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Connections&
February 18--Seventh Sunday of the Year
"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you... For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them"
"Love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High... Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." Luke 6:27-38
Cast Away
At one time or another, we have all wondered what it would be like to be stranded on a desert island and finding ourselves trying to restart civilization from scratch.
Tom Hanks finds himself doing just that in the incredible new movie Cast Away. Hanks portrays Chuck Noland, an ambitious, voluble, time-obsessed efficiency expert for Federal Express. On a Christmas Day flight to Russia, his plane goes down in a storm. Surviving the fiery wreckage, he drifts onto the shore of a rocky island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. Exhausted and bruised, Noland now has one new deadline: the race to survive in the face of starvation, dehydration and natural disaster.
Noland's fight to survive is one of the most mesmerizing stories ever portrayed on film. In his four-year odyssey on the island, he survives by letting go of preconceived notions and expectations about time, about the nature and value of things, about himself. The only thing he refuses to let go of is his picture of his fiancée in the pocket watch she gave him just before he boards the plane. As Noland says, her "presence" on the island with him and his learning to "hope... and watch for what the ocean watches up to [his] island" enables him to survive--both his marooning on the island and, we suspect, the world he reenters afterwards.
CONNECTION: The essence of Jesus' Gospel - encapsulated by Luke in today's collection of his sayings--is to let go of the fleeting ambitions and stresses of the world, the petty jealousies and divisive resentments, the self-defeating egotism and self-centeredness, and embrace instead a perspective of life centered in the hope, joy and compassion of God. Faithful discipleship demands the courage to "let go" of the anger, hatred, despair and distrust that deaden our spirits and perspectives and restarting our lives in God's spirit of justice, reconciliation and peace.v
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