The Tree of Life (watch it and lose the will to live)

I watched a film last night at Cineworld Crawley. On a Wednesday evening there is a concession for Orange mobile users whereby they can buy a ticket and get one free. This made for long queues not only at the cinema but in the car park and all the surrounding retail food outlets.


This somehow made the anticipation all the more special as the gauntlet of parking, then ticket purchase, and finally food, had to be run.

I paid my £8.60, entered Studio 6 and, after 40 minutes of ads, settled down to watch Tree of Life, the latest movie, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.

Two young lads sitting behind me had been extremely loud throughout the ads but once the opening film certificate appeared on the screen they hushed immediately, as did the rest of the packed auditorium.

Twenty minutes later I found myself enthralled by the ‘Exit’ sign on the emergency door to the right of the screen. I studied the line drawing of the person depicted under the sign and tried to work out where this exit led to.

I then noticed a trickle of people, including the two chatty lads, walking out of the studio. This trickle became a torrent as good-natured laughter filled the air - the laughter stemming not from anything occurring in the film you understand but merely from the ever-increasing amount of people making a beeline for the exit.

In the ultimate irony an usher continually appeared at the entrance to escort out a handful of kids who had infiltrated Studio 6 without paying. If only she had waited a few minutes they surely would have gone of their own volition!

I was asked by a friend afterwards what the film was about and gave a rather glib reply of “it was about 130 minutes” as I couldn’t really explain (or rather I couldn’t be bothered to explain as this would have given the film some level of importance it did not deserve).

All I will say is that Tree of Life is undoubtedly the worst film I have ever seen, worse even than Gomorrah

Are You Scared of Dying?

I listened to part of the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 yesterday morning and the daily topic was the growing propensity for children to be unhealthily scared of death. Parents were phoning in with tales of their children hiding under bedclothes screaming “I’m going to die”.

So what has caused this phenomenon and is it the modern scourge that it would appear to be?

There are times when each of us becomes aware of our mortality and the natural defence against this is to avert our thoughts almost instantly so although we are left with the realisation of the inevitable we do not dwell on it or let it impinge on our lives.

Sometimes this coping mechanism goes wrong and we are unable to focus on anything other than the circumstances that might lead to our ultimate demise. This usually occurs at night when idle reflective moments turn into deep introspections. I would argue that this is not necessarily a negative thing.

Although I never had this morbid sensation for myself (I was very good at diverting my thoughts and anyway it just seemed too far into the future to worry about logically) I did have an unnatural sadness at the thought that my mother and father would one day die. I would physically shake and on occasion my heart beat would go into overdrive (a symptom that has recently returned whilst racing around on my bike). I remember several occasions when after particularly bad nights when I got no sleep at all I was literally unable to raise my head from the pillow. It was almost like being trapped inside my body, able to think fairly clearly and quite aware of my surroundings but unable to physically move or speak. On several more occasions I was able to rise from bed but found it almost impossible to walk so had to take the day off school. 

I do think I was particularly sensitive but these feelings certainly made me appreciate my parents, cherish them and love them in the knowledge that one day they might not be there.  I was eventually able to rationalise my feelings and put into perspective the vagaries of being human. I still worry about my father and my four brothers and sister and indeed my close friends but it is within a certain context. I made a concerted effort to concentrate on what's important in life. I strove every day to be a kind and generous and loving person (and failed miserably of course) and any time I even thought about harbouring grudges or maintaining a ridiculous anger, I'd see death and I'd remember.

The expert in the studio informed Jeremy, and the listeners, that children brought up in Christian households (and presumably some other faiths) tend to deal with death far better than those brought up in non-Christian households. I thought this was beautiful and true and where the Richard Dawkins’ of this world fail to understand the deep magic that is Christianity.

When my mother died 20 years ago I was not a practising Christian although she was. I read her daily diaries, the last 11 years of which consisted of unerring daily entries of “attended Holy Mass”. All of us were struck, awe-struck by the perfection of my mother’s death – her dignity, the way she put her house in order, and of course her incredible life’s journey in service to our Lord. She had no idea that Christmas Day 1992 was to be her final day on Earth. She had not been ill so it was a shock to us all. On that fateful day when she said to me quite calmly “remember Trev, I love all my children” I knew what she was telling me, although as is my way I used the ability to divert my thoughts from the harshness of life’s reality. My mother was an old-school mum who brought up six children clean and tidy in a sometimes stressful household. In the home my visions of her are of being constantly stuck at the kitchen sink washing clothes and when she was able to spare a few minutes to watch Corrie she would inevitably fall asleep mouth wide open, much to our amusement. At work she was a legend. I had the good fortune to work at her hospital, Netherne, while she was a ward sister on Galsworthy ward. I had a temporary job in the admin office and Mr Stephens the hospital administrator thought my mother was a saint. She would pop in to the office on occasion and a big fuss would be made of her. She had a devilish sense of humour and a heart of 24 carat gold. I was so proud of her. The amount of times I visited her ward to see her helping patients walk or take their shopping lists reminded me of just how she liked to do that little bit more. It reminds me now of those poverty-stricken times when she could hardly make ends meet but often managed to sneak a Mars Bar into my pocket when I had a cricket match. 

You see, my mother’s faith saw her through. Her devotion to our Lord made everything perfect and she lived and died in a perfect human way. As Christians we embrace death as a natural part of God’s plan. I loved the recent Torchwood episode, Miracle Day, where no one was able to die and the population became unmanageable very quickly. It was thought-provoking and a very real example of the necessity for a thermostat on life.

The feeling of wellbeing from being a Christian goes unsaid very often. We tend to concentrate on Richard Dawkins’ view of us as having a life struggling to follow an unseen entity that makes huge promises but denies epicurean pleasures, thus frustrating the spirit. He just doesn’t get it.

One definition of delusion is - An idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality, typically a symptom of mental disorder. Another definition is - A false belief or opinion: laboured under the delusion that success was at hand.

Both these definitions cover the areas that Richard Dawkins finds so offensive and beyond his understanding. Can he truthfully and demonstratively deny the possibility of God and can he truthfully and demonstratively deny the power that that possibility brings and indeed deny that success was very much at hand in the lives of people like my mother. On Earth my mother will be remembered as someone who worked hard all her life, never taking time off, never receiving state hand-outs, and bringing up six children in extreme adversity but within a loving environment with Christian values. I describe a very ordinary and stereotypical existence but one that was given meaning by the manifestation of my mother’s real faith at her death. The knock on effect is immense. The wellbeing of a Christian is gauged by the deepness and sincerity of their faith. This faith gives hope to others and it is not a delusion.

There is nothing in what Richard Dawkins has ever proven that denies the possibility of God in the same way as he would argue that in a faith-based system we can neither prove the existence of God. But the unsaid and unfathomable X factor is all those myriad of hidden qualities of Christianity that make our spirits soar and make us strong and able to face life’s vicissitudes. These are real, not delusions, whichever definition you might care to use.

A clue about depth of conviction of atheists can be gleaned by the amount of converts to Christianity in the trenches. A most natural and heart-warming occurrence but would a Christian change their allegiance if they faced impending doom, which might manifest itself in illness, loss of a loved one, financial destruction etc?.   Simple answer NO