Wow, I just realized it's been a whole month since I posted. Well I've been busy trying to enjoy my temporary PAID 3 weeks + 5 unused vacation days as well as trying to look for some work at the same time as well as busy with other things...
LOL.... we were watching V for Vendetta (as I was telling my fellow audience, Vendetta is an English adapted word from the Italian word for Revenge basically or maybe you can say "Vengence" which might be French...) today and also ironically at the end of the movie, one of the sisters was reading the credits and said V's name cause that was the first familiar name she saw on the screen....LOL I have never seen the letter V used so many times in one sequence of words as in that one seen... so symbolic! Going to try to keep it short as my mom has been complaining about my sleeping schedule (well what can I say, insomia...) and the fact that I need to wake up early on Sunday and take the car...
But the movie was pretty good! Not pretty... but good! :P I loved the story line... I guess a part of me always wanted to be the liberation hero... power to the people... fight the power! I remember I used to fantasize I can be the hero by killing Mike Harris (BTW, I didn't type that or any of these e-mails I send you guys for that matter ) and saving Ontario from peril... Boy do I have a long story about that one!!! But save that for another day...
Hopefully, not spoiling the movie too much if you haven't seen it, but the part that struck me the most was that part when V was talking to her (yes, V is a guy, LOL...) after he tortured her to see how far she was willing to go to protect him... And then I was almost in tears... it not only reminded me about Jesus, but also myself... "Imitate Christ...." I still remember some quotes, or maybe I can find some...
Only one I can find at the moment :(...
"That's it! See, at first, I thought it was hate too. Hate was all I knew, it imprisoned me, taught me how to eat, how to drink, how to breathe. I thought I would die with all the hate in my veins. But then, something happened. It happened to me, just as it happened to you."
But basically she finally gained the courage, the strength and most importantly the "liberation" of not being afraid of dying for what she believed in... I was touched! My eyes watered, but I knew then that my faith is not in Vain! And as I was telling my cell group earlier on in fellowship when we had our summer retreat sharing about how faith, hope and love are all the same thing... but without love, you can't have the other two either I guess! Booyeah! Praise be to God and... hehe...!
Here is a partial quote from another scene that is also good, I've found most of the quotes in this moVie to be quite profound!
"...But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in his 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I've witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I've seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them... but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it... ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love... And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man... A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget."
Awwww....
Evey Hammond: I don't want you to die.
V: That's the most beautiful thing you could have ever given me.
There's also a song that I guess was the theme song of the movie you could say... At first I googled it up and found "Justin Timberlake" which made me laugh, I thought maybe he re-sung the original version, but it's a completely new version and also I think I actually heard it before when initially I didn't think I've even heard about it let alone heard it...
The old has gone...
Cry Me A River by Ella Fitzgerald
Now you say you're lonely
You cried the long night through
Well, you can cry me a river
Cry me a river
I cried a river over you
Now you say you're sorry
For being so untrue
Well, you can cry me a river
Cry me a river
Cause I cried, I cried
I cried a river over you
You drove me,
Nearly drove me out of my head
While you never shed a tear
Remember?
I remember all that you said
Told me love was too plebeian
Told me you were through with me and
Now you say you say love me
Well, just to prove you do
Come on and cry me a river
Cry me a river
I cried a river over you
You drove me
Nearly drove me out of my head
While you never shed a tear
Remember?
I remember all that you said
Told me love was to plebeian
Told me you were through with me...
And now, now you say you love me
Well, just to prove you do...
Come on! and cry, cry, cry me a river
Cry me a river...
Cause I cried a river over you
If my pillow could talk
Imagine what it would've said
T'would be a river of tears
I cried in bed
So you can cry me a river
Daddy, go ahead now and cry that river
Cause I cried how I cried
A river over you
The new has come? Nah... :P
Justin Timberlake
Cry Me A River
You were my sun
You were my earth
But you didn't know all the ways I loved you, no
So you took a chance
And made other plans
But I bet you didn't think your thing would come crashing down, no
You don't have to say, what you did,
I already know, I found out from him
Now there's just no chance, for you and me, there'll never be
And don't it make you sad about it
You told me you loved me
Why did you leave me, all alone
Now you tell me you need me
When you call me, on the phone
Girl I refuse, you must have me confused
With some other guy
Your bridges were burned, and now it's your turn
To cry, cry me a river
Cry me a river-er
Cry me a river
Cry me a river-er, yea yea
I know that they say
That somethings are better left unsaid
It wasn't like you only talked to him and you know it
(Don't act like you don't know it)
All of these things people told me
Keep messing with my head
(Messing with my head)
You should've picked honesty
Then you may not have blown it
(Yea..)
