Mission Impossible > 007

Rewatching all the Mission Impossible movies. IMHO, an underrated series.

Some have criticized the lack of flashbacks and backstory. The most you get about his past is a detail in MI3 that he, like his fiancé, lost his parents some time ago. Films obsess over those details, draw them like spaghetti, and stuff them into every filler moment in between action scenes. As if we need to meet the first girl Hunt kissed, his childhood doll or his childhood bully in order to understand him. I'm glad we didn't. Films have a bad habit of overexplaining characters in dull predictable terms (family, status, childhood). 

It's not that people don't have such backstories. But the backstory is infinitely more complex than any film could capture, so the angle tends to feel forced.

So I respect MI's choice not to dig into Hunt's life. The closest you get to insights in Hunt's personal values is IMF's Secretary telling him, "some flaw deep in your core being simply won’t allow you to choose between one life and millions." And really, it's more honest to appeal to the mystery of what beats a person's drumbeat. Philosopher Robert Kane suggests that each act of free will is an experiment: I don't know what will come of this decision, but here I go, I have set my course, let's see what happens. It's your task to see it through, "should you choose to accept it." 

Into the Wild: Original Sin Reimagined.

When Adam and Eve were created, all of human nature existed in them, and none of it existed anywhere else (Anselm). We are 'in Adam' in the sense that Adam and Eve are the source code for our own bodies; they are the blue print for the rest of humanity (Augustine/Crisp). Adam's sin changed him and Eve. It made them know sin, but without the benefit of wisdom or maturity (Irenaeus). As a result, they became stunted in their person, altered from their original design (Irenaeus). Coffee spilled on the blueprint (Crisp).

Here, original guilt refers to our state of condemnation: more a 'state of things' than a punitive function (Augustine). It is metaphor for an existential reality of strife and separation to which we are resigned until the savior comes. All humanity is born outside Eden, born in the wild. All are therefore born in exile - suffering the consequences of their ancestors, whether they ate the fruit or not. All other humans have been born into the world into this sadly altered state, knowing sin, but not knowing themselves or God, and having been expelled from Eden, not having the resources innately to right the ship.

But the good news is God has also left Eden or, rather, has brought it with him. God has come into the wild. Jesus enters the human race in order to change the blue-print - for "what is unassumed is unhealed" (Gregory). He, the new Adam, submits to God in the garden where Adam failed (Irenaeus). He goes the distance, enters and dies in our exile. Then he walks anew in the cool of the first day of the week as the new gardener. He is correcting the course of humanity. He gives the Spirit to those in allegiance to him so that they, too, can receive the breath of new life (Reeves). There's a sense Jesus is Eden, the place where reconciliation with God exists (Torrance), and also Adam, the person who reigns on our behalf and reigns with us (Wright).

That rough draft life

You know how your third draft of an essay more accurately captures your original thought? that earlier drafts do not reflect your true tone, mood or intent? Almost everything I say is the rough draft. If I could go back and revise it, the ready-print version would be more measured, less assuming, less chatter. But to others, the words that form on the lips are necessarily in final form. They never appear to others as the first try to form a response. Since oral speech presents none of the editing capability of the written word, it is wise to heed James. "My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry."

chess ideas

gender neutral chess: checkmate queen or king; or replace the titles altogether with Queeg and Queeg 

a game of thrones option: king can kill its own pawn to escape traps

battle royal version: each pawn for itself 

fish out of water

so far, work in the public sector has been a humbling experience.

i was close to having a 'niche' in my firm - becoming the go-to guy to do research, draft strong briefs, make strong arguments to judges. i won cases, made clients happy, and began to have specialized litigation knowledge.

to answer the call of service, i am now a member of a team that works on matters on the far side of the legalverse, with skill sets i previously overlooked. i'm learning a new alphabet through trial and error, and each error reveals my incompetence. i feel found out.

took a paycut to start my legal career from scratch again, with folks who are unimpressed with my irrelevant pedigrees. why did i do this again?

