Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN 

“They saved my life . . . These are great men; they are heroes.”  During a 45 minute fire-fight with Islamic terrorists, an embedded journalist was pulled out of harm’s way by American soldiers who placed the importance of another’s life above their own. 

“I love those guys,” David Beriain said, looking wistfully out the window . . . “From the first time you go kick a door with them, they accept you-you’re one of them.  I’ve even got a ‘family photo’ with them . . . It is those common experiences, where you are all in danger, and you go through it together.  It builds a relationship instantly.”[1] 

Whatever one’s view of war, objective observers recognize the importance of kinship in combat.  A soldier fights for his country and the man next to himself.  

Neither can the battle for ideas be fought alone.  A quote from Charles Haddon Spurgeon has hung in my office for years: “The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted.  He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own.[2]  Spurgeon would have appreciated the latest development in Bible study: the InterVarsity Press series Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.[3]  The voices of Church Fathers are being heard again.  Thousands of books like these line shelves in my library, the collected wisdom of giants on whose shoulders I stand.  

It was with great sadness, then, that I read this past week some believe humanities’ curricula around the United States will have to justify its existence in time of economic downturn.[4]  However, almost 400 reactions to the article’s negative slant on the liberal arts give hope.  Most of the respondents expressed similar ideas: learning the great works of others had disciplined them into thinking people. 

In “Why Should Businessmen Read Great Literature?” Vigen Guroian argues that ethics are best learned, not from textbooks, but from Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.  “To be free, [means] to grow into fuller, more complete, and more interesting human beings who share with each other a living and a life-giving culture.”[5]  We should read great books. Wise voices from the past can help develop the discipline of community ideas today. 

Great people read great books.  Undeservedly vilified during his two terms in The White House by partisan pundits and politicians who thought him a non-thinker, we are reminded that George W. Bush read voluminously.  Over the last three years alone, our 43^rd president read almost 200 books.  In addition, he read The Bible cover-to-cover each year.[6]  History and biography are prominent in the president’s reading list.  Learning from others in past communities influences the discipline of how we live together now. 

My church is dedicated to maintaining connections between our community in Zionsville and its students studying at university.  College cultures-especially professorial lifeviews-influence young minds.  So Kenneth Badley wrote an article that all of us should encourage concerned church members to read:  

Students live in a vulnerable position.  They must face the challenges of the world of thought while assuming no conflict exists between the truth therein and the truth of Scripture.  Presumably they do so with God’s help, but, as I have described it, they will do so without any supporting social structure. . . . And we find our beliefs easier to maintain when some around us believe as we do.  We might call this the “social component of belief.” . . . We can aid our students by coming alongside them in the midst of their tensions.  When we do, we shift the locus of integration by implicitly inviting them to continue their struggles, not alone, but within the relative safety of the faith community.[7] 

It is no secret that “the body” metaphor used by Paul in the Second Testament indicates a unity of community.  The Church is the best place “to receive the kind of teaching that encourages and deepens faith.”[8]  

Jesus, in his high priestly prayer (John 17), was most concerned that believers would maintain a disciplined unity of belief.  Doctrinal solidarity with other Christians is paramount in the early Church mission statement of Acts 2:42-47.  Christian communities were marked by repetitious words like “one,” “body,” “others,” “one another,” and “members” such as is found in Romans 12:3-10.  The English word itself makes the point: there is no community without unity. 

Aquinas’[9] teaching was a reflective, communitarian response which arose from the love of truth, God, and man.  Indeed he said, “A man needs the help of friends in order to act well, the deeds of active life as well as those of the contemplative”[10]  Having just completed a cohort PhD program, I know first hand the importance of camaraderie in the battlefield of ideas.  Not only did I investigate hundreds of sources, listening to voices past and present, but my compatriots and I studied together.  Learning in community: another key to discipline.[11]  In the fire-fight of ideas, I say with those joined in battle, “I love those guys.”(12) 

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[1] “Embedded journalists” is the designation given to news-people who live with military units during wartime giving writers access to firsthand reports.  Jeff Emauel, “I Love Those Guys,” Wall Street Journal Online 23 May 2007.

[2] Charles Haddon Spurgeon. 1863. Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, p. 668.

