The Green Mile movie review and various other thoughts

It was a brutal day at work today. I was on shift doing my rounds as security guard at Escondido Charter High School and was stuck outside for most of the day. The temperature winded its way on up to 96 degrees F. Thankfully, a friend and coworker pointed out to me that the weather report said it only felt like it was 91! What great news! The slight breeze that the weather report must have been citing for its "chill factor" made it feel like I was not only in a furnace, but in a blow dryer as well. Another coworker tried to cheer me up by offering to have his students fry eggs on the cars in the parking lot. I believe an ice cold beer would have made a better offering.

After driving home in a pool of my own sweat I managed to slide out of my car and crawl to the front door; the only evidence of my arrival being a cloud of dust that erupted from my parched throat when I coughed out the frog that would not stop croaking every time I tried to speak. I recovered only by the liberal application of cool libations to my crusted body and a long nap finally interrupted by the cruel ringing of my cell phone at around 7:00 pm mountain standard time. I am unable to recall who rang but will hopefully have my phone repaired soon so that I may check.


Unwilling to go back to sleep, I turned the telly on and saw that one of my all time favorite movies was playing on FX. I was surprised by that because, generally speaking, I think the station should change its initials to ZZ(zzzzz). Anything else on that station and I would have been sawing logs all over again.

The rush of static and zinging noise that brings a CRT to life opened onto one of the most intense segments of "The Green Mile." The miracle worker and falsely accused killer, John Coffey, was in prison with William "Wild Bill" Wharton (a singularly evil being); Percy Wetmore, the belittling and depraved keeper, was on the prowl for easy blood; the simple and repentant Cajun, Eduard Delacroix, was keeping to his pet mouse and was soon to "ride the lighting"; Paul Edgecomb, the warden, was working to hold together a system of justice that could be brutally wrong in its execution of justice.

Delacroix is enjoying one of his last conversations on the earth with wardens Edgecomb and Howell while his mouse is playing with the wooden spool on which thread is packaged. His last concern is the ownership and care of his mouse so Edgecomb and Howell spin a yarn about a mouse carnival in Florida where the little guy can perform tricks and be well-cared after. While gently discussing the care of Delacroix's beloved mouse, the creature runs out onto the green mile (central corridor) and is stomped under the vile boot of Percy Wetmore who states only that he knew he would get him eventually.

The anguished cry that pours from the soul of Delacroix is simple to understand: Death was looming before his eyes and the last measure of joy in his life had just been crushed. Wetmore, a man who delighted in destroying what was good had won an evil victory in ruining Delacroix's spirit. At this point, Coffey urgently beckons for Edgecomb to place the dead mouse in his hands and, for the sake of all that is good, resurrects it back to life and denies Wetmore his wicked triumph. Be forewarned that I mean to describe how I see the beauty of Christ in all of this.

The scene described is amazingly powerful because it reflects the desire of the human heart to see justice done. Yet, justice is ultimately impossible for creatures of flesh and blood. The throbbing wounds and open cuts dealt by the hand of the evildoer remain even when the perpetrator is held accountable before the law. Even when the wounds for the victim heal over there is oftentimes a deep scar. Thus, we see that the law has no ability to save and maintain life. All it does is point to the failures of those who come before it and punish them. The life giving ingredient that is missing from the law is mercy which cannot be given arbitrarily lest justice be ignored.

Nothing of flesh and blood can stand clean before the law and that is why the gift of life that Coffey gives is one of mercy and compassion. He resurrects Delecroix's mouse to show compassion towards a fellow man who was condemned under the law and about to be put to death. He resurrected hope by giving life. Did not Christ do the same thing when, in His miracles He healed the sick, gave sight to the blind and raised the dead from the grave? In this respect, Coffey is a Christ-figure in this movie.

Whereas the natural man, like Wetmore, is condemned before the law because of a desire to withhold justice and steal from others what is good, the supernatural and supremely innocent man (or man of the Spirit whom Coffey represents) is justified before the law because of a desire to restore life and love. Coffey does this willingly through his own suffering when he sucks the sickness and death out of the infirmed and pulls it into himself. He renews life, hope, love, joy and peace through his compassionate gift. Thus, in a sense, absolution is found for those whom Coffey heals when he hides their sickness within his own frame and suffers for it.

Christ does the same for those who love Him. The ability to give life is the most powerful force in the universe and when Christ takes the condemnation of those who fail the test of the law and buries it in His own body, the One who must judge that wickedness now finds no fault in the one from whom it was removed. In fact, the fault now lies with the one who holds it (Christ) and He suffered the blame.