Midsommar

The story-line is overdone. I get it.

Once you get past the gore, cliches, and maybe slightly pornographic scenes, there is kind of an important message.

As in every horror movie, there are obvious warning signs the movie's protagonists ignore.

But what's unique here is the reason they ignore it. The professional mostly twenty something males are all anthropologists-in-training. They're deeply indoctrinated into cultural relativism: the belief that no cultural practice should be judged 'from the outside'. They're also motivated by careerism. They're too educated to recognize that a village killing off its elderly with gravity and an ornate sledgehammer is just that: a village killing off its elderly. Preoccupied with their educational ambitions, and led by their penises as much as by their obsession with neutrality, they miss the forest for the trees.

At the same time, I can't really judge them. I too am an over-educated (thirty something) male. I question my questions too much. I don't see the forest or the trees; I'm busy racking my brain to find a good quote to use in the conversation I'm having with myself.

These are my thoughts in between Good Friday and Easter during the pandemic of 2020. I hoped to find something more spiritual to say but this is it for now.

Payce 

Ad Intra: The Gospel of Cosmic Companionship

James Gray's movie Ad Astra is a soulful take on space exploration. Ad Astra is Latin for "to the stars". The film follows Roy McBride's pursuit for his estranged father, Clifford McBride. Clifford is a famous astronaut who spent his life searching for life. That search cut him off from his wife, son, and eventually, his crew. In a sad irony, his "mission" for life led him away from life. (SPOILER!) After a fight with his son, the elder McBridge departs from the station he called home and enters Neptune's orbit a final time. The once great cosmonaut dies as a satellite of a dead planet.

McBride's flaws aside, his desperate search for cosmic company resonates with me. I too, want to know that I am not alone. I want to be reassured that somewhere out there someone is watching with a friendly eye. I doubt I'm alone. We all look at the world around us and long to find a signal of reason. The conflicting pictures of violence and beauty drive us to seek, in a word, reconciliation. We want a vision that reconciles us to the harsh facts of the world while finding firm footing for our ideals and hopes. Yet for many of us moderns, the prospects of this search looks bleak. Camus said that man "feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” That silence is what McBride must have felt when he saw Neptune for the last time.


The New Testament attests to the human need for reconciliation. The New Testament paints a vivid picture of a place of justice and peace, where the wrongs are righted and where there's a place for everyone at the table. That place is the kingdom of God. But in order to participate in the kingdom, we must be "born from above" (John 3:3), and Jesus is the only one truly "born from above" (v. 31). The space between us is the reason to go ad astra. But the gulf is too wide. Anti-matter engines can only take us so far. What spiritual technology do we have to cross the infinite?

As we were not born from above, God himself entered Earth's atmosphere. He became born from below. "Since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared the same humanity..." (Heb. 2:14-15). Like Clifford, God sent his son (John 3:16) on a 'mission' - a mission to seek, find, and save. Athanasius sums up the significance of the incarnation in these words: "He became what we are so that we can become even what he is."

The gospels illustrate in unique ways how Jesus participates in our condition. In Matthew's account, Jesus shares our condition by re-tracing Israel's steps. As Israel did before him, Jesus goes to Egypt. He then is baptized, reenacting Israel crossing the Red Sea. He then wanders in the wilderness for forty days, recapitulating Israel's forty years in the desert. In all of this, he is sharing in, summing up, and changing Israel's story. Jesus then goes up to the mountainside, just as Moses did before him. You may recall that the people were too afraid to go up with Moses. But Jesus brings them with him. He sits with them and eats with them. And he tells them what it is like to be in the kingdom. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God."

Jesus is God in the flesh, the God-with-us, and he catches us up into his story. Because of everything God has done in the Christ, we no longer have to painfully ask, "Who will go up into heaven?" (Rom. 10:6), because the ruler of heaven has come down. As Christ's diplomats in this war-torn galaxy, we transmit this hopeful message through the airwaves: yes, there is life out there, and his name is King Jesus.