[3] http://www.ivpress.com/accs/

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html

[5] Vigen Guroian. 2005. Rallying the Really Human Things: Moral Imagination in Literature, Politics, and Everyday Life. (ISI): 184-85.

[6] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123025595706634689.html

[7] Kenneth R. Badley. 1992. “The Community of Faith as the Locus of Faith-Learning Integration.” In Alive to God: Studies in Spirituality Presented to James Houston, ed. J.I. Packer and Loren Wilkenson. (IVP): 292-93.

[8] D. G. Hart. 2005. A Student’s Guide to Religious Studies. (ISI): 44, 48.

[9] Aquinas (1225-1274) was a Dominican monk.  He was a popular teacher who wrote Summa Theologica, a summation of theological knowledge.  Robert J. Choun. 2001. Aquinas, Thomas. In Evangelical Dictionary of Christian Education. Edited by, Michael J. Anthony. (Baker):46-47.  His industry, depth of thought, and discernment gained him the title “Doctor Angelicus” R. C. Sproul. 2000. The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts that Shaped our World. (Crossway): 65.

         [10] Thomas Aquinas. 1954. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Edited by Mortimer Adler. Great Books of the Western World. (Encyclopedia Brittanica, Inc.): 636.

[11] See Part One-DISCIPLINE: What Kramer Said to George http://www.mahseh.org/site/category/warpwoof/

[12] With deep admiration and thanks to Gayle, Teresa, Fran, Rod, Travis, Casey, Ken, Blake, Dondi, Doug, and Tommy.

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN 

“Everything relates to Seinfeld.”  A running joke in our household and among friends for years, the 90’s sit-com addresses many human concerns.  In one episode entitled “The Keys”[1] Kramer is disgusted with George saying, “You’re wasting your life!”  George-ever paranoid, ever defensive-gives one pathetic response after another to Kramer’s harangue that he has no reason to get up in the morning.[2]  Later, as Kramer considers his own purpose for being, he asks George, “Do you yearn?”  George, unable to fathom the concept, replies with hesitation, “Well, not recently.”  A moment’s pause prompts a final, feeble attempt to define yearning: “But I crave.”

In a culture obsessed by the physical, craving replaces yearning.  As a high school teacher it was my wish to create in students a yearn to learn.  Yet how many times did I hear the infamous, “How will I use this?!”  Plagued by consumerism, we in The West have misused the practical, creating pragmatism.  No longer content to pursue a coherent framework of knowledge, degrees are instead keys, unlocking more fiscal rewards.  Unfortunately, like George, the idea of desire is reduced to lust.  Harry R. Lewis, former dean of Harvard College, lamented the educational state of affairs as Excellence Without a Soul.[3]  

Hebrews set the standard, using the word for “soul” as equivalent to yearning.  “My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you.”[4]  The soul can be hungry or thirsty.[5]  Some satiate satisfaction with appetite, craving what they lack.[6]  Ecclesiastes says folks fill the void with more emptiness, others “with good things.”[7]  “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.”[8]  Loving God with the whole of one’s life (“heart, soul, strength,” Deuteronomy 6:5) is singular devotion, one’s desire.  But what is it that prompts our longing to love God? 

Jonathan Edwards in a sermon entitled “The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth”[9] explains, 

So there can be no love without knowledge.  It is not according to the nature of the human soul, to love an object which is entirely unknown.  The heart cannot be set upon an object of which there is no idea in the understanding.  The reasons which induce the soul to love, must first be understood, before they can have a reasonable influence on the heart.  God hath given us the Bible . . . there can be no spiritual knowledge of that of which there is not first a rational knowledge. 

Solomon was right: “It is not good to have zeal (Hebrew “soul”) without knowledge.”[10]  It seems that yearning, a longing for God, one’s desire “indeed is the desire to know, for we are known, and into this we grow.”[11]  Eugene Peterson calls knowing God ascetical theology.  “No wonder there is such lavish attention given throughout Scripture to the properties and conditions of our humanity-our bodily parts, our emotional states, our physical circumstances, our mental processes, our geographical settings.  Every human detail is part of this instrumentality of response to God.”[12]  

My daughter Chelsea, completing her undergraduate degree in May, told me on the phone this past weekend, “I’ve just now learned how to be a student.”  She is in exactly the right frame of mind to live a whole Christian life.  Edwards contends that knowing about God and His world is the “daily business” of all Christians, “their high calling,” benefiting the soul.[13]  “Hard work and discipline should be needed for this,” maintains Evelyn Underhill.  In a chapter entitled “The Preparation of a Mystic” she contends that knowledge development will entail, “the training of a layer of your consciousness which has lain fallow in the past.”[14]  The so-called “spiritual disciplines” need biblical knowledge to prompt desire for loving God in everything. 

