More on The Wrestler

Here is another take on the religious symbols in The Wrestler via The Revealer. Thanks to Bene for the suggestion.

The Wrestler is a movie all about redemptive suffering, as we see the central role that dramatized violence plays in the Ram's life. At a couple points this is made perhaps too clear, as in an early scene where Randy shows Cassidy the scars his career has left him with. She responds by quoting Isaiah 53:5 by way of The Passion of the Christ's opening epigraph: "He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; by His wounds we are healed." She makes the connection even more clear moments later, dubbing Randy "the sacrificial Ram," and later in the film we see a tattoo in the center of his back of Jesus crowned with thorns. Clearly, the film wants us to view wrestling as a spectacle of redemptive suffering.

Read the rest here.

Reading the Religious in The Wrestler

I just discovered this on-line journal Religion Dispatches and what I've read so far is neat. You have to love a journal with the by-line "exhilarating the breakfast table since 2008."

There is a fascinating review of the movie The Wrestler looking at the religious symbolism and the religious ideas published yesterday. Here is a little taste of it.

Cassidy and Randy each work double lives, between their bodies as commodities and their bodies that have to pay the rent and support their children. Somewhere in all the meat are identities, struggling for birth. Each carries multiple names: Cassidy is “Pam,” while Randy “The Ram” Robinson is actually “Robin Raminski”—his character’s complexity unveils at least three names, as The Ram, Randy, and Robin. Yet, as with religion itself, and multitudes of other social structures, the crux of the matter of identity is the human body in all its aged protuberances, its scarified flesh, its rotund, risqué, and otherwise resolute features.

Read the rest here.

When Winter is Beautiful

Dogs

Roger Ebert has a really wonderful blog post about dogs here. I'm wiping my tears now.

Smile and Wave

I haven't written much lately and I'm feeling the loss. I've been feeling so fragmented lately though from lots of different work things and a lot of people time. Some of these folks are going through hard times too. A friend told me that when she visits her grandmother in the nursing home her son walks in saying, 'smile and wave, boys, smile and wave.' Her boys are a riot and I love that they realize at a young age that many of these seniors brighten at the sight of boys with big grins. But the words took on a different meaning for me. I'm an extrovert - no doubt about that - but when I spend a lot of time with lots of people I start to feel like there is nothing holding me together at the core. And then I don't feel like I'm always present to people. Life becomes a bit of 'smile and wave boys.' Reading week has begun though and I'm looking forward to some quiet time working at home to catch up on admin work and get my lenten prep done. I was away ten days ago at a conference and I haven't finished unpacking yet so I'm hoping to get that done too. There will be time spent with folks in my week too but I'm hoping that after some time putzing in my house I won't be just smiling and waving.

Twenty Years Ago Today

Barbara Harris was the first woman consecrated a bishop in the Episcopal Church USA. She has always been a hero of mine!

Healing Simon Peter's Mother-in-law

I have to confess that the gospel for this morning has always irritated me. Jesus heals a woman and immediately she starts waiting on the men. But over at The Painted Prayerbook Jan Richardson gave me a whole different way to read this text:

Here is an exerpt:

Here we see the domestic Jesus, the intimate Jesus. Crossing from the house of worship into the home of Simon, standing at the bed of a woman whose body has been disordered by illness, Jesus conveys with his outstretched hand that there is no sphere that he does not control, no suffering that is beneath him to heal, no place where he does not desire wholeness and peace. He makes clear that his power is present in every realm, the home no less than the synagogue. He extends his healing to all, the woman in the grip of a fever no less than the man in the clutch of an unclean spirit.

There is no place, no person, unworthy of a miracle.

Read the rest here.