Movies and Books and Love

[Tim]

Tuesday night we were leading the program at Vision Cafe and used the topic "Love is & Love does."  Did you know that if you type in "love is," Google suggests that you're starting to type in the phrase "love is patient"?  We discussed about love being a purely natural/chemical/evolutionary event vs. love being a supernatural reality that overlays the physical universe.  We discussed examples of what love looks like and pulled out the CS Lewis quote about what happens when you protect your heart from vulnerable love:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

As part of the "Love is & Love does" discussion program, I showed a clip from a good movie, Fireproof, and had table-groups discuss it.  In Fireproof, a troubled marriage is transformed via the power of unilateral love.  Enough students were interested in watching more, including our friend Nick, who is on staff at the Cafe, that we are planning to host a movie night before the week is out.

Today one of my classes has a morning with no school, so a group of students is coming over in an hour to read and watch The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I've found that if I hook my laptop to the TV and increase the font size, they can read the eBook along with me.  I do all the voices, and they get a kick out of hearing their American-accented friend doing British and Irish accents  (I do Tumnus and the Beavers with a trilling brogue).  Then we'll watch the movie together, or maybe do a section of reading, section of movie, and back to the book, etc.  

I am down to teaching just twice a week, now: Monday and Friday mornings.  But next Monday there is no school, to celebrate the 41st anniversary of the liberation of Saigon.  Half of our friends here have family from southern Vietnam and they don't seem to think it's a day worth celebrating--they would put the word liberation in quotes.  But it's a quiet view that they'd mostly express just to foreigners.

I'm going to sign off and make sure the house is ready for my guests.  We'll meet for beef noodle soup for breakfast and come back for book & movie here.  Have a beautiful day!