A Place for Serenity (Poetry by Bob Racine)

For some, God is a rousing fire, troubling the impenitent,

frightening the cold, callous heart, melting stiff bones.

For the restless, a blasting wind to catch them up and

hurl them into fiery confrontations.

Fire will come, but most likely from fools careless with the torch.

If God is a flame, little of the divine inferno has been let loose on me. 

And I hold myself none the worse for it. 

      

A thousand Pentecostal tongues may yet bedazzle. 

The cosmos, set to churning once more, could frighten and fascinate. 

Even so, my diminutive soul would yearn yet more

for the yeast of the Spirit, for garden fresh friendships and

the simple tapestries of the sacred place tucked away in the quiet cove.

Let me see the fire in my lover’s eye,

the dull made luminous on my children’s babbling tongues,

the crimson sparkle in the chalice, the tender fruit ablaze on the vine,

the throbbing stars flecked into the black canvas of the night sky.

And surely my feet know where to go to find the becalmed ocean

drinking down that consumptive sun at day’s end.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Mud (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

                             2 hrs & 10 min, color, 2013

In order to learn what caring and devoted love is many folks have to learn first of all what that kind of love is not.  What is counterfeit, and what is bone fide real?  Some do not learn the difference until far into adult life, after heartbreak and rejection and injury have had a go at them.  Some never learn, for lack of mentors and role models and established family precedents.  What a remarkable thing it would be if a fourteen-year-old child were presented with the opportunity to learn something about the difference!  And stranger yet it would be if a half insane, love deprived drifter/loser, someone barely surviving and maybe at the end of his rope, inadvertently opened the door wide for him to learn.  Such a thing might seem beyond the realm of possibility, but such is the upshot of “Mud,” an original screenplay written and directed by Jeff Nichols, wherein it takes on strong credibility.     

The title is not a reference to wet soil; it is the name of the adult character around whom events spiral, the desperate drifter, portrayed with considerable imagination and strength by Matthew McConaughey.  With long straggly hair, unshaven countenance, sun bleached skin, grimy hands and nothing more to his name than his pants, a thin long sleeved shirt and a Colt 45 pistol, he scrounges for himself on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River.  The boy’s name is Ellis (played by Tye Sheridan), a malcontented teenager and only child, in a quiet state of upset over the impending demise of his parents’ (Sarah Paulson and Ray McKinnon) marriage, which presages the destruction not only of his home but of the houseboat on an Arkansas tributary where the three member family has long lived.  Ellis meets Mud when he and his friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), a close riverboat neighbor of the same age, decide to explore the island and make a hideaway in an abandoned motorboat resting in the branches of a tree, not knowing that Mud is already occupying it.     

The boys get involved in the man’s predicament and start to bring him things he seems to need, hoping in return to take possession of the boat once the man is gone from the island.  But they soon discover that Mud is something other than a crazy sad vagrant.  He is a fugitive with a history of retributive violence, a sharp and resourceful creature, with bounty hunters on his trail, and he is bound up emotionally with a floozy skirt named Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) hanging out in town, whom he has known since childhood and with whom he has had an off again/on again relationship.  As Mud sees it, she is there waiting to make contact with him and prepared to run away with him once she does.  But things are not that simple for anybody, as it turns out. 

Mud is a man possessed a bit by superstition, haunted by his past and something of an adult child who reckons that changing your location is enough to make a new start, never having caught on to changing within.  When you move to a new locality you take all your baggage and trouble with you.  One must shed the baggage, and even up to the last time we see him, he remains oblivious to this fact.  And he knows something about how to ensnare people by pretended affection and trust, giving them a false sense of safety in trusting him.  It does soon become clear, however, that the boys are having a new kind of influence on him, touching a vein of caring so unexpected that he is able to break the mold and save Ellis’s life at a desperate moment.  In the process of doing so he even exposes himself to the likelihood of discovery by his nemeses.  But of course circumstances head off the possibility of any permanent bond.  The men who are after Mud are super deadly and malicious and we get to see just how much they are – in one ugly scene that foreshadows what lies in store for the quarry when he is caught. 

     

Mud may be the most fascinating character in the story, but Ellis is unquestionably the main one.  Everything is seen from his point of view and he is in just about every scene.   He is hooked on the prospect of bringing these two “lovers” together, proving to himself that the love that has faded between his parents can be a lasting thing after all, that the tottering world he knows at home is not the one beyond his door.  As one might expect, he comes in for some heartbreaking disillusionment and gets in up to his neck. 