We can see a type of the injustice of Christ's guilt when Coffey willingly suffers death by electricity. Yet, that death is only for himself, so that he might escape the pain that he holds within and the suffering that he sees "all around." How much more unjust was it that Jesus, who died willingly as well, should die a death on the cross to save us because of the pain that we suffer through? This is how God's mercy triumphs over law's judgment. Read John 17 if you wish to investigate for yourself. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2017&version=NIV

The deep truths I am trying to convey in this writing are thus given:

1) Without grace and mercy everything we gain in this life will be lost.

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart." Job 1:21

"...the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!" Ecclesiastes 2:16

2) Death and wickedness are thieves and an offense that God has overcome.

"When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:54-57

3) God restores life and love in a state uncorrupted and beautiful.

"Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Revelation 21:3-4

Good food makes her clothes fall off.

This video is a must watch. A crazy woman discusses why Adam and Eve stopped walking around naked then segues into the transgendered mayor segment and blasts into various other topics such as how Oregon would rather pay to euthanize a woman rather than paying to treat her cancer. I will focus on the crazy woman.



The crazy lady (Rae), says, "Adam and Eve were naked and everything was just fine until they ate bad food and then they got really self-conscious." Perhaps Adam and Eve became farty and bloated when the bad food fermented in their bellies. In light of this, I'm sure that their first clothing was, in fact, a thick diaper woven from fig leaves and animal pelts. Praise Gaia that this woman purged the mysterious "bad food" from her diet and shed her FigSkin Depends.

A friend of mine said to me, "Now I know to keep eating bad food so my clothes don't decide to fall off..." Her hilarious comment reminded me of the country song by Joe Nichols, "Tequila makes her clothes fall off." In place of Tequila, substitute what Rae says about bad food and you'll understand her shining brilliance (PBUH). Oh, how like a laxative it penetrates even the deepest of dark places within diapers to release the flood gates of "truth!" To put it bluntly and with less sarcasm we would say in the Marines, "If it looks like crap and it smells like crap it must be (you guessed it) CRAP!" I mean, at least Joe Nichols gives a probable reason for why a person would disrobe, but bad food? Give me a break!

Defying reason, Rae manages to construct an unholy union between good food and nakedness and becomes, herself, a great, stinking love child of twisted thoughts and lies. My wisdom would be on par with her's if I stripped after drinking grape juice. After all, it could have been wine, right? I would just be looking forward to the promise of fermented liquids in my belly to release my inhibitions... Although, in actuality, the inhibitions I would be releasing (like Rae's) could only be contained in the largest loin cloth of Adam and Eve's invention described above.

Like the king in Hans Christian Andersen's famous fable, "The Emperor's New Clothes," this woman is clothed in shame that she can't even see. She does not wish to appear stupid and so, to avoid the shame of her private fable, she has gone public with her nudity and is laid bare. Though the proverbial child has pointed out her nakedness, she holds her lofty head up high and flaunts her foolishness for all to see.

I write this only to point out the absurd claim of this woman. I mean to judge her words and conduct because it is proper to unmask the lie. To be honest though, it is a perfect mental picture for me of what I am like before God. I have lived in a world that to one degree or another has been contrived by my own lies. I subconsciously live by the famous mantra that "if I repeat a lie often enough it becomes my truth." I am just more skilled than Rae at hiding my heart from those around me.

There is One whose eye has pierced every layer of my clothing and knows even my innermost being. I shall one day stand before His judgment seat and He will demand that I give an account of my life. Will He see that it was built upon the lie of my own desires or, as Rae says, "whatever feels right"? Every one does only what is right in their own eyes. Thus, how worthless my gifts will be to God when I stand before Him naked with my heart fully exposed. As Paul says in Romans 7:24, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

Thus, it was not "bad food" that made Adam and Eve "self-conscious"; it was their disobedience and sin towards God that made them ashamed. However, God, in His love, covered their shame (or nakedness as it were) because He took compassion on them. The covering He provided for them (animal skins) was a sign of Christ's sacrifice which alone could cover all sins perfectly and remove their shame. He was naked on the cross when He suffered the shame of our sins. He was exposed and laid bare so that in a very real way we could approach God without guilt as "naked" ones. He bore the wounds of our iniquities so that we could be healed in truth (unlike Rae's healing lie).

In Christ, we have nothing left to hide and can close with the rest of the thought from Romans 7:25 where Paul writes, "Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Freaking Ants (part two)!

My previous blog about ants reminded me of a blog I wrote in October of last year. Let me see if I can scrounge it up for you for it is quite funny (uncomfortable though it was for me):

Tickling my brain

"This morning I woke up with my brain tickling. Not only was it like the itch you can't scratch, it was like the itch you can't scratch that hurts really badly if you even think about scratching it. I think it was about 1:30 am when I noticed it. I was slowly brought back to consciousness in a most unpleasant manner. The sensation got worse and worse until about 20 minutes later I desperately jumped out of bed to plunge my ear with a cue tip. Amazingly, a little black ant was all the way back in my ear canal. It had been marching on my ear drum as if it were a parade deck!

