Another Night Looking for Serenity

Last night I watched the movie "Serenity"... I'd finished the TV series "Firefly", which is the lead in to the movie, earlier in the week & had decided that I very much wanted to catch the movie & see the last chapter (?) in the story of the crew of the spaceship 'Serenity' (since the series, like most good series on TV, was cancelled far too early)....I was planning to see it tonight (friday), but I'd found that 'Serenity' was disappearing from theaters this week (though one website now says there are still showings available), so I reordered my plans and, in the middle of one of the busiest work weeks I've had in a long time, changed up my schedule to catch the late show on Thursday night (after asking a gracious friend to let me cut my evening with them short so I could sneak off to see the movie.....

....so I sat in a theater with 3 other people & watched this last chapter, a story full of adventure, drama, humour & the fantastic characters that have become 'friends' in some odd sense.... the movie was good, though hard to watch... like life there was lots of joy & lots of sorrow.... and a lot of tension - lots of harrowing moments where the crew were on the edge of dying with hope slipping away fast. The 'bad guys' in the movie, the reavers, were terrifying - the stuff born of nightmares - made even more scary 'cause they never really show them. The pictures flash across horrible faces, full of twisted evil & destruction - and the image is there for such a short time that it leaves your brain to fill in the details with all of the fears it can imagine.....

.... and yeah, I watched, I laughed, i clutched the edge of my seat, heart pounding in my chest, I cried & yeah... I left the theater somewhere after midnight with a whirlwind of emotions - tension, sorrow, hope, longing.... and yeah, was pretty somber getting home & had a hard time sleeping most of the night 'cause of too many thoughts rushing through my head from the movie....

... and the thoughts haven't quite left... today had a dream like quality to it - partly from another busy day at work, partly from being very tired, partly from all the thoughts... but yeah, tonight I found myself alone at home, trying to rest & enjoy some time to myself while facing the thought of a weekend filled with work trying to catch up from all that didn't get done this week. I debated about what to do tonight, sort of wanting to be around people, but yet hating that prospect, too.... I have nothing much to say (sort of) and time spent around people requires conversation, requires me to say something, or to listen, but my heart isn't in it so much..... so I went home, tried to just hang out & rest....

..in the end I pulled the car out of the garage & went wandering, went to grab some desert at the cheesecake cafe & read in a book (starting 'the importance of being foolish" by Brennan Manning).... but honestly I was looking for something....

...I was looking for Kaylee, for someone with the heart of a romantic, a dreamer, someone who can laugh & joke & play & remind you of what it's like to be a kid again, someone who is touched by & filled with wonder & a gentle belief in the goodness of people.... I was looking for Inarra, someone of wisdom & beauty, a person of quietly surprising strength, someone who knows how to listen, how to hear the heart, someone who knows the right things to say & has the courage to fight for & stand with those they love.... I was looking for Mal, or even Zoe, someone with courage, someone who is simply a scalywag, all rough around the edges & full of flaws, but a man or woman of courage, of conviction, someone who knows what's right - not in the pietistic sense of polished moral platitudes - but the frontier sense of knowing that was is right is to show love, to fight for the underdog, to go against those who would seek to control people & crush their freedom.... people who have the courage to love, to live, to fight & die for freedom - their own or for others, people who look after their 'crew', their 'family', leaders for whom leading is coming with the firm hand of giving orders which must be obeyed, but a leadership that will lay down their life for their crew/family, leadership that earns loyalty by being worthy of trust.... and yeah, maybe I was looking to find a bit of Kaylee, or Inarra, or Mal in my own heart....

(and yeah, there were more than a few times where I was checking over my shoulder for reavers)

Most of all I was looking for 'Serenity'.... when describing to my friend why I wanted to see this movie so badly, I described Serenity as this safe place for me, a place that pictured family for me... I've thought over the past week or so, that if I was going to run off & join the circus (or fly to the stars), I'd want to be on Serenity... to be in a place with broken people, with quirky weird people who are not quite right - people who are misfits & the underdogs, but people who, in the end, learn how to love each other 'cause they're really the only family that they've got....

And yeah, in my life I find I'm a story teller - or I'd like to be.... mostly right now I'm a listener. Why does fiction matter? Why do movies & tv & books & plays & poetry, why does it have a place in our hearts & lives? Why do stories move us so? I don't have the answer, but I know that stories paint pictures for our hearts - we learn who we are & who we want to be from seeing the examples lived out in lives around us. Stories teach us about people, about life, about what it is to be human, what it is to love, to risk, to have courage & bravery, to see the power of hope, the dangers of pride & greed, to remind our hearts of our longing for something better.... we are all connected by stories - each moment of our days is another scene in the story that is our life, a story that is woven into the greater story of the history of the world, and, ultimately, the story of Jesus romancing His bride....

This is why i connect so much with the old testament & the gospels in the Bible far more than I connect with the letters of Paul, or Proverbs - the majority of the bible is just stories - stories about men & women who are not quite right, men & women who are often not the nicest people, not the most together. People who are treacherous & scalawags & vagabonds.... ragamuffins as Brennan puts it... the 'heroes' in the Bible are just screwed up 'everyman's (or everywomans) that muddle their way through life the best they can.... the thing that makes their lives remarkable is their encounter with this God who is other to them, but who starts to weave them into His story.... and there story then is not a moral tale - not some aesop's fables to teach some simple lesson - but instead the honest example of what happens when the divine encounters the earthly, when the finite is romanced by the infinite.....

... stories are not truth... they are not logical statements that can be proven right or wrong.... they're just stories - they point to truth, they paint pictures for our hearts that, if we look at them long enough, we can find the truth, and ultimately the One who is Truth.... but yeah, you have to listen to them to make them matter, you have to let the stories into your heart - let them sink in & let your story weave in with the stories of others... and this is part of learning to love - to see that you're not so different - that your story sounds sometimes like the story of another - that somehow you have common bonds, a common heart & a common hope, common longings & dreams, common fears & sorrows as others... and in that, if we listen, we find that the differences that keep us apart are not nearly as big as the similarities that bring us together....as put by another great storyteller, "If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? "

Stories remind us of what matters - of how fragile we all are, that the things which so often take up most of our thought life really don't matter. We are fading like the flowers & there is only the moments that we are living in now in which we have time to love, to laugh, to fight for what is right, to stand up for the oppressed, to try to bring light into our little corner of the world & help bring hope & freedom to those around us.... to simply enjoy the moments we are given.... instead of frittering them away with meaningless pursuits....

...and yeah, I know it's all complicated & such, and thankfully the good stories show that complication, show a world full of risk & full of villains who stand against all that is good & right.... but yeah, the stories remind us of what our hearts long for....

....and hence 'Serenity' reminds me of home.... of the family I've been longing to find, of the courage & bravery I long to find in my own heart, of many, many things.... but most of all it, like so many great stories, reminds me how to fly....

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: It ain't all buttons and charts little Albatross. You know what the first rule of flyin' is? Well I suppose you do, since you already know what I'm about to say.
River Tam: I do, but I like to hear you say it.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Love. You can know all the math in the 'Verse, but take a boat in the air you don't love, she ain't keepin' up just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her up when she ought to fall down, tells ya she's hurtin' 'fore she keens, brings her home at the end.
River Tam: Storm's getting worse.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: We'll pass through it soon enough.