Everything seems poised to end in tragedy, but this southern-based drama does not take place in the world of Carson McCullers or William Faulkner or Tennessee Williams.  It bears more resemblance to that of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.”  Human decency and compassion force their way through the stress and the pain and the musty surroundings to give themselves the final words.  The heart insists upon showing up even amidst the near death incidents and the violent climactic showdown that is visited upon Ellis’s little domestic haven.  Ellis’s parents may be poor and penny pinching, but they are not trashy, nor are they especially lacking in affection.  There are in fact some touching scenes between each of them and the kid.  And Ellis is really an obedient and respectful child, shaken off course only by sudden domestic unrest and uncertainty and his stark encounter with a seemingly wild man on an island. 

The picture is not a perfect work.  Too little character development is given to Neckbone and the uncle who for undisclosed reasons is raising him alone.  To my satisfaction he never comes completely to life.  He seems to be more of a device in the plotting, not a vivid personality or presence.  Also the incident in which Ellis’s infatuation over an older teenage girl ends in a cruel rejection gives me a little trouble.  It is very well directed and staged, but I question whether or not it belongs in this particular movie.  It feels to me like a distraction from the dynamics of the story and bears no overt relation to them.  And there are some loose ends that are never cleared up after the dust settles, which of course I cannot denote without giving too much away. 

But Nichols is an independent Writer/Director to be watched.  The scenes between Ellis and Mud are quite powerful and the ones in which we become familiar with Juniper are most electrifying.  The supporting cast is sturdy, especially Sam Shepherd, a fine actor and writer who I have not seen perform in many years.  He plays a recluse who has a history of his own with Mud, flushed out of seclusion by Mud’s crisis.  And the ambience is terrific – not surprising considering that the film is very close to home for Nichols, having grown up in that very world as a river scamp himself.  Google him and read what he has to say about his experience of making “Mud.”   I suspect the youth will find the movie quite engaging; it is a good story for anyone between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Autobiography of Bob Racine

Please indulge me a bit this time around.  During the year and a half that I have had this blog going I have revealed little in it about my identity and my personal history, though I have shared personal views and opinions, mostly in the essays I have posted.  Many of you reading are already acquainted with me and are somewhat familiar with my personal circumstances and background, but for the benefit of many who are not I wish to share a brief autobiographical summary and a listing of my beliefs and values.  If any of you have further questions pertaining to who I am or about the beliefs and values I will be listing, please direct them to bobracine@verizon.net and I will be happy to answer them and perhaps get to know a few you individual readers I have not had the privilege of meeting in person.

It was on February 25, 1933 in Norfolk, Virginia, that I, Robert Wayne Racine, arrived in the world, the only child-to-be of Raymond and Virginia Racine.  Growing up in Norfolk I was nurtured in Central Baptist Church of that city, where I felt the call to the ministry very early in my life.  I graduated from Maury High School there in January, 1952 and received my Bachelor of Arts degree from Wake Forest College in 1955 as a pre-ministerial student.  My divinity degree came from Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1963, after a few years of experience in the field as a welfare caseworker, and I served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Scranton, Pennsylvania from 1963 until 1967.  I then accepted a job with Mass Media Ministries in Baltimore, Md., an interfaith agency designed to serve churches of all faiths seeking to develop media programs.  I worked for them as chief writer and assistant editor on their bi-weekly Newsletter publication, reviewing short films, TV and current cinema.  I also conducted seminars on media usage, wrote promotional fliers and gave personal consultation to people in church-related professions on the planning of media programs. 

In 1974 I moved to Columbia, Maryland, where I have resided ever since.  Following the discontinuance of the Mass Media Newsletter in 1980, I became involved in community theater, organizing my own in conjunction with Kittamaqundi Community, an ecumenical church body in that city.  The theater remained in operation for twenty-two years.  In that endeavor I got training in acting, directing, and producing, and in 1988 began writing scripts, several of which have been performed in public, one for the annual Baltimore New Playwrights Festival.  In recent years, since the retirement of the theater, I have segued from script writing into fiction writing.  A novella, “It Won’t Fit Through the Door,” remains available on compact disc.  “All Saints Eve” is my first full length novel still seeking publication.  I have also written over the space of the last forty years a considerable body of poetry, and at varied times and on varied occasions have given public recitations of them.  Some of them have already appeared in this blog. 

