Mourning Song
Tonight I began a movie because I wanted to laugh at it. But in the end, I found that it had chosen its faults well, and I really could not laugh at them. Indeed, quite the opposite. I found myself strangely touched---moved by that queer, exquisite, aching flutter which tells us that someone has struck a chord in our hearts, and disturbed with their stone the smooth unruffled surface of our beings. It was humbling, to be so stirred by a movie that I had intended only to ridicule. I repeat, it was humbling. It was also instructive.
The movie is "Becoming Jane." I had been led to expect that it would include strident feminism and sexual innuendo. There were those things in it. At several points I was glad to be watching with a remote control and the ability to mute or fast-forward scenes. But these things, though egregious, are not always the sum total of a movie. In the story which I intended to mock for its shallowness and anachronisms, I found an element of depth and historical---indeed, universal---accuracy that far exceeded its regrettable accessories.
Boy meets girl. Both are penniless. All hopes of a respectable union are dashed, one after another. He weakens; they part; each becomes engaged to someone else. They meet again, by chance. The agony is unbearable, and so they decide to run away together. On the journey, however, she discovers that his family is dependent on him for money. She cannot bear that their love should be the means of making so many so unhappy, and thereby turn to bitterness. This time, it is she who breaks matters off. She returns home. He marries someone else. Many years later, they meet in a public room. His eldest daughter is with him; he has named the girl after her. She reads her book to his daughter, and in the chosen passage we hear an infinity of what might have been, but without complaint. Then she folds her hands over the book, and is still.
You see, this is a story about pain, and its most unusual feature is that it does not try to hurt you, but cannot avoid doing so, because the reality which it portrays is an open wound. In its best elements I believe is a mourning song, all the more powerful because restrained and quiet, as deep grief so often is. When we are in pain, sometimes we run mad. But those times are rare; more frequently we sit, and rock ourselves, and hold it in, betrayed only by the occasional, shuddering breath. Our minds cry out to us, but our lips are silent. Our bodies shake, but we are also still, too fragile to move for fear of breaking altogether. That is what this movie is like---it is like the stillness of a bowed head and a grief accepted, endured, overcome.
Sometimes I reflect to myself that human beings were not formed for pain. We were not created to suffer it. It bewilders us. But I think that God, in pity, has given us means of suffering without annihilation. We have tears. We have the rituals of lamentation. Our ancestors tore their clothes and cut their hair and covered themselves with ashes. We wear black and shut ourselves away for a time. I wonder, often, whether their methods were not better than ours. Surely it is wiser to express a grief, that it may be removed. Surely that which can describe our pain adequately (there is no such thing as perfection in a matter like this) deserves our thanks.
For we all must feel---and those who do not are the worse for their lack---that evil has entered very deeply into us. We must feel that the tearing of hearts which I witnessed in this movie tonight is not what was created to be. God sovereignly willed it; that is enough for me. But God has also given us means of enduring it, through mourning, and I am grateful for this movie as a lament. Let there be a lament for all the young girls whose hearts have ached to love and found no outlet. Let there be a song of grief for all the young men who overflowed with the desire to love, and were stayed. Let there be mourning for all the hands which stretched but did not grasp.
To those who, like the couple in the movie, loved not without sin, and were sundered by one of the evils that plagues our race: separated by greed, by deceit, by anger, by pride, by selfishness, or by a bullet or disease or a freakish accident, my heart is with you. Have I not sinned? Have I not known pain partly or wholly of my own making?
But if my heart is with these poor sinners (such we all are), then what do I owe to those few who loved more rightly, not in selfishness for the greater part, but in self-sacrifice, and were yet in God's wisdom parted? What does my heart owe to the truly great among lovers? To you, shining ones, I say "My heart stands before you in awe. I would learn of you, you men and women who loved fully and yet gave away freely when the beloved was required of you. I wish to learn how to surrender the friend of my soul, and yet trust God. From you, from you I would learn to grieve. For you have made grief beautiful in its time, because you set your heart on God."
I value "Becoming Jane" because I believe it is a true lament; but I will turn elsewhere to learn the way of grieving, because though in that movie the heart goes on, it does not rejoice. And we were made, after the darkness, to rejoice.
The movie is "Becoming Jane." I had been led to expect that it would include strident feminism and sexual innuendo. There were those things in it. At several points I was glad to be watching with a remote control and the ability to mute or fast-forward scenes. But these things, though egregious, are not always the sum total of a movie. In the story which I intended to mock for its shallowness and anachronisms, I found an element of depth and historical---indeed, universal---accuracy that far exceeded its regrettable accessories.
