you've read books about the piece of work, or met the artist directly, I'm not convinced it increases the validity of of the interpretation. Because I also question how thoroughly artists see the layers of meaning in their own works. There might be an intention to communicate a message, but other issues and ideas, our stuff, can sneak into what we create beyond our cognizance. So it remains possible for a viewer to get to a clearer understanding of the art than the artist. And the accuracy of the interpretation becomes unknowable, relative, personal wherein it only really matters what the piece says to you. And each viewpoint should be considered, contemplated, no matter how wrong it seems.

It's frustrating when people don't get what we're saying. There's some cases where people are just completely missing the mark, not actually taking in a significant part of what we're putting out there. They're not interesting to me. But there are other cases where people see what we've done and see more than what we intended to say. And that's very exciting - even when I vehemently disagree with them.

I've been thinking about this lately with respect to people as art: art in progress or performance art or fluid expressionism, whatever. We intend to communicate a message about who we are, but it's often lost. I'm often misinterpreted. Could it be the case that the viewer is, in this case, seeing a clearer version of me than I'm able to get to? Sometimes. But more often, like the first case above, they just completely miss it. And the question becomes when to clarify.

If people get something from their perspective of me that adds to their life, something they really appreciate, but it's really not me at all that they're seeing, it seems best to leave it alone. I don't explain, but hope people will re-evaluate their original explanation of how I am through repeated exposure. But sometimes the construction is oppositional to the intention. Then it seems wise to intervene with clarification.

If I paint a rape scene, my rape scene, as a means to come to terms with a trauma, hoping to communicate the devastation and pain it causes, someone could misinterpret it as a glorification of rape, a promotion of power over others. "Look how happy he looks doing this to her..." Interpretation is most affected by where your lens is focused which is precisely what the audience brings to the aesthetic experience. It's the individual viewer's addition to the pot luck, and some dishes are tastier than others.

Years ago my own mother insisted that my frugal nature ("You just hoard your money - live a little!") was the real reason I wouldn't buy a car. She couldn't grasp that I despise the mass consumption transportation devices. I can walk everywhere I need to go. A car merely gives me the ability to carry lots of purchases from a store to home. Who needs that? A car symbolizes freedom and fun to her. Not owning one means I must be trapped and miserable. That perception coloured her interpretation of me until she died. For this she pitied me a little, like some of my students pity me when they see me walking home from the grocery store dragging a cart behind me "like a homeless person."

We can't be understood in the way we understand ourselves, even by people close to us, because of what they're bringing to the table, particularly the connotations our iconography has for them. We're often liked or disliked for who people think we are, which doesn't seem fair at all. But who has time or the interest to explain and re-explain especially when many, like me, won't agree that's what we're like at all. In exterior artwork, it doesn't matter to me at all what the artist was intending to say, but the interior? Does our self-knowledge necessarily trump all other explanations, or does each interpretation, like in art, have the potential to be more in focus that the artist's deliberate conception?

Hate the Religion, Not the Religious

I have strong opinions on religion but rarely write about them because it’s all too clear to me. I often write to clarify my own ideas for myself, particularly issues in which I can easily understand all sides, issue like abortion and pornography. Because I understand the other points of view, it’s more important to me to delineate my own stance which is never entirely black or white, never on one side of the artificial split made between agreeing or disagreeing with a position. But with religion it is entirely one-sided for me.

I struggle to understand why people in this day and age still believe in God. I’m not saying that believers aren’t intelligent. I have very good friends, knowledgeable and wise, who have a strong faith. I’m just baffled by it all.

I’m also not saying there’s a problem with believing. As far as I can see, it’s beneficial to many to feel the love of God surrounding them. We all like the idea of being loved unconditionally (although God's love seems pretty conditional to me). It’s comforting to think we’ll all meet up with our loved ones in some glorious afterlife. But it’s just so fantastical.

I’m a recovering Catholic who couldn’t continue to believe tenets of a religion that are so dismissive (at best) to half the world. This site does a great job of listing many of the issues feminists have with the Bible. But it doesn’t begin to address problems with institutionalised religious organizations: the hierarchy, the abuses, the money grabs, not to mention the crusades and wars fought in God’s name. Why would anyone want to join this club of such dubious merit?