I seem to have always worn two hats throughout my adult life – religion and the arts.  Almost all I have done over the past half century has involved participation in both worlds.  And now the early profession of film critic that I practiced in association with Mass Media Ministries, cut short by the onset of a severe hearing loss, has found a soul-gratifying rebirth in the reviewing of motion pictures on DVD on this blog, along with other writings.  The word processor now has become my new stage as well as my new printed page, thanks to the brilliant assistance of my stepson JC Nolan, to whom I will be eternally grateful.

I have been married to my third wife, Ruby, since 1981. An elementary school teacher for close to thirty years (retired in 1996), she is the supreme love of my life and has been a magnificent support to me in all my endeavors since we met.  We reside in Columbia.  We have seven offspring between us from previous marriages and eight grandchildren.  Though now in our latter years, we remain very active in the Kittamaqundi congregation and share in its leadership and work. 

The following is a list of what I regard as my personal beliefs and values, to which I hold myself personally accountable:

Biblical writings as a repository of moral, ethical and spiritual instruction

The existence of God both as unfathomable mystery and redeeming presence

The perseverance of faith, both as outlook and practice

A spiritual community that is supportive and nurturing

Diversity of expression within a unity of faith sharing

Integrity and wholeness of character

Personal discipline in all domains as opposed to off-the-wall lifestyles

The dignity of work

Scrupulous care of one’s own body as indeed the Temple of God

Equally scrupulous care of the planet Earth as the bosom mother of us all

The sanctity of all living creatures

The unique giftedness of each and every human individual

The loving family as the foundation of civilized society               

A creative fusion between religion and the arts

Music and poetry as the language of God and food for the soul

The preservation and study of sacred and classic writings

Friendship that sets no boundaries and imposes no obligations

Patience and kindness

Humility of spirit

Unbounded and unqualified forgiveness, both of self and others

And basic to all:

Love as a verb, not a noun, which is to say aggressive good will in action,

compassionate service to others, selfless labors to lighten each other’s burdens, and active commitment to the ongoing liberation of the human spirit

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Ambiguity - Pleasure or Pain

When Rhett walks out on Scarlett at the close of “Gone with the Wind,” his final profane dismissal of her carries the sound of finality.  With his towering physical stature and his super macho air of authority he fends off her anemic, tearful attempts to dissuade him.  The two of us are through forever.  I am putting you out of my life for good.  He strides off into his new future seemingly firm and confident.  She is atomized and lost. – Or is she?  At the final moment before fadeout, after her head clears, she declares just as confidently it seems that she will figure a way to get him back.  “Tomorrow is another day.”  Are they once and for all gone from each other’s lives?  Rhett is a man who has always known what he wanted.  But Scarlett is a woman who has always gotten what she wanted or thought she wanted, a schemer with many devices, to which Rhett has not always been known to be resistant.  Is it final?  Moviegoers for three quarters of a century have enjoyed themselves speculating about the question.  We have relished this exciting, sweet, tempestuous ambiguity.  Each time I have seen the picture I have been less sure one way or the other.

For centuries millions of eyes have looked at the subtle visage of the Mona Lisa.  A popular song came forth back during the 1950s addressing itself to her, full of wonder at what her face is communicating to the viewer.  “You’re the lady with the mystic smile. . .Do you smile to tempt a lover. . .or is that your way to hide a broken heart?  Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep.  They just lie there, and they die there!  Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa, or just a cold and lonely lovely work of art?”  Yes, many stories have been woven around her.  Experts have studied that spare little smile.  You can stare at that canvas for hours and days on end and see almost infinite pictures.  In her case there are many more than two possible interpretations, perhaps hundreds.  We are thrilled to look at that face and its eternally stubborn refusal to talk back and engage us.  The unanswered question lingers, and we would not have it any other way.

In my May 10 entry on the blog I gave a glowing review of last year’s “Life of Pi,” quite simply my favorite movie release out of 2012.  Some have been confused and disappointed by it, having expected a straightforward linear adventure story – man overcomes the sea and the elements, man locked in combat with a ferocious beast, shipwreck victim devising clever ways to stay alive, etc.  They have not been prepared for the meditative aspect of it, the poetry of it, the mystery of it.  More specifically they have not been prepared for the ambiguous conclusion at which the screenplay arrives.  The boy relates two versions of his story and we are never told which one to believe, or whether some of each.  The boy has been through a strange metamorphosis of the spirit, perhaps has had some lapse of sanity and regained it.  He has finalized his understanding of God.  Perhaps his journey has been one of the soul more than, or at least as much as, the body.  One leaves the viewing enshrouded in the mystique of man and animal and earth and sky and universe.  It is a challenge to deep thinkers and spiritual adventurers to sort through the images and the lyrical voices to find nuggets of truth and beautiful surreal moments to remember.  Which version of the story we choose to accept will perhaps tell us something about ourselves.  It is that kind of thing!

