In the Heat of the Night (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr and 50 min, color, 1967

                                               

Landmark movies do not have to be super spectacular creations.  “In the Heat of the Night”, released fifty years ago this summer (yes, another half century anniversary), did not introduce any new cinematic devices or any technical innovations or original narrative techniques.  Viewers did not set new records in attendance; crowds were not lined up at box offices in serpentine formation around the block.  But the picture did sell, enough to start a groundswell of interest that led to Oscar victory and did make an unmistakable impact upon the American movie audience’s mind.  It was what it signaled that set it apart and drew earnest attention from all over the country.  To put it precisely, in the words of Malcolm Boyd, it was in this one that “the black man became a man” on screen at last, in every sense of the term.   The African American male image has never been the same since in motion pictures. 

Sidney Poitier is a proud, professionally competent northern police detective, a homicide expert, traveling through Sparta, Mississippi, who gets roped into showing bigoted small town sheriff Rod Steiger how to solve a murder and throws Jim Crow racism back into the redneck teeth with a flourish.  Director Norman Jewison and Screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, working from a John Ball novel, are our benefactors.  The film is full of high tension face-offs, and almost every scene is memorable.  It not only portrayed the entrenchment of Southern bigotry at the time but ripped into it and exposed its raw core.  And it did not do this in the garb of a docudrama or a narrated, topical illustration.  It was staged as one might stage any conventional who-done-it, served up with a heaping helping of police detective work and undercover investigating.  But its detective hero just happened in this case to be a man whose racial identity pushed buttons that set off a chain reaction of enmity and violent aggressiveness. 

This was not by a long shot Sidney Poitier’s first starring role.  He has been in films since the early 1950s and in most of them he has played a lead.  (The most memorable of those is “Lilies of the Field”, which I recently reviewed.)  But this was the first case in which the film was devoted intentionally and conspicuously to the red hot button issue of Southern styled racism.  By 1967 most of the landmark civil rights legislation of the Johnson years had already been enacted.  The 1963 March on Washington was recent history and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial was fresh in most Americans’ minds.  But of course what was on the books and what was being enforced were worlds apart.  Jim Crow still ruled the South, especially in small town and rural areas.    

Many of you reading this may be unfamiliar with the film for the simple reason that it came out before you were born or at least well before you were of an age when you would have been aware of its existence; maybe it got lost in the torrent of world events or of personal struggles of your own.  I myself was only thirty-four when I first viewed it at a theater on Times Square.  It was an afternoon in the middle of a week, with very few people present.  That was nothing unusual at a matinee, except for the fact that the rest of the viewers in the audience were all black, and they were so exercised by what they saw that I began to fear that maybe I, the lone whitey, would not get out of there alive.  (I did, of course!  They acted as if I was not even present, and that pleased me no end.) 

Can we now imagine how cathartic as well as electrifying it must have been for them to see a black man stand up to the white baron of the community, returning the man’s facial slap without hesitation?  That was a first, and it tore through the air.  The big shot is so startled by what this supposedly inferior black man has done that he is reduced to tears.  What gets unmasked in this scene is the essence of so-called Southern white paternalism.  We see that it is nothing more than a thin veneer loosely disguising hate, thuggery, and paranoia.   The black folk who saw it on first release must also have found catharsis in the scene in which three redneck hooligans gang up on Poitier in a garage, and this black Philadelphia citizen fights them back with courage and expertise.  This is one of two scenes actually in which the detective comes perilously close to getting lynched.  But he does not kow-tow for an instant. 

Not that the man is a crusader.  He is a reluctant participator.  He is on his way to visit his mother when he is corralled by a twist of circumstances into taking charge of the investigation.  He is not out to prove anything, other than the identity of the killer.  He simply believes in being thorough and professional in the performance of a duty, regardless of the time or place.  In the larger sense he has nothing to prove and is not out to impress the white establishment or curry favor.  