I understand maintaining a belief in God as an adult’s way of having an imaginary friend who is a composite of the ideal mother and father. It gives them unconditional love and support whenever they need it. It keeps them good under the threat of impending punishment if they misbehave (or at least threat of a loss of eternal rewards for some Christian denominations). In a nutshell, belief in God seems like a maladjustment to an emotional separation from the parents born from a fear of living a totally independent life with full responsibility for all one’s own thoughts and deeds.  But that's just me.

I have no issue with people who find it easier to cope with life through faith, who are soothed by the thought of God’s arms around them, but I do have issues with Christians who don’t behave anything like Jesus suggested they should. I have no patience with judgmental types who bark at me about my sinful life focusing on the letter of the law instead of the spirit. One film that really captures the perverted hold religion can have on a person is My Summer of Love. A man's relationship with his sister is destroyed through his new-found fundamental beliefs. I know people who are at risk of losing any real connection they might have had with much of their family because of strict views that don't allow for true compassion or warmth. I live a very loving, caring life, but much of what I do and say is not church sanctioned.

The idea that our existence is born out of a series of random chance events is terrifying for many people. We must have a purpose, right? Maybe we’re just here for the time being, and we can make what we want of it. But, some would argue that if we have no purpose, there's no point to it all. Why not just kill for fun and then off ourselves while we’re at it? Why bother being nice to others unless it’s a means to get to heavenly bliss? Can we be good without God? Does a lack of faith cause a lack of conscience?

I actually think that rejecting God can allow for a more sincere morality. We can be good without threat of punishment or loss of rewards. In fact, can we really call someone “good” who only acts kindly in hopes of eternal salvation? I’m much more inspired by those who do right for the sake of what’s right without expectation of fame, fortune, or spiritual longevity.

We can choose to be kind and loving simply because it’s the most intelligent way to live with a bunch of other people. I won’t steal from you or stab you in the back if you promise to treat me likewise. Hell, even if you steal from me, I’ll still refrain from stealing because harming others makes me feel bad. It’s my conscience, a bunch of neurons firing in a sea of hormones, not God, that dictates right and wrong for me. I’ll even go the extra mile to give you food or shelter or help if you need it. Sharing resources builds communities. Good acts are rewarding in their own right. Even the most selfish person will see the benefit of creating allies to help protect the fort against potential thieves or murderers. Don’t harm others, keep out of harm’s way, and try to help out when you can. Imagine if religiously zealous political leaders followed that moral code.

But in rejecting religion, I’m not about to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There’s lots of good stuff in many biblical passages. To be Christian necessitates a belief in the big guy in the sky, and I can't go there; however I do strongly agree with most of what Jesus was saying. Jesus had a very egalitarian mindset. While his moral code isn’t specifically focused on feminism, it certainly goes hand in hand with the hope for equity between genders and the cessation of exploitation of human beings everywhere. I can still use the ideas that I like, the ones about loving forgiveness and such, and leave behind the homophobic sexist and racist crap. I appreciate much of the philosophy in the Gospels without buying that Jesus has any family ties to some self-absorbed micro-managing creator of the universe.

And without religion to guide me, I’m forced to become more introspective and to really think about my actions. I have to make my own guidebook and help my children do the same. The rituals of a church strengthen community ties. But my neighbourhood has on-going e-mail discussions and gatherings to develop a lovely supportive group for everyone within a few blocks. I have no intention of leaving the benefits of church participation behind.

I could posit several arguments against God’s existence, but faith is about belief not proof. However, one idea I’ve never seen addressed, I thought of while watching the film, Metropolis: If God is perfect, why did he change his tune so much between the old and new testaments? A perfect being can’t develop into something better over time or it wouldn’t have been perfect to begin with. Generally speaking, God made a dramatic shift from “an eye for an eye” to “turn the other cheek.” He got all soft and gooey: no more floods or using cruel means to test people’s faith, or sending back armies to kill all the women and children (except virginal girls to be taken as wives), or sanctioning ethnic cleansing, or prescribing a good stoning if you come across a sinner. He has a kid and suddenly he’s all about forgiveness and loving your neighbour; now you just get condemned to eternal damnation if you even think an unkind thought. Then in "Revelation" he starts really kicking ass again. Human beings evolve dramatically individually and historically, but can a perfect being flip-flop?

We can make this world a better place for all of humanity. We waste time waiting for God to help us, to give us a sign or send us another saviour. Since there is no afterlife, it’s more crucial to make heaven out of this mess of a planet we live on. We get one chance. One. This is it. Get busy.