In Pleasantville, After the Fall

This past Friday I was able to sneak away from campus for a motorcycle ride.  This is one of the keys to maintaining my sanity, such as it is.  On the ride, I was stunned by the beauty of this river valley where we live.  The weather was like a summer day, yet the turning of the leaves had begun on some of the trees; for others, the golden transformation would come at a later day.  I had to stop on more than one occasion to take it all in.  I watched ducks fishing with their bottoms up, which always cheers me for some reason.  What a great way to look for food.  And yet with so much beauty in the world, many of our students were saying goodbye to Raul at his funeral in New York City.  How does the human heart hold such dichotomies at the same time?  How do we hold it all together without breaking apart?  Even as I went through the routines of my week, Raul and his family and friends were never far from my thoughts and prayers. 

Our community was going so many different directions this week.  For our Jewish students, Rosh Hashanah began last Wednesday, celebrating the Jewish New Year of 5775.  The Jewish High Holy Days will end next Friday with Yom Kippur.  On Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish New Year, apples are dipped in honey in the hopes of a sweet new year.  Rosh Hashanah is a celebration of the precious gift of creation—of sacred life itself.  It is the birthday of the world.  But the Jewish High Holy Days end with the Day of Atonement on Yom Kippur, the day of forgiveness which is much darker in its divine power.  It is a calling to repentance.  During the High Holy Days, the Jewish people are called to reach out to those they have hurt or wronged, in ways both large and small.  The High Holy Days, taken as a whole, include both the power of creation yet also the call to repentance to participate in the beauty of creation.  New beginnings involve soul searching during the turning colors of fall.      

As I tried to make sense of beauty and repentance together, along with love and sorrow, I was reminded of the movie Pleasantville.  It is an excellent autumn movie.  The film came out quite a while ago, in 1998.  The movie is about a perfect television world, a utopia, where there is no pain.  But there is no growth either.  Within the movie, Pleasantville is a 1950s style television show portrayed in black and white.  The show is centered on a perfect family called the Parkers.  They have no problems, and everything turns out just right for them, every time.  There are no arguments, no pain, no aging, no divorce, and certainly no death.  Even the temperature never changes: it’s always 72 degrees.  The basketball team never loses.  Into this utopian world of television are transported a regular pair of high school students from our complicated world named David (played by Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (played by Reese Witherspoon).  The twin siblings try not to interfere with the black and white world, but things begin to change, imperceptibly at first.  The new reality begins with a red rose in full color, blooming at night.  But soon the perfect black and white colors begin to change in wider ripples, following after the rose.   As Ralph Waldo Emerson said of roses in his essay “Self-Reliance:”

            “Man is timid and apologetic.  He is no longer upright.  He dares not say, ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.  He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose.  These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they exist with God to-day.  There is no time to them.  There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence…Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature in all moments alike…When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of a brook and the rustle of the corn.”

            Because of the arrival of David and Jennifer, the perfect world of Pleasantville is blown apart.  It begins with flowers, but moves onto people.  Black and white characters burst as if into flame, into full color like in The Wizard of Oz.  They become “colored” in the language of the film.  A strong surge of emotion seems to trigger the transformation to full color, and the new identities are not timid, or apologetic anymore.  They are standing upright, as Emerson hoped for in “Self-Reliance.”  They are human—they have discovered their full humanity.  Some of the transformations are inspired by romance, but this is not true in every case.  Jennifer—the Reese Witherspoon character—finds her deeper humanity by reading a book, and David discovers his true identity by defending himself in a fist fight.  The town fathers—still in black and white—fear the independence of the colored people, and eventually put David on trial for the chain of events he has set in motion.  The judge gets so angry that he bursts into full color himself.  The trial becomes a beautiful chaos, with even the town fathers in full bloom. 

The movie Pleasantville urges compassion, in every direction.  The events that give others their full humanity may be different from how you discover your true self.  Pain comes to everyone, and pain has come to us this week.  We all feel differently.  We all grieve differently.  But grieving we are.  And yet the good things in life are still good.  Creation, in all of its majesty and awe, is still here, but it is no black and white utopia.  We live in a reality aflame with color where there is danger, peril, illness, death, and yet great beauty all around us.  Our full humanity can be recognized, one person at a time, and we look at each other in full color this morning.  Grief is not far from us, but neither is the love of God who made things the way they are.     