Poitier may be the focus of attention all the way through, but he is not the only leading player.  Rod Steiger is mammoth in the role of the sheriff, who is conflicted over the investigation Poitier is doing.  He feels pressure from two sides.  The white oligarchs of the town do not want Poitier to show them up; Steiger is ready to put him on the train and ship him out.  But the wife (Lee Grant) of the murdered man, an industrialist from the north who has come south to build a factory, has other ideas.  After seeing how hasty and incompetent the sheriff is in arresting a suspect who Poitier proves is innocent, she declares that she wants the black detective kept on the case until the true felon is caught, threatening to pack up her dead husband’s engineers and equipment and leave the area, if her wish is not met.  The factory is something of huge economic importance to the life of the community, and the bigwigs need to keep her appeased.  And there is Steiger right in the shaky middle – the horns of a daunting, king-size dilemma!  

Steiger was quite brilliant with anything he did, though he was never a box office champion.  He was something very special and quite versatile.  He might have second billing here, but he makes something prodigious out of this easily rattled, nervous, slouchy, gum chewing officer of the law.  Not only do we get to observe his chief’s performance on the job, but in an intimate scene the screenwriter takes us into his inner mind to show us how lonely and wretched he is.  By film’s end he has come to feel a quiet respect for Poitier.  Steiger’s work in the movie earned him a well-deserved Oscar, and the work of the combined cast and crew earned the Best Picture trophy.   

The settings are so believable that I sometimes get the feeling while watching that I am smelling the town, smelling the dusty roads, smelling the jail and police station, smelling the depot.  There is nothing phony about the visuals and nothing half disclosed about the reactionary fear of the isolated town.  And a low keyed jazzy score by the celebrated Quincy Jones on the soundtrack adds its rich flavor as well as the voice of Ray Charles singing the title song. 

Not often have I ever pleaded with my readers for their attention to what I am highlighting, but this time I cannot think of a better word for what I want to say.  I plead with everyone reading this who has never seen “In the Heat of the Night” to check it out from Netflix and screen it, or if you remember once seeing it but the memory is hazy, check it out and refresh yourself on a vital aspect of American life and history.  I am saddened to have to say that it still reflects upon a very real danger dogging at our nation’s heels.  Hate crimes and enflamed racism are still very much with us, as recent killings that have made front page news so painfully demonstrate.  Jim Crow may not be as dominant as he once was, but he is still lurking around.   See this and educate yourself a little more on the subject.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Sully (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr & 36 min, color, 2016

                                     

The badge of heroism is not always so easy to come by.  So many who end up feted for valorous behavior or courageous undertakings have to be proven worthy of the honor, in some cases posthumously.  “Sully” is the true story of Chesley Sullenberger, the U. S. Airways pilot forced on January 15, 2009 to land his passenger plane in the Hudson River, with one hundred and fifty-five on board including the crew, when both of his engines conked out within minutes after taking off from LaGuardia; it seems a huge flock of birds collided with the aircraft and killed the engines.  He ended up doing what had never been done before in the entire history of aviation – using a riverbed as a landing platform for a jet.  He has long since been credited as a hero, but following his accomplishment he was subjected to testing and debriefing and the overwhelm of publicity that proved just as rugged as the ordeal in the air and on the water which he and his passengers and crew had survived.  Both the physical and the emotional tolls for Sully and his copilot are portrayed in no uncertain terms.

                                     

It is significant that the film begins with a nightmare in which Sully finds himself back in the air, trying to pilot his craft in descent over the New York skyline, the nightmare ending in his crash into one of the skyscrapers.  The flaming impact wakes him up in a state of abject terror.  He deals with the dream’s aftermath by jogging through the Manhattan streets.  What he is undergoing is a form of PTSD that he has to carry with him for many days, made no easier by the grilling he has to undergo from the flying commission’s panel.  The two airmen find themselves on the defensive about the decision that was made at the moment of midair crisis. 

