movie notes
Diane and I went on a date earlier, our first partaking of the Eppley family babysitting services, a service they were overjoyed to provide, missing Luke as they do. So not only was Diane’s and my afternoon refreshing and recalibrating, Luke had a ball too. His grandaddy and his aunt and her fiancé took him to the park, his favorite fast food restaurant, to the mall where he got to ride the elevator and merry-go-round, to a grocery store and through a car wash. All of which, cumulatively, produces roughly the same amount of enjoyment and excitement in him as a trip to Disneyworld. He returned to us abuzz from his adventures and none too eager to go to bed.
As for our date, we saw The Nativity Story, a wonderfully-done retelling of the New Testament narrative. The movie treats the story with a real dignity and authenticity (in the non-postmodern sense), is unabashedly biblical (many explicit references to Jesus as Messiah and God incarnate), and although it feels a little staged near the end, the overall realism of the details and the portrayed humanity of Mary and Joseph in particular are very affecting. Highly recommended. Will probably be on our video shelf eventually.
In other movie news, can I express how excited I am this movie is being produced? I adore the book, have read it several times and always find it compelling in so many ways, not just for the creativity and esoteric mathematical-ness of it, but also for its allegorical success and richness of philosophical application.
I specifically enjoy the book’s depiction of the idea of whole bodies of knowledge unattainable without direct experience. I haven’t been able to find a more accessible illustration of this than when the book’s protagonist, the Square, is allowed to experience three dimensions, something inconceivable in his world, and then returns and attempts to explain his revelation to his compatriots. I have a strong conviction (without a direct biblical reference) that much of what occurs in our supernatural realm is like this, that many things we deem absolute paradoxes in our current state of worldly experience would be the most plausible things imaginable if only we were allowed to glimpse, for a minute, the dimension, the plane of existence in which they occur. This, to me, is a highly exciting proposition. It undergirds a lot of my anticipation of heaven.