Author: Vince
Rogue Too
1979 was a pretty good year for the Yale University School of Drama. One of their graduates starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in the year’s top-grossing film, a family drama about the breakup of a family. Meryl Streep, class of ’75, would eventually win an Oscar for her performance in Kramer vs Kramer, one of several that now grace her home (although she almost lost that first one, leaving it in the bathroom at the Oscar ceremonies).
The other graduate was in another top-10 box office hit, a science fiction movie not named Star Trek that was still one of the most hotly anticipated movies of the year.
Godless
I ran across this statement recently:
“The greatest danger of television and movies is helping (us) to grow accustomed to the enjoyment of the absence of God.”
I’ve pondered that for a couple of weeks. I generally agree with the sentiment: we need to be careful about what we intake, and a lot of our intake these days is television and movies. (Note the absence of books, probably for a couple of reasons: one, it’s possible to find books that aren’t absent God, and two, who reads books anymore?) But there are couple of implications that I’d like to tackle.
Just Because You’re Paranoid…
Just a quick site administration note. I’ve setup secure hosting for Broken & Saved, which means you should get here with https://www.brokenandsaved.com instead of plain http://www.brokenandsaved.com. The site will automatically redirect you to https if you use forget and use http, but it would be good to update your bookmarks to the site to add the s after http.1
You will (should?) not notice any difference at all. The only difference is that the communication between your web browser and the web site itself is now encrypted, and you have assurance that when you specify this site in your browser, it’s really this site that comes up.
Impact
Last time I talked briefly about a woman who’s influence on me was both deep and wide.1 Today I want to talk about the opposite end of the spectrum, a woman I spent a total of forty-five minutes with, in the company of several other people, six-and-a-half years ago.
It was our first trip to Cambodia. The church body we’re members of had formed a partnership with IJM, and a member of their church mobilization team led seven of us from 121 on a trip to meet as many organizations working on the ground as possible, and learn as much as we could about the country and the cause (combatting sex trafficking).
The Power of Pachyderms
My daughter, who as you know lives with her husband and son in Cambodia, has a new carved elephant sitting on their TV stand. It’s an African bull elephant sitting on his haunches, with painted ears, eyes, and toes. It seems a bit out-of-place — it’s the only carved anything in their house that I know of, and certainly in their family room. As a result, I knew why it was there even before I asked her about it.
My wife and I also have an elephant — several elephants, actually — on a lacquered piece on the wall of our bedroom.