                                     

Heroes it seems are not so easily recognized in present times, when everything in officialdom is appraised with caution and skepticism, both in government and in the private sector.

                                     

The challenge to derive something tense and exciting out of true story material in which the inspiring outcome is already known at large is one that few film makers seem to tackle anymore, but Director Clint Eastwood and his fellow producers have taken on the job with very informative and satisfying results.  The incisive screenplay is the work of Todd Komarnicki, based upon Sullenberger’s own book.   One thing that helped make the adaptation a success is the excellent casting of Tom Hanks as Sully.  He seems to be one of those multi-dimensional actors who can do no wrong; he has portrayed a plethora of characters during his many years on the screen, and he never disappoints.  His face always plays a major role in giving the character visibility of body and soul.  I will never forget how his countenance conveys the sharp edge of quiet incredulity when he hears that all passengers and crew members have survived the ditching in the river.  He does not dance around or whoop and holler.  He barely even smiles.  You know that he wants to believe it is true, yet it takes him a few stubborn moments to ingest the news and internalize it. 

                                     

If that had been the end of his internal warfare, there would scarcely be a story to tell.  The most trying days and hours, however, are yet before him, as his professional reputation hangs in an uncertain balance and he is virtually required to be guilty of negligence until proven innocent.  As Sully sees it, his three decades of safely flying passengers will be practically worthless to his examiners; he knows history will judge him solely for how he performed during what turned out to be only 208 seconds.

                                     

The crash and the rescue are enacted (in flashback of course) with superb attention to detail.  The passengers know something is wrong when the plane’s main power goes out.  The flight attendants must preside over near panic, especially after the dreaded message comes from the captain to “Brace for impact”.  The attendants must keep them all buckled up and bent over with heads completely down.  Sullenberger has to call forth his trained instincts and draw upon his years of experience and learning to make sure the wings stay level and well balanced over the water; if one or the other dipped, the plane would have flipped over and probably broken in half.  In such a case it would have been a different story; deaths would have been almost impossible to avoid, maybe many. 

Once the aircraft has ceased moving and settled in upon the riverbed, Sullenberger leaves the cabin at once and goes to his passengers with the urgent request to disembark from the plane, as water begins to flood into the aisles.  He and the attendants manage to get most all the people out onto the wings, though some activate the emergency exits and slide into the freezing water. 

                                     

What a blessing it was that the bird encounter took place where it did – in the New York vicinity where rescue help was plentiful and speedy.  The rescuers consisted of people who were primed and ready to save lives and had the provisions for getting the endangered passengers warm, and boating them out to the area to safety.  I lost count of how many there were.  I teared up a bit watching this display of humanity coming to the willing aid of humanity.  Eastwood takes his time with these details, and I am so glad he does.  He does not go for spectacle; he keeps the action intimate and heartfelt.      

                                     

What we are so vividly reminded of in this narrative is the fact that some decisions in this world must be made by only one person, even though many lives are at stake.  Sullenberger is required to act solely on his own; it is a dilemma he has not asked for.  The size of the flight crew, including the copilot, and the many voices over the radio giving him information about possible nearby airports where he might try landing was really of no help to him in the final analysis.  No one outside that cockpit could possibly have known what it felt like to be faced with his situation.  It is the loneliest place in the world to be.  It is not the kind of decision that he can take time discussing with fellow flyers; there is no time to weigh options in preparation for something that awaits him with hours or days to spare.  He had to act quickly.  That kind of thing separates the adults from the kids.  At first I found the panel’s digging to be harrowing for me to watch, but slowly I began to see that walking through that hail of stones provided a chance to open up this pilot’s heart and to place us all in that crisis, physically and emotionally.  It made the outcome that much more sweet and cathartic.   

