Charity

Years ago I found an old book plate in a used book store that both disturbed and amused me. It was a depiction of charity and it showed a well dressed woman delivering something to some obviously impoverished people. She towered over them and looked more self-satisfied than compassionate. I kept the picture for several years until it got ruined by a leaking pipe while in storage. It wasn't something that I really wanted hanging on my walls and yet my ambivalence about the depiction of charity made me keep it.

In my work I am often engaged in 'acts of charity' especially around Christmas. We hand out bags of food to students at the university at the end of each term and we help do Christmas hampers at the college. I love doing this stuff - it makes my Christmas actually. Yet there are also times when I worry about becoming the self-satisfied woman in the picture, grateful to the poor for giving me the opportunity to feel good about myself for my generosity. Jim Tagg has an interesting post on the problems of charity at home that speaks to some of my own experience. Read it here.

Just a few more thoughts on Wendell Berry

In 2005 an article appeared in Christian Century by Kyle Childress entitled "Good Work: Learning about Ministry from Wendell Berry." It was one of those pieces of writing that resonated with me in a deep heart centred way. It is a really lovely tribute to the insights of Wendell Berry and their application to ministry. But more than that it evoked for me everything I was coming to value about paying attention, learning to see in new ways, falling in love with what it is that I am truly seeing and not with my ideas of what I'm seeing.

Years ago my teacher Peter Erb opened up the world of Iris Murdoch, and through Murdoch Simone Weil, to me particularly their notion of the need to pay attention. Later I would read Danny Gregory's book Everyday Matters about how his return to drawing, particularly the drawing of his surroundings, helped him to find meaning and purpose and joy after an accident left his wife in a wheelchair.

It is hard work, paying attention. And it takes time. And it means learning to turn away from distractions. And it requires patience. In Thomas' teaching on prudence he talks about the need for docilitas, docility. Docility is a bad word in our culture but Thomas said that if you were going to make right judgements you couldn't prejudge a situation, you needed to allow the situation to inform you first. And that required being docile.

I taught for a year at a Catholic college where students were required to take a course in ethics and we read Josef Pieper's wonderful book, The Four Cardinal Virtues. One of the most delightful moments of the year for me came when I read a student's reflection paper on his experience volunteering in an after school programme for predominately African American children. He wrote that he had never thought of himself as prejudiced but that he really had never spent any time with people who were black. In spending time with these children he had come to realize that prejudice can also mean prejudging people even if those judgements aren't negative. He said that he had learned he needed to practice docilitas so that he might come to understand people different from himself.

This thanksgiving I give thanks for Kyle Childress, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, Peter Erb, Norman Wirzba and Rick for teaching me to practice a little more docilitas as I pay attention that I might understand and love my community truly.

More on movies

Well, World Trade Center was.....I don't know what the right word would be. I remember that day and the days after that. I remember finding out that I knew people here in Lethbridge who had lost family there. A close friend of mine was booked on one of the planes but changed his flight at the last minute because a meeting on the coast was canceled. We held a service at the university and a lot of people came. Another friend went down with the Red Cross and worked with the recovery teams.

Some of that all came back watching the film but in some ways it was a very different glimpse of what it was like to be that close up and not know what was going on. The Port Authority policemen who are at the heart of the movie don't know the second tower has been hit. They haven't seen the planes. They are trying to respond to the emergency but are operating figuratively in the dark. But what struck me was how light it all seemed at first, before the towers collapsed.

In some ways the film reminded me a lot of We Were Soldiers Once with Mel Gibson. That film covers the events of the first major battle of the American involvement in Vietnam on the same battle ground where the French had been defeated before them. The focus of both movies is on the courage of the men and on the agony of the women left behind. Neither are particularly political films in the sense of commenting on the nature of the conflicts. This surprised me with WTC since it is directed by Oliver Stone and he always seems to have something to say that is controversial. Instead the whole point of the movie was to remember the courage of people who ran into buildings when everyone else was running out.

To return to my post on romantic comedies I need to add a couple more films. In response to a comment posted by Aaron I need to add Notting Hill. I like About a Boy but Notting Hill is one of my favourites. Very late last night another one of my favourites was on - Return to Me. It was too late to watch it but I was reminded to add it. Like Notting Hill it has some wonderful scenes of friendship and it has a great soundtrack. And in that vein I would add Keeping the Faith, Edward Norton's gem about the friendship and romance between a priest, a rabbi and a corporate workaholic. There is also that wonderful little Canadian film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. How could it not be a gem? the writer was from Winnipeg.

Now I'm putting my mind to making a list of movies about friendship that I like. 84 Charing Cross Road would be at the top. If you have any suggestions.....