I was with a group of church elders this past weekend at Mahseh Center.  Anxious to learn they asked, “If we set up a group, can we study Scripture together?”  Unlike George, here are believers that know yearning is a desire for Our Father, knowing His Son, attained through The Spirit’s discipline, by reading The Book. 

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[1] Seinfeld, Season 3, Episode 23, first aired 6 May 1992.

[2] It is how Jason Alexander (George) delivers the lines that has me chuckling again even as I type.  It is one of many not-to-be-missed Seinfeld scenes.

[3] Harry R. Lewis. 2006. Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. (Perseus Books Group).

[4] Isaiah 26:8-9; Psalm 119:20.

[5] Psalm 107:9; Proverbs 19:15; 25:25; 27:7.

[6] Isaiah 56:11; 58:10; Jeremiah 50:19.

[7] Ecclesiastes 2:24; 4:8; 6:2, 3, 7, 9; 7:28.

[8] Psalm 42:1.  Longing for God’s courts (Ps 84:3), the law (Ps 119:20), salvation (Ps 119:81), and The Lord Himself (Ps 130:5; Lam 3:25). 

[9] Quoted in Douglas Sloan, The Great Awakening and American Education. (Teacher’s College, 1973): 197-211.

[10] Proverbs 19:2.

[11] Sebastian Moore as quoted by James Houston, The Heart’s Desire: A Guide to Personal Fulfillment. (Lion, 1992): 27.

[12] Eugene H. Peterson. 1994, 1997. Subversive Spirituality. (Reprint, Eerdmans): 80-83.

[13] Ibid., 204, 211.

[14] Evelyn Underhill. 1915, 2000. Practical Mysticism. (Reprint, Dover): 15.

May 16, 2009

to

May 17, 2009

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN 

Robert Fulghum, my favorite religious humanist, penned the title to end all titles with his All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  But it was one of his later tomes that most captured my attention.[1]  Sitting in a chair beside his burial plot, Fulghum had himself photographed as he considered his final destiny.  That picture hangs in his office as a visual reminder of his life’s end.  Astride his interpretations of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (“there is a time to be born and a time to die”) are my comments reminding him of chapter three, verses nine through fifteen:  

“. . . I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.  That every man may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil-this is the gift of God. . . . And God will call the past into account.” 

The humanist has here and now; the Christian has here, now, there, and then. 

A few years ago my pastor asked me to participate in a dialogue teaching.  One of the questions for me to ponder and then recount during instruction on a Sunday morning had to do with why my vocation was important.  I declared my belief that the education of young people was imperative because of our impending death.  I am compelled to read, study, think, write, and teach because my voice carries the voices of others to the next generation.  

One of my favorite haunts in Grand Rapids, Michigan was recently closed.  I used to wander through the basement of Kregel’s looking for a bibliophile’s book bargain.  On one of my excursions, I remember distinctly stopping in my tracks, mid stack.  I was jarred by the thought, “These are dead men’s books.”  

I read dead men’s books.  Every day I listen to the dead speak.  I hear the words of Shakespeare and Poe.  Auden and Milosz capture my attention.  Stevenson and Shelley add their ideas.  Moses and Luke give voice to history.  Dead men’s words live today.  As I think about how to live, I must first consider that I must die.  