                                     

Jeffrey Skiles, the copilot who stands with Sully and supports him with great admiration is warmly portrayed by Aaron Eckhart.  And though Sully and his wife (a marvelous Laura Linney) never do more than talk over the phone, the bond between them emerges as strong as if their encounter had occurred  in the wee hours of the night in their bedroom.  You can feel how much their arms ache for each other.  Those hours of separation while required to wait through the lengthy investigation must have been the most trying they as a couple had ever experienced.  Is it any wonder that Sullenberger retired during the following year, wrote his memoirs and concentrated on a new career as an international speaker on airline safety.  

                                     

While our nation’s moral compass is being weakened by a near despotic administration, this factual parable about true honor and idealism could not come before us at a better time. 

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

A Man Called Ove (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr & 55 min, color, 2016

                                            

It is not often that we see a lighthearted motion picture featuring an individual’s repeated attempts to commit suicide.  Yes, you are reading me correctly – suicide intentions made humorous.  Not an easy task, but a Swedish auteur named Hannes Holm, director and screen writer, has succeeded where many others would probably have failed.  The individual whose grim, resolute efforts are depicted is a fifty-nine year-old construction engineer Ove (pronounced o-va) laid off from his decades-long job and six months a widower.  He is in every respect a curmudgeon who alienates himself from his neighbors over the most inconsequential issues.  He is a loud constant complainer, what we Americans might call a regular sourpuss.  

                                             

Most of the magic in the story derives from an astoundingly effective performance by an actor named Rolf Lassgard, someone fittingly unhandsome, whose tall obese body, pudgy face and deep base bark give us a kind of ferocious music.  Ove is a perfectionist, whose avocation is watchman in a lower middle class housing project, a gated community where each morning he does the rounds and tries to enforce rules of cleanliness and order, including the disallowance of automobiles on the narrow main street.  He never hesitates to dress down any violator, however slight the violation.  But his job has become only a habit; his heart has not been in it since his wife Sonya died, a woman he dearly loved.  Each day he takes flowers to her grave and talks with her, promising to join her very soon.  He is such a “proper” person that before each attempt to snuff himself out he dresses up in his finest clothes, as if he is going on a date, anticipating his reconciliation with his beloved.  That practice alone supplies comic value to his brash behavior.  Something in his manner begs us not to take him too seriously. 

Of course he is not very good at dying by his own hand.  Something or someone always distracts him or interrupts him.  An attempt at hanging from his living room ceiling is thwarted when the rope breaks.  This failure impels him to march back to the supply store and bawl out the saleswoman for selling him material that is not as strong as she allegedly claimed it was. A plan to throw himself in front of a train goes awry when another individual on the station platform accidently passes out and falls onto the tracks, and he is faced with the “inconvenience” of rescuing the guy.  By the time the others present pull Ove to safety the excitement for him is passed.  An attempt to asphyxiate himself in his car garage is interrupted by neighbors who pick up the scent.  And it is neighbors again whose pounding on his door causes him to lose his grip on his shotgun pressed to his throat.  Even a stray cat does its share in slowing his rush to extinction.  You have to witness these scenes to really appreciate the droll humor in them.                                      

There is, however, a sober and serious aspect to the story, one that becomes visible to us in an extended interwoven flashback.  It seems that Ove has not had the happiest life.  Death has visited him with great shock three times.  First, his mother dies when he is but a small child, he being the only offspring.  Then his father, a railroad worker, is accidentally killed on the job when Ove is in his early twenties.  This crisis leaves him vulnerable and all alone, until he meets Sonya (played with great sparkle and zest by Ida Engvoll), preparing to be a teacher.  Their courtship is very touching and joyously uplifting and ends when she successfully supports him in becoming an engineer.  They have a long and largely happy marriage.   Of course the third death and the most heartbreaking is that of Sonya herself, paraplegic and childless because of a severe tragedy.  In the wake of her passing from cancer, which is never portrayed, Ove grows hard and decides that nothing good has happened to him other than the woman he has loved.  “There was nothing before Sonya and there will be nothing after Sonya”.  

The rest of the magic stems from a lively supporting performance. 