Boy meets girl. Both are penniless. All hopes of a respectable union are dashed, one after another. He weakens; they part; each becomes engaged to someone else. They meet again, by chance. The agony is unbearable, and so they decide to run away together. On the journey, however, she discovers that his family is dependent on him for money. She cannot bear that their love should be the means of making so many so unhappy, and thereby turn to bitterness. This time, it is she who breaks matters off. She returns home. He marries someone else. Many years later, they meet in a public room. His eldest daughter is with him; he has named the girl after her. She reads her book to his daughter, and in the chosen passage we hear an infinity of what might have been, but without complaint. Then she folds her hands over the book, and is still.
You see, this is a story about pain, and its most unusual feature is that it does not try to hurt you, but cannot avoid doing so, because the reality which it portrays is an open wound. In its best elements I believe is a mourning song, all the more powerful because restrained and quiet, as deep grief so often is. When we are in pain, sometimes we run mad. But those times are rare; more frequently we sit, and rock ourselves, and hold it in, betrayed only by the occasional, shuddering breath. Our minds cry out to us, but our lips are silent. Our bodies shake, but we are also still, too fragile to move for fear of breaking altogether. That is what this movie is like---it is like the stillness of a bowed head and a grief accepted, endured, overcome.
Sometimes I reflect to myself that human beings were not formed for pain. We were not created to suffer it. It bewilders us. But I think that God, in pity, has given us means of suffering without annihilation. We have tears. We have the rituals of lamentation. Our ancestors tore their clothes and cut their hair and covered themselves with ashes. We wear black and shut ourselves away for a time. I wonder, often, whether their methods were not better than ours. Surely it is wiser to express a grief, that it may be removed. Surely that which can describe our pain adequately (there is no such thing as perfection in a matter like this) deserves our thanks.
For we all must feel---and those who do not are the worse for their lack---that evil has entered very deeply into us. We must feel that the tearing of hearts which I witnessed in this movie tonight is not what was created to be. God sovereignly willed it; that is enough for me. But God has also given us means of enduring it, through mourning, and I am grateful for this movie as a lament. Let there be a lament for all the young girls whose hearts have ached to love and found no outlet. Let there be a song of grief for all the young men who overflowed with the desire to love, and were stayed. Let there be mourning for all the hands which stretched but did not grasp.
To those who, like the couple in the movie, loved not without sin, and were sundered by one of the evils that plagues our race: separated by greed, by deceit, by anger, by pride, by selfishness, or by a bullet or disease or a freakish accident, my heart is with you. Have I not sinned? Have I not known pain partly or wholly of my own making?
But if my heart is with these poor sinners (such we all are), then what do I owe to those few who loved more rightly, not in selfishness for the greater part, but in self-sacrifice, and were yet in God's wisdom parted? What does my heart owe to the truly great among lovers? To you, shining ones, I say "My heart stands before you in awe. I would learn of you, you men and women who loved fully and yet gave away freely when the beloved was required of you. I wish to learn how to surrender the friend of my soul, and yet trust God. From you, from you I would learn to grieve. For you have made grief beautiful in its time, because you set your heart on God."
I value "Becoming Jane" because I believe it is a true lament; but I will turn elsewhere to learn the way of grieving, because though in that movie the heart goes on, it does not rejoice. And we were made, after the darkness, to rejoice.
posted by Praelucor at 12:24 AM
3 Comments:
I believe that we are not to hold grief in, because it can poison us. We are to "rend our hearts, not our clothes," "offer ourselves as a living sacrifice," pour out all that grief and misery at Jesus' throne until we are utterly spent. We are to throw ourselves into His hands, saying, "I can't bear it, dear Lord, so please bear me for a while."
These are the words of Corrie Ten Boom's father to her:
"Corrie," he began instead, "do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain.
"There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill the love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.
"God loves Karel -- even more than you do -- and if you ask Him, He will give you His love for this man, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy. Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way."
It's all God, that's the key. Only His fingers can work it in us. It is a divine intervention, a miracle.
Thank you, Sarah.
i was surprised too, Tissy. i think i expected it to be over the top "broken romance" - but it was truly Sad.
you know - i don't know if you noticed, but at the end, when she lays her hands over the book, she puts her ringless left over her right, showing Tom that she never married and never loved anyone but him. i liked that.
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