With my sleep interrupted as it was, I was really tired at work all day. When I got back to the house, I decided to take a nap. No more than 20 minutes into my nap my nose started to itch as if the feather dusters of the world had united and shoved themselves into my nostrils. I'm not joking when I say that for the second time in one day an ant had found its way into my face. It felt like the itch you get in your nose before you sneeze (though this one burned)...and it didn't go away! I was finally able to get the ant out of my nose but now I'm terrified of going to sleep tonight..."

Other than that, a couple of other interesting things about ants popped up onto my radar. A writer on the blog site Open Salon (Tim Cordle to be precise) made an interesting point behind the meaning of sacrifice. On sacrifice for personal gain (a homicide bomber gaining their harem in heaven) he says, "Whatever a terrorist believes about his or her just cause, the altruism of their act is considerably diminished by virtue of the fact that by committing such atrocities they hope to guarantee a special reward in the hereafter. That is hardly a selfless act."

On sacrifice for the gain of others he provides the example of a specific type of ant mentioned by the December 2008 Smithsonian:

The Collective Good

"Scientists in Brazil have observed an unusual act of selflessness. When Forelius ants retire for the night, one or more workers remain outside the colony, kicking sand to seal the entrance. If that protects those within from predators or rain, it also dooms the outside ants to die overnight of exposure. It's the first known case of "pre-emptive self-sacrifice" among insects."

To make his point about sacrifice, Cordle compares the two forms of sacrifice and their worth: "No, a true selfless act is that of the ant that barricades itself outside the nest and expects nothing for its sacrifice but death. For at least as far as we know, there is no Paradise in the metaphysics of ants."

To read Cordle's blog in its entirety is to read a post disclaiming religion because it does not provide for a form of sacrifice that is selfless. This is where he drops the ball, not having spiritual eyes to see with. My challenge to him would be to tell me how the sacrifice of Christ was in any way selfish. The scriptural proof I give to show how others-centered Christ's sacrifice was I present Hebrews 12:2-3:

²Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

The joy of Christ was to be with His Father in heaven, in perfect fellowship with His children whom He lived, died and rose again for, forever. AMEN!

My (slightly humorous) take on why Christians are so annoying.

I understand the annoyance for God's people, I really do. We are the veritable "people of the cloth" or the "Frozen Chosen" as the "reformed" Presbyterians are so named. I generally roll with that group for some reason. Prior to my conversion I was Episcopalian or, as my friend Rory called the denomination: "Catholic-lite." Apparently we had all the ceremony and only half of the guilt! It sounded like an ad espousing the benefits of Margarine over butter. We love our labels and others love to label us. We usually seem to get labeled in direct accordance with our hypocrisy.

Anyhoo, I came face to face with this Christian hypocrisy my first year as a believer. I was invited to a beach gathering up in LA with the regional church and was very excited to go. For reasons that will become apparent later, I did not get much sleep that night. We had a nice hour and a half long drive up to the beach house where I was lulled into a false sense of serenity. I won a huge container full of Gummy Bears when I guessed closest to the proper amount, won a Bible verse locating round against all odds, swam in the ocean amongst breaker waves that literally crushed my body into the sand and rolled me up the embankment like a ball of limp, masticated noodles, drained fluids from my nose for half an hour after sand burning my face all the way up the shore, oozed into a fabulous leather chair with little mechanical massaging rollers and ultimately fell asleep. Big mistake!

With those rollers buffing relaxing patterns into my musculature I was like a bittersweet square of soft imported Dutch chocolate left on a hot car hood in the middle of the Death Valley desert; I melted. My body sank into every nook and cranny of that chair and time died to me. I woke up half an hour later to the sound of poorly concealed snickering that took place behind hands that were pushed up so hard against mouths that their teeth were almost extractable from behind their ears.

It seems that I had been drooling upon my heaving bosom for the duration of my false-safety, sleep induced coma. Oh, it wasn't just a little drool and it wasn't just a small wet mark; it was foamy white around the edges and encompassed up to half of my now embarrassingly dripping chest. My shame was so thick around me it could have been cut with a chainsaw! I gave a couple of nervous laughs while everyone around me guffawed with open mouths and flapping tongues. They flopped as fish out of water and made a similar, though more guttural sound.