Bahar Pars plays Parvaneh,  a young Persian mother of two who is expecting a third, a refugee from her Middle Eastern country, a woman who turns out to be a match for Ove, at least in the strongminded department.  She and her young Swedish husband and their two children move in next door, and Ove is repeatedly drawn with much resistance into helping them with one thing or another.   Parvaneh becomes the closest thing to a real friend, something that causes some conflicting emotion for Ove.  It is Parvaneh who finally breaks through his shell and lets him know how insane he is thinking that he does not need anyone.  She is the one to whom he ends up telling the flashback history.  The sharing of it, which apparently he has kept for so long to himself, does much to quieten the self-destructive urge that has been driving him.                                          

It is a real delight watching the influence of the two women upon Ove.  He betrays the fact, ever so slowly, that he does have a conscience and a heart of sympathy.  It takes relatively little to uncover that heart that still beats below the bluster.  Every time he does a favor upon request we get the feeling that he is just getting some duty out of the way so that he can effect his escape from the lonely life he is living.  Just this one last bothersome thing before I depart!  But one “bothersome” thing leads to another and another, until we are finally treated to his smile.  For me the most touching moment in the story is his holding Parvaneh’s newborn baby and placing it lovingly in the cradle he once made for the child he expected but never had.                     

“A Man Called Ove” is a sensitive and warm movie, very much on the side of the angels, well written and cleverly conceived, adapted from a novel by Fredrik Buckman.  It is one of the most enjoyable films from the continent of Europe I have seen in quite a while. 

My only fault-finding has to do with the casting of the young Ove.  Filip Berg is a competent actor and one to whom I extend my best wishes in the pursuit of his career, but I think he was miscast.  Admittedly it is always a challenge trying to match up different generations of the same character.  But I see nothing in the physique of Berg that bears any comparison to Lassgard’s bulkiness and broad countenance.  The same can be said for their personalities.  One is unassuming, the other is forceful and in your face.  I cannot close the gap between old and young, something I know is possible in motion pictures, because I have seen it done many times.  But what makes the flashback so enjoyable nonetheless is the appeal of the lovely Ida Engvoll.  She is the dominant figure in most of the scenes in which Berg appears.  She is the sun that outshines his moon.  As such they make a lovely pair.                               

I highly recommend “Ove” for viewers who are drawn to storytelling about ordinary people struggling with sorrow and in transition toward crucial personal discoveries about themselves, people crawling out of cages of their own making.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Dogmatics or Dynamics (Essay by Bob Racine)

A close friend of mine not too long ago accused all Christian liberals (of which I am one unashamedly) of destroying Christianity.  We are murderers of the pure thing, spreading a slow poison across our nation.  He is one of thousands who insist that only the so-called “born again” believers are the rightful offspring of the religion’s founder.  Let me put it in more earthy language: One only comes to God by way of Jesus Christ; there is no other access route.  So it was no surprise to me that in an editorial in the Sunday New York Times on Christmas Day a questioning writer for that paper with a Christian background interviewed an Evangelical pastor and asked him outright, “Pastor, am I a Christian?”  It seems this editorialist is an admirer and to some extent follower of Christ but had some trouble with a few orthodox doctrines – the Virgin Birth, a literal bodily Resurrection, some of the recorded miracles, etc.  When a sizeable segment of professed Christian advocates lays down hard and fast tenets to which all must be accountable, it is not surprising that many on the margin of the Church are going to question how genuine their own Christianity really is.

Sometimes I wish that the word Christian as a noun had never been invented.  If you search the New Testament, you will note that that noun never shows up in the writings of the Gospels or in the epistles of Paul.  The only reference made to that use of the word can be found in the book of Acts, where we are told in passing that followers of Christ “were first called Christians in the city of Antioch”.  They were called that by citizens of the surrounding society as well as by each other.  It was a label that was attached to an early, radical and revolutionary form of Jesus discipleship.