There are thousands of examples of ambiguity in the realm of art and drama and literature.  There are mysteries we do not want completely solved, depths we do not want to be filled in, complexities we do not want simplified.  We are used to being seduced by them, charmed, beguiled.  We are excited by the degree of our imaginations that they provoke.      

But ambiguity can bring great pain rather than pleasure in some instances.  It can cause heartache, stress and confusion.  When the question of a defendant’s guilt or innocence looms before a courtroom and a judge and jury, with an entire society waiting for and in some manner invested in the outcome, a verdict can be a catharsis, or a feeling of vindication and satisfaction or it can be a shock and a stunning blow to expectations of justice as individuals or groups understand it.  I for one have nothing but sympathy for the jury in the Zimmerman/Martin trial.  They had to make a decision with practically nothing in the way of evidence to go on.   They were shackled to the principle that anyone accused is innocent in the eyes of the law until proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Each of the mothers heard the voice of her son on the tape calling for help and rescue.  Each of the scenarios depicted by the contesting attorneys was credible.  Two versions of events on that dark night, both consistent with the facts made known, including the crucial tape recording!  Where does the finalizing truth lie?  Perhaps only inside the head of George Zimmerman, from which it is not likely ever to emerge.  

We like our murder trials neat and compelling with outcomes easy to anticipate.  We prefer the prosecution of known miscreants, when the evidence is so blatantly set forth in the media that anyone of average intelligence is already familiar with the details of the killing or killings long before the jurisprudence gets underway and guilt and conviction is almost a sure thing to be anticipated.  We wait not only for technical justice under the law to be brought about but for real universal justice to be achieved, an outcome in keeping with a higher morality.  We just wait out the unfolding of the drama.  Even if somehow the defendant unjustly beats the rap, little doubt remains of the person’s real guilt.  At worst we walk away helpless with disappointment over the miscarriage, and no ambiguity is present to cloud our minds or dampen the outrage.  But when nothing is obvious in advance of the trial and the truth lies cloaked in the shadows, most of us are not sure where to take hold of the question of guilt or innocence.  I am not sure how I would have voted if I had been on that jury.  How do you send a man to prison on such ambiguous fragments of evidence, whatever suspicion you may have in your heart about that defendant?    

The kind of ambiguity this trial turned up also challenges the imagination, but in a much more troubling way.  Even the most open and fair-minded individual finds him-/herself accosted by pictures flung upon the brainpan that are hard to resist viewing, even if we fight them off and try to erase them.  Without facts or confessions of wrongdoing, doubts and suspicions can rush in to fill the void, and loopholes in the testimony and in the court record can get stuffed with prejudicial sentiments and assumptions of culpability.  I do not want to watch my imagination foist itself upon the picture of an unarmed seventeen-year-old suffering brutality or getting caught in a fatal struggle with a stranger.  Nor do I want to watch that teenager make a foolish move that results in his mis-adventurous, tragic death.  Too many variations on possibility left to the imagination by the ambiguous findings!

So what do we do with these visceral disturbances left in such a trial’s wake?  Are we mad enough to feel as if we want to kill somebody?  If so, who do we kill, if only in our fantasies?  All justice-loving, humane individuals ache for some kind of finality or closure other than the mere word of a man engaged in the suspicious business of neighborhood watchdog and resting his case upon the dubious and dangerous doctrine of “Stand Your Ground.”  But we are denied that closure and its denial tempts us into an outrage no less severe than the one an obvious miscarriage would provoke. 

We cannot count on life to be fair and never will be able to.  Whether or not it was technically and legally fair to Trayvon Martin, we may never know, but it certainly is not being fair to us who have to try to make sense out of a senseless killing.  Most especially is this so for the boy’s family.  Time will ease the pain of what happened for us; for them the wound will never completely heal.  The same is true for the hundreds of families throughout our nation who have had one of their offspring fall victim to a violent death.  We can at least be thankful that people do not have to die from wounds of the heart, however severe, but living with them takes unusual strength and character.  We cannot do too much praying for the Martin family and others in the same boat. 

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net