Indeed, I think about death quite often.  In fact, I would encourage all of us to consider our earthly demise more than we do.  And I would ask us to hang a metaphorical portrait of our gravesite on the walls of our mind.  Ponder passages below that prompt us to not only to consider that what we do in this life counts for the next, but that our death ought to prompt our opportunities for living: 

“Turn, O Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love.  No one remembers you when he is dead.  Who praises you from the grave?” (Psalm 6:5) 

“He cut short my days . . . so I said: ‘Do not take me away, O my God, in the midst of my days.’” (Psalm 102:23-24) 

“Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.  You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you.  Each man’s life is but a breath.  Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.  But now, Lord, what do I look for?  My hope is in you.” (Psalm 39:4-7) 

“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom . . . May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us-yes, establish the work of our hands.” (Psalm 90:12, 17) 

“Better a live dog, than a dead lion.”[2]  I remember when my nephew Ethan got in school trouble for quoting that as his favorite verse.  But no other phrase from Scripture gives us better marching orders.  Ecclesiastes 9:5 explains, “For the living know they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.”  Ecclesiastes 9:10, often misinterpreted,[3] completes the thought: simply, while we live, we have opportunity-for here and now, there and then.  

After playing Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days[4] I would remind my students that serving God should begin when they are young as is taught by Ecclesiastes 11:7-12:1.  Jacques Ellul well summarizes the truth: 

Remember your Creator during your youth: when all possibilities lie open before you and you can offer all your strength intact for his service . . . to serve as the presence of God in the midst of the world and the creation.  You must take sides earlier-when you can actually make choices, when you have many paths opening at your feet, before the weight of necessity overwhelms you.[5] 

Upper elementary school parents should read Katherine Patterson’s Bridge to Terabithia to their children.  Originally penned as a personal response to a young friend’s death, Paterson’s classic touches the cord of loss families feel at the graveside of a loved one.  High school should prompt reading of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyitch where one discovers as he is dying that he never really lived.  And as an adult As I Lay Dying penned by Richard John Neuhaus is an important rumination teaching us how to live: all the more poignant since his own death in January. 

When discussing the end of days, how does God end His Book?  By talking about how important are the words IN the book!  

“These words are trustworthy and true;” “Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.  You and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book;” “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near;”  “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”[6]  

There are those who “testify” on behalf of The Book.[7]  And as if we did not get the point, “The Alpha and Omega” is coming, the first and last letters of the alphabet, The One about whom The Book is written.[8] 

I can hear the vocal complaint by any who read this essay, “What in the world has death got to do with reading?!”  Perhaps the idea is best summarized by a movie of which I never tire, The Shawshank Redemption. The theme, the summary, the reason for reading, the reason for doing anything while we live, is uttered by Red (Morgan Freeman): 

“Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.”  

“Better a live dog, than a dead lion.”  Robert Fulghum is right to consider his gravesite every day.  Better yet, we should remember The One who knows our grave-day.  Life is a gift from God.  Enjoy it.  Enjoy Him.  Read a book.[9]  Read The Book.[10]  

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[1] Robert Fulghum. 1995. From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives. (Villard): 27.

[2] Ecclesiastes 9:4.  In the Middle East, dogs were considered filthy animals, rejected by humans.  A lion, on the other hand, represented the pinnacle of accomplishment, royalty.

[3] Some mistakenly think that the verse gives us carte blanche (a blank check) with which to do anything we desire.  Others contend this is a statement forwarding the “Protestant work ethic.”  Still more think the statement mirrors a pessimistic sadness that there is nothing beyond this life.  All miss the point.

[4] Springsteen reminded his listeners decades ago not to live in the past, to rest on one’s laurels, but to consider life’s brevity: “gone in the blink of a young girl’s eye, glory days . . . ”

[5] Jacques Ellul. 1990. Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes. (Eerdmans): 282-83.

[6] Revelation 21:6, 7, 9, 18-19.  In English we can see “words” and “book” are mentioned six and seven times respectively; a marker of their importance.

[7] Revelation 21:16, 20.

[8] Revelation 21:13.

[9] No money to travel?  Go places in books!  Want to know how others think?  Pick up a book!  Do you still ask ‘Why?!’ Pick up a book!  Tired of TV?  Pick up a book! 

[10] There is much to be said about reading, consuming, and internalizing God’s Word.  “Eating The Word” (Jeremiah 15:16 and Ezekiel 2:9-3:3) has been a mantra in my teaching since 1983.  “Sweet words” is a concept repeated about Scripture consistently: Psalm 119:103 and Proverbs 24:13-14.  Most recently Eugene Peterson reflected on the teaching in his Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, (Eerdmans, 2006).