Yes, it is true that at the Ascension Jesus urges the people gathered about him to “go into all the world and make disciples of all nations”.  But what is a disciple?  A blind follower?  A sign-on-the-dotted-line convert?  An enlisted person radicalized for a prescribed set of rituals and hands-on functions?   Look at the twelve men Jesus gathered around him, his inner circle and others who strolled the land with him.  Did he organize them into a clique or club?

Jesus never built an edifice; he did not write out an epistle or draw up a charter.  He did not conduct a meeting of elders to lay out specifications for behavior.  All his words were spoken from heart to heart, his heart to the hearts of the world, directed at human need, some of them meant to challenge the existing order.  Many of them sound a bit mysterious, and they remained mysterious to people in the early Church long after Jesus was gone.  Many of them are multi-layered.  And these two thousand years later we are still groping to understand how they must apply to the way people treat each other and themselves.

I am sad and distressed that after so many centuries we still have those dogmatic leaders and followers who believe they have the license to hold others to account for the purity of their beliefs.  Look at me; look at us; we have it all wrapped up.  We have a pipeline directly to the Almighty, and you are either with us in our army or you are lost and drifting.  And with this attitude goes a kind of unwritten Litmus Test.  The Inquisition is past history, but the notion of checking each other’s beliefs for “accuracy” or authenticity is still rampant in many quarters.

I no longer use the term “my Jesus” as I once did.  The Christ of the New Testament is a figure of powerful charisma but great mystery at the same time, so how can I profess any ownership of his person?  That so-called Jesus of mine would at best be merely a mirror of my own assumptions.  It is tantamount to confusing him with what he represents, confusing form with essence.  Jesus pointed the way for a lot of people, myself included, but instead of directing our gaze at that to which he is pointing, many get distracted by the pointing finger.  They have learned to suck on his finger and nuzzle it instead of lifting up their eyes to see where he is directing them.  We confuse the message with the messenger.

In my prayers I never even address Jesus anymore.  I direct those prayers  toward the Creative Power behind the universe, toward the Spirit that I believe resides in every human heart and surely resided in his, whether that Spirit has ever been called forth by many persons or not.   To say that Jesus Christ is the only way to God is absurd.  Would those who so believe repeat those words to a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Jew?  What would such a contention mean to any of them?  It would be alienating; it can only be heard by them as a claim to exclusive privilege.  It would render their entire religious and spiritual histories bogus.

For me a Christian (if you want to use the word) is a pilgrim, a seeker of truth, one who moves in the direction in which Jesus pointed, not someone who has the gospel truth carefully packaged.  And the search, the pilgrimage goes on and on.  The essence of what Jesus declared and encouraged is what I now embrace.  Following the light of that essence takes many structural forms, all the way from the simplest community meeting in an attic or basement to the towering cathedrals and their formality and every shape and size and style in-between.  There is no one way to appropriate the teachings of the Galilean, no one way to institutionalize them or systematize them.  The essence of what Christ represented can often be found incarnate in the lives of people who do not name his name, those of non-Christian persuasion.   My wife and I live next door to a Muslim family who practice neighborliness and kindness in ways that sometimes exceed our own.                                          

The Christian I strive to be is a person who endeavors to live according to the spirit and the essence of the Christian faith as it derives from the records of the historical Christ.  I strive (do not always live up to, but I strive) to live by the things that in my mind Jesus valued – peace, love, compassion, joy, honesty, kindness, fair dealing, justice, sharing, humility of spirit, love of beauty, depth of devotion, commitment to the welfare of my neighbor as much as myself and a supportive community to foster any and all of these values.

People in my home church who nurtured me and encouraged my preparation to be a minister would be disturbed to read this essay.  They would see that I have moved some distance away from the thought forms that were handed to me in the beginning.  But I am more grateful to those early instructors than I can ever say.  They might not have given me all the answers, but they gave me something more important than the answers – the questions.  Those in this world who are lost are not the people without answers; they are the people without the questions – questions not yielding to a simple, one dimensional answer that compel us forward. Those first nurturers of mine gave me a foundation on which to build.  And I am still building, still examining, still exploring.