            The gospel reading from Matthew deepens our awareness of what it means to be fully human.  The scene is in the temple, and an argument takes place, one which foreshadows the trial of Jesus.  In the visual lexicon of Pleasantville, Jesus represents the world of color, his antagonists the black and white status quo.  Everything has changed because of Jesus’ presence, and the chief priests and elders want to know why—by whose authority is Jesus doing these things?  The chief priests and elders live in the safety of the past.  They are timid and apologetic, and they are afraid of the upright personal religion that Jesus is sharing with his followers.  They see its danger, especially in the appeal to his growing followers.  This isn’t the trial of Jesus—not yet, so Jesus answers their question with a question.

            “I will ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will tell you by what authority I do these things.  Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” 

            They can’t answer the question.  Not because they don’t know the answer, but because the right answer won’t produce the desired political outcome.  How often does this happen in our world?  So Jesus doesn’t answer their question, but he does offer a parable of two brothers.  One son refuses to work in the field of his father, but eventually does, while the second son agrees to go, but then changes his mind.  “Which of the two did the will of his father?” Jesus asks.  This parable is so apolitical and innocuous that even the chief priests and elders get it right.  You may say no to God at first right now, but, when the time comes, you change your mind and go to work in God’s field.        

The two brothers represent the choices we have about how to respond to the gift of life, the invitation of creation, even when invaded by sorrow.  We’re asked to go to work for God right now.  As the leaves begin to change, so do our hearts—they are heavy, hopeful, overflowing, and open to the Spirit of God.  We walk upright in full color.   

The gospel from Matthew is not specific about the kind of work needed in the father’s field by the two brothers.  But after the week behind us, I imagine the command is this: Take care of each other.  The command goes out to every member of the Kent School community.  Take care of each other now, and in the days to come. 

The Kosher Boxer: A New Spirit of Adoption

            A few years ago, I spent my spare time going to boxing matches, mostly in the New York City area.  If this seems like odd behavior for a clergyman, you’re just going to have to deal with it.  My passion for boxing is somehow different from the other sports I love.  It is a sport of mystery, and paradox—where you remember that things are not always what they seem to be.  And I think you will hear a sense of mystery in the story of a summer evening when I attended a championship fight in New York City, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in the Manhattan Center. 

Attending a prizefight is a unique anthropological experience.  The scene outside the Manhattan Center?  The best word for it —here’s a Kent word that evokes a rich and textured seediness—the scene was sketchy.  I joined the fight crowd, the many gangster types, wearing a Kent tie.  Not a single person besides me was wearing a necktie.  It is sometimes said that the human face is the construction of the mind.  If this is the case, then everyone there should have been arrested.  Except for me, I’ve got a tie. 

            Just to pick up my ticket at will call, I underwent, and survived, the most invasive pat down in my life.  All pockets were emptied, metal wands were swiped.  Not even in an airport have I been so thoroughly investigated, my necktie notwithstanding. 

And I passed the test.  I found my seat in the balcony above the ring, and I sat back to enjoy the 5 early fights on the under card. 

And that’s when things took a strange and unexpected turn.

            In the row right in front of me, three young men in yarmulkes sat down.  Before I could do a double take, two old men in black hats, long beards, and black coats walked down the aisle; they might just as well have walked out of 19^th Century Poland.  The incongruity of these growing sights at a prizefight was startling.  Something new and strange was in the air.  In a span of maybe thirty minutes, the arena was wholly transformed.  My section filled up.  With Jews.  I was swallowed completely in some kind of Jewish rooting section, and the flags of Israel began to wave.  It was absolutely tribal.  But there was also something more, a new spirit moving among all of us.  Some days have a unique energy.  This summer night had a soul. 

            “What’s the story here?” I asked the man seated next to me.  I had heard enough of his conversation with his friends to know that he was a medical student; and that he and his other medical student friends, all Jewish, had never been to a boxing match in their lives. 

            “What do you mean?” he asked me.

            “Well, this is not a typical fight scene.”