You don't have to say, what you did,
(Don't have to say, what you did)
I already know, I found out from him
(I already know, uh)
Now there's just no chance, for you and me, there'll never be
(No chance, you and me)
And don't it make you sad about it
You told me you loved me
Why did you leave me, all alone
(All alone)
Now you tell me you need me
When you call me, on the phone
(When you call me on the phone)
Girl I refuse, you must have me confused
With some other guy
(I'm not like them baby)
Your bridges were burned, and now it's your turn
(It's your turn)
To cry, cry me a river
(Go on and just)
Cry me a river-er
(Go on and just)
Cry me a river
(Baby go on and just)
Cry me a river-er, yea yea
Oh
(Oh)
The damage is done
So I guess I be leaving
Oh
(Oh)
The damage is done
So I guess I be leaving
Oh
(Oh)
The damage is done
So I guess I be leaving
Oh
(Oh)
The damage is done
So I guess I be... leaving
You don't have to say, what you did,
(Don't have to say, what you did)
I already know, I found out from him
(I already know, uh)
Now there's just no chance, for you and me, there'll never be
(No chance, you and me)
And don't it make you sad about it
Cry me a river
(Go on and just)
Cry me a river-er
(Baby go on and just)
Cry me a river
(You can go on and just)
Cry me a river-er, yea yea
Cry me a river
(Baby go on and just)
Cry me a river-er
(Go on and just)
Cry me a river
(Cause I've already cried)
Cry me a river-er, yea yea
(Ain't gonna cry no more, yea-yea)
Cry me a river
Cry me a river, oh
Cry me a river, oh
Cry me a river, oh
Cry me a river, oh
(Cry me, cry me)
Cry me a river, oh
(Cry me, cry me)
Cry me a river, oh
(Cry me, cry me)
Cry me a river, oh
(Cry me, cry me)
Cry me a river, oh
(Cry me, cry me)
Cry me a river, oh
(Cry me, cry me)
Cry me a river
(Cry me, cry me)
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...the next generation
Not sure who invented it, but presently, it has been a number of years ago now that I have heard someone express that "a generation is ...
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To be accepted whether or not we deserve to be accepted has always been an outrage to careful and rigid moralists. To the ancient Pharisees, for instance, it looked like the most wicked bargain ever offered to a sucker full of shame. In their straight-line moral bookkeeping there were two kinds of people: people who are acceptable enough to be accepted and people who are not. If you are one of the second kind, too bad for you.
Graceless religion worries that grace will turn a spiritually homeless person into a freeloader. If you can be accepted without being acceptable, why try? It is a fair question.
The answer to the question could begin with a comparison. Who has the better crack at living an acceptable life? A child who is warmly accepted by his parents from the start? Or a child who was abandoned and left with a persuasive hunch that she was rejected because she did not deserve to be accepted?
To make my point, I want to tell two stories. One of them is the story of Racehoss Sample. The other is the story of C. Prescott McCaernish. Racehoss is a real man's real name. C. Prescott is a made-up name for a real person.
Racehoss was Big Emma's boy. Big Emma was a smashing prostitute who made a living by providing gambling and bootleg liquor along with the sex she sold in a shack near a railroad stop in middle Texas. Racehoss got in Big Emma's way, and she resented him for it from the start. She beat him whenever she was drunk, which was a good deal of the time, and made him know that he was less than worthless.
When he got to be eleven years old, Racehoss could not stand it anymore and took off; he ran away to nowhere special, riding the rails wherever they took him, riding them with bums and hoboes, and, along the way, becoming a creature of volcanic rage. The Second World War broke out, and the army found him but soon found it could not tame him. He went AWOL every month or so, and each time he did, he got into a fight and was sent to jail for assault and battery. Finally, they sentenced him to thirty years in the Texas state penitentiary. Here he learned for sure that if you treat a person like an animal, he becomes one.
