grief

by

Grief and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life – A Reflective Essay

This week I learned that a new version of Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life was being released as part of the Criterion Collection. This is very pointedly being billed as a new version and not simply a director’s cut. It is 49 minutes longer and focuses more on the young Jack’s relationship with his father to explore elements of “toxic masculinity.”

“What’s interesting talking to Terry about this [new version of ‘Tree of Life’], I think he still doesn’t want people to think this is a better version. This is another version,” Criterion technical director Lee Kline told us earlier this month. “He said, ‘No one asked Bob Dylan to play a song the same way every night. Why should I have to make one film?’”

As I have been thinking of taking this blog into a phase of focusing exclusively on writing over photography (aside from illustrations), I thought it would be a good idea to present an essay about The Tree of Life which first appeared in the now mothballed Catapult Magazine.

____________

To say that Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life is about grief is a little like saying the Hamlet is about revenge. The statements are true enough, and yet they do not do justice to the richness of themes and majestic sweep of each of these works. Nevertheless, experiencing grief or suffering is the principal theme of The Tree of Life, and the inception, history and resolution of the central cause for grief in the film provide its structure, interwoven with amazing sequences which describe nothing short of the birth, life and death of the Earth itself.

In the very opening frame of the film, Malick provides a key for the viewer to understand how the relatively small story of the grief of a family in Texas will be interwoven with the very large story of the lifespan of the Earth by quoting from the ancient book of Job (38: 4,7):

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?…

When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of

God shouted for joy.

Continue reading →

by

Antidepressant – Haiku / Senryu / Reflection

Underground rivers.
Feelings flow beneath my ken.
Antidepressant.
________________

Today I attended a funeral for a child on the cusp of being a young man who suffered far too much and whose life ended far too soon. I did not know him well, but his eulogy sketched out the portrait of a sensitive, creative, loving soul. I do, however, know his mother and father and know that their grief has been overwhelming, as well as that of the boy’s older brother. There were several times during the service today where I was aware of the fact that I normally would feel deeply about a particular stimulus. It was not that the awareness of sorrow was not there, but the accompanying welling of emotion and tears were not present. That was the genesis of this haiku. Such is the trade-off sometimes of taking antidepressants. Just now I am grateful for their sway in my life, even given this somewhat numbing effect. There may come a day when I may need to dial them back a bit, but perhaps being aware of the way they in which they work and knowing cognitively that I am empathetic and sorrowful is enough for just now.

by

Waiting in Ashes and Dust – Grace and Peace Fellowship – St. Louis, Missouri


It has been a hard couple of years for this my congregation, with a number of deaths, unexpected and heartbreaking. Walking through the sanctuary last Wednesday night, I appreciated this dramatic, though serene, lighting along with a banner which reflects our anticipation and longing for the glory of God to be made manifest in the Earth. It all seems appropriate for Lent, as we wait again to hear, to know, the promise of Easter.

by

Hope Chest, a Reflection

“A hope chest, dowry chest, cedar chest, or glory box is a chest used to collect items such as clothing and household linen, by unmarried young women in anticipation of married life.”

Hope. Glory. The language of longing, transcendence. The language of fulfillment. It may be that such appellations ultimately put too much store in a cedar lined box for it to bear. But what a lovely image nonetheless of storing up hope, of anticipating glory. I have been to enough weddings exuding glory–I have seen enough good marriages speaking of hopes fulfilled–amidst the rubble of so many others–to still not feel such ideals as hollow, though needing to be pursued with clear-eyed realism.

Two weeks ago, my small car with huge capacities to bear baggage (now there is a metaphor if ever there was one) was loaded with a hope chest, making its way up from San Antonio to St. Louis. This past Saturday, on August 3rd, it made the much shorter trek to Illinois, to the very region from which it had been taken to Pakistan some half a century before. It returned on very day it’s owner had died some 27 years earlier.

My mother’s hope chest long has been both a metaphor and a solid object containing memory for me to be able to ignore. And yet, still, I have not cataloged all its contents fully–have not plumbed its depths–because in some ways it is too much weight to bear. Perhaps the only objects left in it which align with its original purpose, are a pair of long, slender, white wedding gloves. The absence of the dress itself speaks of the presence of her charity, in her loan of it to a fellow missionary on the field, only to never receive it back.

Now, in more cynical moments, I might view this chest as collection of hopes thwarted, containing her beautiful saris and diplomas and jewelry. But in the light of truth, it is still a chest of hopes, of hopes fulfilled, of a life well lived–holding christening gowns and baby bibs and golden rings, a well worn mumu, and that large blue cardigan in which she did her work in the hospital.

And one day when we are all together we will do the heavy lifting and catalog it all, and it will be used by my sweet niece to start a new catalog of hopes.

___________

I cannot say that this past Saturday was an exceptionally difficult day. When time passes, grief is perhaps less tethered to dates, and yet the passing of the day and the noting of what portion of my life has gone by without my mother always makes for some weighty accounting. Here is an old poem when the fraction of my life without her was much lower.

7/23

a sabbath cycle sets this year, mom
and me 23
that means that come this time in a year
a third of my life will have gone by
without you

and slowly it goes on
the gradual slide to accept as commonplace
the thought that chilled with horror
my cozy childhood heart; me alive
without you

and so it will go on
until God moves His hand
in countless moments of joy and pain
the sun and rain will weather me
without you

——————————————

God, please let the mantle fall
of one who loved you well
and let me live like her
as she sought to live like you
and pierce and punctuate
the busy fabric of my life
with memory