            “More like a synagogue on Friday night?” he asked.

            “Yes.  So what’s going on?”

            “It’s all because of Dmitri.”

            As the championship bout approached, my neighbor told me the story of Dmitri “Star of David” Salita.  Otherwise known as the Kosher Boxer.  He is the only Jewish fighter in professional boxing (there have been just a few in the 20^th Century).  Dmitri is an Orthodox Jew, and completely observant.  He grew up in the city of Odessa, in the Ukraine.  His first experiences of boxing were all on the receiving in the end—the many beatings he experienced as the only Jewish kid in his neighborhood.  His mother had a dream of a different way of life for her only son: in America.  His mother also had cancer.

            Dmitri’s mother was dying just as her family arrived in New York City.  Her son stayed by her bedside day and night, and the family of a Jewish patient in the same room was moved by his devotion.  They took young Dmitri to pray at their synagogue.  They might just as well have adopted him.  The entire synagogue wrapped their arms around the boy, in every conceivable way; and they never let him go.  And the boy became a man.   A spirit of adoption, of God’s presence, came through the love and affection of the second family, the synagogue, and a special rabbi; they got him through the worst experience in his life: the death of his mother.  So Dmitri began to practice his Jewish faith, the faith he had never followed in the Ukraine, the one he had hidden trying to fit in.  And in the meantime, he became an extraordinary boxer.  As the Orthodox community of Flatbush, Brooklyn, once took him into their hearts and lives, he has likewise adopted the entire Jewish community of New York, and beyond.  And I for one did not feel like I was on the outside of his unfurling story.  I was part of a big Jewish group hug at a prizefight. 

            So back at ringside, we all stood as the lights went out for Dmitri’s entrance into the ring.  A soulful song rose from the darkness, a song of the heart, and its beautiful depths.  Lights came on the stage of the Hammerstein Ballroom, and a band, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, played a slow reggae version of Hava Nagila.  Half of the band looked like they were from Phish, the other half from the cast of Fiddler on the Roof. 

            “Who are they?” I asked my neighbor.

            “Oh, that’s the Orthodox Reggae Band.”

            “What?  You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

            “Nope.  These guys are terrific.”

            And they were.  The lead singer, separate from the band, emerged from the shadows, in black hat and beard; the singer led the Orthodox boxing entourage out of the crowd and into the ring.  The song rose in intensity, going faster and faster, a summer swoon ripened to spiritual perfection.  Everyone in the arena was standing.  Goose bumps were now commonplace; everyone had them.  A spotlight fell on the boxer as he walked slowly towards the ring.  His face was hidden under his blue hood, and he wore the Star of David up and down his matching sky blue boxing trunks.  The scene transcended athletics, certainly.  It was liturgical, like what we do, or should do, in church. 

Finally, the boxer and the singer stood before each other.  In the center of the ring.  The reggae singer put his right hand upon his own heart.  Then he reached out and touched the boxer on his heart  It was Dmitri who had brought everyone together.  With his strength, dignity, sportsmanship, loyalty, love, and his courage.  Even after Dmitri won his first boxing championship nine rounds later, the first thing he did was seek out the talented fighter from Mexico, who was also undefeated, to embrace him.  A sense of deep respect was everywhere.

            I have thought back many times to the spirit of adoption that was in the air that night.  A spirit of adoption is very much part of the Kent experience right now as we begin another year.  Bonding is happening everywhere you look, from new classes to athletic teams-- from the dorms to the advisory you will eat with tonight.  This new spirit of adoption can be as simple as explaining the many mysteries of Kent School to someone who is new. 

            A spirit of adoption is much more than being nice; it is more than simply doing the right thing in terms of your own ethical conduct.  It means taking another person into your heart, sometimes into your own home in an hour of need.  There is no doubt that a spirit of adoption, whether you give it or receive it, can change your life, as it did for Dmitri Salita.  It can change the way you see everyone around you, and all of the boundaries that divide us.  The time we get to spend together is precious; it doesn’t last forever.  Embrace the change that is all around us right now, and embrace each other in the name of the one God.  You won’t regret it.  Have a great night and a wonderful year.  Let us rejoice and be glad.