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN 

Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker, was shot dead by a radical Muslim two months after his film “Submission” was aired.  Showing the subjugation of women was too much for some in the Islamic world.  Kurt Westergaard created the most famous of the Muhammad cartoons published September 2005 in the Jyllands-Posten displaying the prophet with a bomb in his turban.  Mr. Westergaard has been in hiding ever since.[1]  Truth is on trial all over the world. 

Dictatorial mindsets loathe free expression of the individual.  Napoleon’s famed statement “four hostile newspapers are to be feared more than 1000 bayonets” expresses universal despotic views.  Lenin, intent on wiping out intellectual classes, birthed the 20^th century practice of genocide.[2]  Stalin hoodwinked Western cultural elites of the day to downplay the former U. S. S. R’s mass murder of vocal opposition.[3]  

Burning the authors of words seeks to eliminate intellectual “heretics.”  John Wycliffe, who first brought the Bible into English, died of natural causes; yet his bones were unearthed, burnt, and scattered so as to eliminate his memory.  Jon Hus was strangled then burned for his attempt to communicate Scripture in his native Prague.  William Tyndale had his life taken from him on the pyre while uttering the immortal words, “Lord, open thou the king of England’s eyes.”  Tyndale had translated Hebrew and Christian Scripture into English, against English law.  Indeed, not a century later, The King James Version made vision a reality.  The problem for those who attempt to wipe out books at their source is a struggle to contain the impact of their martyrdom. 

Eliminate the messenger or the message.  Winston Churchill reminds us, “A lie is half way around the world before truth gets its pants on.”[4]  Silencing jihadist critics via American higher education is endemic in academia today.[5]  Thomas Sowell refers to the Western media-known as The Fourth Estate-as something more akin to a Fifth Column.[6]  Former English Prime Minister Tony Blair coined the word “viewspaper” to indicate that media no longer do “straight reporting;” rather journalists create cynicism not by analyzing the results of one’s judgments but their motives.[7]  Josef Pieper was concerned that when words were divorced from reality, disassociated from truth, they would simply become “instruments of power.”[8] 

Kill the words.  Kill words’ meaning.  Kill the wordsmiths.  If it were not for international acclaim, freedom loving writers such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, and Andrei Sakharov would have been butchered.  Why are authors, playwrights, cartoonists, and intellectuals the first to be killed in totalitarian takeovers?  Because words are power. 

Acts 3:21 declares God to have been speaking His Word through His holy prophets “since the world began.”  So Jesus condemns the powerful elite of his day in Matthew 23:31-35 because they killed the prophets: from Abel through Zechariah.  Since Abel was killed by Cain in Genesis 4, the murdered “cry out to God.”[9]  In the end “the earth will disclose her blood, and will no more cover her slain.”[10]  But The Rider whose robe is dipped in blood will revenge all the Christ-following messengers, prophets, and wordsmiths returning to earth with Him.[11] 

But why do words have power that force dictators to kill?  “A fire imprisoned in my bones” is how Jeremiah 20:9 describes the prophet’s experience: he had to speak.[12]  So changed by his conversion was Blaise Pascal he wrote the word “fire” on a parchment sewn inside his coat.[13]  Pascal’s Pensees (French for “thoughts”) have been strong Christian words for almost 500 years. 

The fire of God’s Word is Truth.  Truth cannot be denied, contained, overthrown, or destroyed.  Dictators hate Truth because The Truth sets people free.[14]  One who personally lived the freedom of Truth was Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famed author of The Gulag Archipelago.  He ended his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in literature by quoting the Russian proverb tyrannical types hate: 

“One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”[15] 

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[1] The cartoon was a satirical comment on the fact that some Muslims are committing terrorist acts in the name of Islam and the prophet.

[2] Paul Johnson. 1983. Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Eighties. (Harper & Row): 71.

[3] Johnson, 275ff; 452-54.

[4] Any number of quote websites identify the origin, though one ascribes a dictum very close to this one by Mark Twain.  The famed Martin Gilbert in Churchill: A Life (Henry Holt, 1991) confirms the essence of Churchill’s concern, “It is difficult to overtake slander . . . but the truth is very powerful too” (959).

[5] Walid Phares. 2005. Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America. (Palgrave MacMillan): 176-78.

[6] A “fifth column” is a group that works within its own country, against its own country.  Thomas Sowell. “Fourth Estate or Fifth Column.” 25 January 2005 www.townhall.com.  The Pulitzer Prize Winning journalist Peter R. Kann’s article “The Power of the Press” examines the ten current trends of mainstream media 13 December 2006 http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009377.

