faith

Munching on my bagel this morning, I watched the tiny wren trying to dig out some food from the bottom of the bird feeder, which was hanging on empty. He sat on that perch for almost a half-hour, futilely pecking and looking around and watching for someone to come out and fill the feeder. He had faith that someone would. And so we did.
Last night, I watched a totally unknown movie, The Edges of the Lord — a film that never made it into the theaters. I didn’t know what it was about, but I picked it up to watch with my mother, since it’s set in Poland, 1942 and has kids in it. She likes movies with kids.
It’s an amazing movie about faith — or rather how it does not sustain us, not really, in times of terror. And it’s a lot more than that — it’s about all the shades of gray in which faith gets waylaid. Except for the two known actors (Haley Joel Osment and Willem DaFoe), all the others performers are unknowns with definitely accurate accents and appropriate last names.
The priest (DaFoe) at one point says something like “some are blessed, but the edges aren’t blessed,” explaining to Osment the process of cutting out and preparing holy communion wafers. And Osment says something like “how do we know if we’re blessed or we’re the edges.”
The DVD box calls it a “coming of age” movie. What an understatement!!
Go rent it!

3 thoughts on “faith

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  2. I saw “Edges of the Lord” tonight. It was not Western drama. It was Polish drama in which “being” has precedence over “doing”. Karol Wojtyla’s (John Paul II) plays were along these lines as well. It was certainly not a “Coming of age” move by any stretch.
    Catholics during WWII did adopt many Jewish children to save then from the Nazis. It was their intent to return them to their families after the war. The priest (Dafoe) did respect Osment’s character’s Jewishness by giving him unconsecrated Communion bread symbolized by the edges rather than consecrated Communion bread which is Holy Communion (the body and blood of Jesus Christ). Dafoe’s portrail of a Polish priest during WWI was awful.

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