The worst punishment they had for untamed prisoners was confinement in the tomb. The tomb was actually a four-by-eight-foot basement cell with no windows and two solid-steel plates for a door, a solid slab of concrete plates for a door, a solid slab of concrete for a bed, a missing slab in the floor to pass for a toilet - the stench lingering on from occupant to occupant - and absolute darkness. This is where they stuck a prisoner who forgot to grovel low enough to suit his white boss, locked him in there for twenty-eight days, with one cup of water and one biscuit a day, and one meal of mush every six days to keep him alive.
Racehoss spent a considerable amount of his time in the tomb. In the sixteenth year of his captivity, he contradicted one of the guards and was locked in again, but it was not the same this time. This time he was terrified as soon as they shoved him in. He heard a sound as of rushing water nearby, and he knew for sure it was going to seep in and drown him. He went crazy.
"I...ran around the walls. Then rolled on the floor like a ball...I mauled myself, scratching and tearing at my body. Slumped, exhausted on the slab, I covered my face with both hands and cried out, 'Help me God!! Help meeeee!!'...
"And then -
"A ray of light between my fingers. Slowly uncovering my face, the whole cell was illuminated like a 40 watt bulb turned on. The soft light soothed me and I no longer was afraid. Engulfed by a presence, I felt it reassuring me. It comforted me...I breathed freely. I had never felt such a well being, so good, in all my life. Safe. Loved.
"The voice within talked through the pit of my belly. 'You are not an animal. You are a human being.' And 'Don't you worry about a thing. But you must tell them about me.'
"After that, God was real. He found me in the abyss of the burning hell, uplifted and fed my hungry soul, and breathed new life into my nostrils."
When they let Racehoss out, they weighed him and noted that he had gained five pounds.
The way God came to the tomb for Racehoss Sample may not be God's normal route to the human soul. God did come to him, however, and what Racehoss experienced when God came was pure grace. The only message Racehoss got was the word he had ached to hear just once from Big Emma, and now he heard it from God: you are accepted.
What came of such easygoing grace, a grace that accepted a sinner and demanded nothing but that he tell people whom it was he met in the tomb? A good deal, actually.
Racehoss walked out of prison on January 12, 1972, at 9:45 in the morning with ten dollars in his pocket. Later on, he wrote his memoirs, but we learn elsewhere that he was the first ex-convict ever to work out of the governor's office, the first to serve as a probation officer, and the first to serve on the staff of the State Bar of Texas as a division head. He was given the Liberty Bell Award and was named the Outstanding Crime Prevention Citizen of Texas in 1981. He received a full pardon and changed his name to Albert Sample in 1976.
I take Racehoss Sample's story as an exhibition of the truth that grace becomes a positive power in a shamed person who is accepted by grace without regard to whether he is acceptable.
Now comes the story of C. Prescott McCaernish. He was the son of a minister of the gospel than whom no man could have been more acceptable. The message he heard from the beginning was: "Your father is a great man of God, and if you can be half the man he is, you will do well." He heard it from his mother and from everybody around him, and he never forgot.
So C. Prescott devoted himself to the kind of life that might make him acceptable in the eyes of God and his father. The first thing he needed was to feel a call to be a minister. He felt one. By the time he was forty-five, he stood, six feet of pulpit eloquence in a flowing blue gown, preaching three splendid sermons to more than two thousand splendid believers every Sunday morning.
Was he half the man his father was? To 95 percent of the people, he was more than the man his father was. What was wrong with the other 5 percent? He gave them more. And then some more. He was available to everybody. Need some counsel? He would make time. A daughter's wedding? He turned it into a pageant. A delegate to the national assembly? More than willing to go, run for high office if the call came. Boards to be on? What were evenings for?
But on the inside C. Prescott McCaernish was a frightened child ashamed that he would never be the acceptable man his father was. He found someone who had a talent for accepting unacceptable men; she nestled him, warmed him, excited him, and accepted him. She took him in; the congregation put him out.
Here lies C. Prescott McCaernish: a casualty of viral unacceptability syndrome. He had grace in the palm of his hand, but he could not close his fingers around it and take it to his lips. He worked in the atmosphere of grace and breathed in the smog of shame.
Grace genuinely experienced is not really dangerous at all. What is dangerous is the wearisome, joy-killing heaviness of living without grace. You can be sure to tell a life lived with grace and one without by where acceptance is sought. Ultimate acceptance sought in others rather than from God results in the heaviness of joylessness.
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