[7] A copy of the speech originally given at Reuters headquarters in London 12 June 07 was reprinted 21 June 07 and is available at http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010235.  Jon Stewart and his “Daily Show” have direct links to character assassination through the news.

[8] “The word is perverted and debased, to become a catalyst, a drug.” Josef Pieper. 1974, 1988, 1992. Abuse of Language-Abuse of Power. (2^nd edition, reprint, Ignatius): 20-23.  All who know the power of words should possess this small booklet.  For those attune to visual message, watch Robert Redford’s Sneakers: “it’s about controlling the information.”

[9] Genesis 4:10-11.  See Isaiah 26:21; Matthew 23:31-35; Revelation 6:10  Hebrews 12:24.

[10] Isaiah 26:21.  See also Hebrews 12:24; 1 John 3:12-15.

[11] Revelation 6:9-11; 19:14.

[12] Jeremiah 20:9 is the only place in Scripture where an author uses the word “fire” for God’s Word. God used it in Jeremiah 5:14 and 23:29.  See also Exodus 24:17; Deuteronomy 4:24; 9:3; Isaiah 33:14.

[13] Mind on Fire, (2006) edited by James Houston (Victor): 15.

[14] John 8:32.

[15] Quoted in Edward E. Ericson, Jr. & Alexis Klimoff. 2008. The Soul and Barbed Wire: An Introduction to Solzhenitsyn. (ISI Books):189

Ecklian Reviews: Frozen River

Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center, Lake Bruce, IN 

“The baby is dead.”  “No it’s not.”  “Yes it is.  Just hold it close to your body.  Keep it warm.  We don’t want to give it to her cold.”  After discovering the child is alive Lila says, “It wasn’t me it was the Creator” and Ray, “All I know is K-Mart’s closed and I don’t have nothin’ for under the tree.” 

Motherhood: the dogged determination to the death that says I will provide for my children no matter what.  Life may hit me with its best shot but I will find a way through, over, around.  Flint-like resolve in her scared momma’s eyes, Melissa Leo’s Academy Award Nominated performance demands to be watched by everyone born by a mother.  Each scene is tension filled because every act of life is played on the precipice.  We are required as viewers to live on the ledge, to feel what it is like to scratch and claw for every piece of change making sure our kids eat lunch.  We will be asked to consider what we would do were we the lone decision maker in a household.  We will look face to face in the face of women who must face the world on their own.  And we are forced to look at our faces in the mirror of our own souls. 

Directorial debuts seem to produce soul-searching films (i.e., Alejandro Gomez Monteverde for Bella, Gavin Hood for Tsotsi, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck for The Lives of Others to name a few).  Courtney Hunt’s freshman project is worth thoughtful reflection and deep group discussion.  Frozen River takes the cinematography of daily life (think The Office) to create a world the common person knows: no makeup and no spectacular production designs.  Dollar stores and house trailer living are par for the course here.  Forget politics.  Fortunately, social commentary is no where to be found.  [Would that Hollywood would get the point: "Just tell the story."]  But we will be haunted for days after to consider what would we do were we confronted with . . . deadbeat dads, human smuggling, hand-to-mouth living, insufficient work, latch-key children, and credit card fraud.  An odd couple, Lila (Misty Upham) and Ray (Leo) find themselves joined at the hip through actions to which they must simply respond.  Two women from different cultures connect through their common humanity.  Even tribesmen and troopers are presented as compassionate beyond the normal Hollywood cut-out characters.  The frozen river stands as the metaphor, harboring either hope or peril. 

Were I to create a movie trailer, it would be the opening paragraph above, which makes no sense until you see the movie; which is what I want you to do.  We must place ourselves into the middle of a tunnel where an oncoming train forces us to make decisions these mothers make every day.  Lila and Ray both seek provision for children.  Their coupled, selfless deed mid-film makes every heart ache.  Acting to redeem a life or care that a child receives a Christmas present transcends personal interest.  Parental trauma cannot be reproduced.  Those who suffer in some way to care for children feel the pain of Frozen River, hoping for a thaw. 

Rated R for brief use of profanity and adult situations.