A few days ago we read that Jimmy Carter has broken his ties with his native Christian denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.  He too has moved away from the nest, but I doubt if he speaks or thinks harshly of the nest itself.  He too was built upon a foundation of inquiry that was inculcated into him by his instructors in his native church congregation.  And now his pursuit of truth has compelled him to move in another channel.

In the movie version of “Inherit the Wind”, there is a poignant scene in which the two opposing attorneys, one prosecuting a young teacher for teaching Evolution and the other the attorney for the defense, have a conversation way off the record in private.  They have known each other for decades and have worked together many times, and now they find themselves political foes.  The prosecutor wants to know how the defender can have moved so far away from the “True Word”.  The defender answers, “Motion is relative.  Perhaps it is you who have moved away by standing still”.  The understanding of divine revelation is dynamic, on the move, and to grow in understanding of it one must be dynamic as well.



To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Children of Nazareth (Poetry by Bob Racine)

The Scriptures tell us of Jesus’ birth but give us no account whatsoever of his childhood, except his visit to Jerusalem at the age of twelve in the company of his parents.  The time between the events we observe at Christmas – the manger, the shepherds, the Wise Men, Herod, etc. – and his baptism by John that preceded the start of his ministry has otherwise been called the Silent Years.  We can only speculate about what this Hebrew child did on a daily basis around the Nazareth streets and countryside.  I offer the following simple poem as a meditation on that time, but seen through the eyes of other young ones, unsuspecting kids with whom he played or worked.      

Oh, children of Nazareth!  You have not looked of late

into each other’s eyes, as you rough about, kicking up the dust of centuries.              
And why should you know?  Why should you know?

Cease not then your animal noise.  Go make your little stampedes

among lazy herds of village sheep, who know you too well to fear you.
Go have your fights, skin your knees, take your bruises,
keep your dithery pace with the blood that races in your veins.

Why should you know now of that blood’s power to speak

to nations and peoples yet unborn?

Crouched in a corner, you wait to catch the desert wind by the tail.

But it spurns your habitations and sends you back to your
lackluster streets to ply your meager trades, live out your meager days,
and sow your proud mortal seed, dream however you must.

Soon enough the last seed will be sown; age will slow you down –

foot companions to your beasts of burden.
Not until then will you ever look, look deep, deep into each other’s eyes.
Then at last you may realize:  You’re not all the same,

for time, in accord with its sacred offices, has sought you out,  

yet to vindicate you, in the well-wrought life of Another amongst you  
more free, more knowing and more restless than even you.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Bob's Autobiographical Summary

This time around I am repeating the publication of my Autobiographical Summary first posted in October of 2013, with a few more pertinent details.  Many subscriptions have been added to my blog mailing list since that time and perhaps many who were on it in the beginning have forgotten about it.  This now will be the entry that henceforth I will make reference to at the close of each of the writings.  It will be easier to locate, being more recent. 

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 independent interfaith agency designed to serve churches of all faiths seeking to develop media programs.  I worked for them, under the editorship of Clifford York, a fellow minister, 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.  A novella entitled “The Safety Zone” was posted in serial form on this blog in the winter of 2015.  I have also written over the space of the last fifty years a considerable body of poetry, and at varied times and on varied occasions have given public recitations of them.  Several have 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 in this blog, along with other writings.  The word processor now has become my stage as well as my printed page, thanks to the brilliant assistance and supervision 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. 

I am largely in good health for my age, or so my doctors tell me.  I do have a severe hearing loss already mentioned which has plagued me since the early 1970s.  I have one good eye, and I am now a partial cripple as the result of a Lumbar Stenosis condition that keeps me somewhat bent over, relieved in no little measure by the use of a walker and aided by regular physical therapy.  But my internal organs seem to be functioning in top form.  I plan to be around for some time yet.

   

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.