I wiped the last lonely strands of spittle from my sopping chin and made my walk of shame out into the sun to dry my saturated shirt. It was a welcome heat and much more natural than the fire that burned with the heat of a thousand suns within the tips of my ears. Alas, to have had a friend willing to warn me against my own lack of classiness! I would almost have rather walked amongst the best looking women in the world with my fly unzipped for an entire day. I would have at least had a great excuse for being clueless!

I pose this challenge to you believers out there (and a last convenient label): The next time you have the chance to save a brother from embarrassment ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?"

Red-blooded men!

The other day I was quietly sifting through a jumble of emails that have been calling out my name to be read for many weeks now. It seems that ever since the Presidential election I have been unwilling to read much that comes my way through such means. Either that or my love affair with Facebook has taken me from my first (and much simpler) love of email. That aside, I am not here to talk about relationships. I'm here to talk about the night I realized that I was a man.

The previous sentence, without any context, may seem rather risque. Thus, allow me to elaborate upon the circumstance in which I found myself. You see, I had the window in the computer room open so that I could experience the benefits of fresh air while I tried to wade through the stifling number of unread emails. The result of this was that I was able to hear any number of night time sounds that wafted into my ear canals. Imagine my reaction when I heard frantic squabbling coming from the chicken coop my landlady keeps on her property.

Being a responsible man and realizing that the chickens had not been locked up for the night, I figured that the source of their squabbling must have been either a raccoon or possum. I ran out of the house as quickly as my feet could take me and called upon Josh, the son of my friend and landlady, to come out with me as fast as possible with a flashlight.

The chickens were splayed around their cage and outside of their coop in various stages of shock and fright. My favorite, whom I call "Crazy Eyes McCluck" because of her crazy eyes and strange cluck, was almost comatose as her legs were locked in the upright position and her breast and head were sagging to the ground. Her wings were drooping to the ground and she was shaking slightly. She was a pitiful sight to say the least.

My manly instinct to protect chicks kicked in at that moment and with the help of Josh we managed to herd the ladies back into their coop and lock them up. Pushing them into their coop almost felt like the game "Whack a Mole" with them trying to leave as quickly as you herded them in. Now, chicken herding is fun and should become a national sport much as sheep herding is in the British Isles (see YouTube video) but I was half-naked without a shirt when the neighboring dog sent up a sharp growl at an avocado tree that grows inside of the cage.



A lonely leaf fell to the ground as I slowly looked up to the sound of soft rustling. I had figured that whatever creature had attacked the girls was long gone. I couldn't have been more wrong... I whispered to Josh for his flashlight and investigated the tree in my vulnerable and half-naked state. The beam alighted upon two specks of reflective, shiny blackness. To my horror and amazement, I saw looking back at me the two eyes of a raccoon the size of a medium-sized dog.

It's hands had the dimensions of a small child's.


Josh "oohed" and "aahed" and wished for a stick so that he would have the ability to beat the coon out of the tree. This reminded me of the two spears I had brought back from Uganda and I ordered Josh back into the house to grab them so that we could stab the raccoon and get it to leave the chicks alone. Soon, with spears and flashlights in hand, we began a systematic stabbing of the tree as we had lost sight of the animal. After spearing various branches, leaves and avocados I finally found the guy again and gave it a medium thrust to the belly (not a killing blow). Now terrified itself, and put in its proper place, the coon scampered away.

At the top of my lungs I bellowed a war cry that shivered the timbers of every tree and shriveled the lips of every marauding creature in the vicinity. I thrust my spear in the air and wiped the coons blood in swirling patterns upon my face. I erected a truly massive bonfire outside of my animal hide tent and watched my shadow dance with me late into the night. I poured smooth libations down my gullet in ever greater quantities as the gods looked down upon me in amazement. How can this not be the night when I became a man?

Superhero/Messiah Obama!

For a truly enjoyable experience you really should watch the brilliant embedded video recently published by Jib Jab! Personally, I was happy to see this video not simply because it made fun of the Obamessiah, but because I have the ability to enjoy and support media that pokes fun at the most powerful man in the "free world" without facing repercussions. Meanwhile, my heart aches for the protesters in Iran and their desire to escape from an oppressive regime that allows for the unquestioned murder of its citizens for the purpose of keeping a theocratic government in power. I will not post specifics on the murder of Iranian protester Neda Agha-Sultan on my blog but you may read the condensed version of her life here: < http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-neda23-2009jun23,0,6240992.story?track=rss >. My hope, apart from their obtaining salvation, is that they too would someday have the liberty to make fun of their government. With as bitter as I am towards mine at times I believe that, this side of heaven, humor is one of the most powerful tools used to dispel fear in the absence of God's grace and mercy. Wherever you stand, or sit, politically, or religiously, you will assuredly get a good respite from what concerns you when you watch this video!

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