Station No. 26

“How?” Charles asked, almost in a whimper.

The silence, which had lasted seemingly for days, was broken. It had been one of those awkward silences like when two people have just had a passionate argument and then crossed a line with their words which stops one dead in his tracks. Jason and Charles had sat with the pregnant pause and Jason waited patiently for Charles to say the next word. He was certain he needed say nothing else to Charles. He was surprised, however, that Charles spoke so soon.

Jason had figured Charles would walk out in silence to wrestle once more with his life and his notions of fairness, only to storm once more into the cafe after a long absence and demand from Jason answers for his pain.

Not so this time. Charles seemed humbled and the “how” had a ring of sincerity Jason had not heard previously. Jason was hopeful.

“What do you mean when you say, ‘How?’” Jason was still going to make Charles do the lionshare of the work.

“I mean how do i live in the storm with the chaos and the unpredictability and the uncertainty and the realization of not being in control and the . . . ?” The list went on a long time as Charles gushed, his heart unable to keep it all down any longer. It was not the ranting of a prideful victim demanding his rights, which had often characterized his comments in the past. Gone was the clenched fist, replaced by an open hand.

A smile crept across Jason’s face, at first unnoticed by Charles who was, understandably, preoccupied. Charles was still going: “ . . . and the pain and this greatness you speak of and voices in the wind and” —

Charles saw the expression and stopped mid sentence. “What are you smiling at?” he yelled.

“You are finally asking the right questions,” Jason said. “It’s been a long night, let’s call it a day and talk tomorrow.”

Station No. 25

Charles sat motionless, staring off into space with a million thoughts racing. He could not focus, but felt completely overwhelmed with questions, doubts, hopes and fears. Jason had opened a door and lead Charles into a foreign land.

The conversation which had begun in the cafe had progressed long into the night and then the early morning. By the time it was finished, Charles was dumbstruck, was sitting in the parlor of Jason’s Victorian twin. It was as if the rug had been pulled from under his feet; the levy had broken; and the sun gone out all at the same time.

“What was Jason talking about?” Charles thought to himself. “What had Chin li been writing about in his poetry?

Now, more than ever, he considered it a foul curse that he had ever met Jason or read that poem:

There is a voice in the wind;
There is a charm in the stars;
There is a romance in the storm;
And i hear a call to enter even this chaos.

Charles, who had been talking excitedly and waving his arms with fervor as he argued and wrestled with Jason, now could not even look at him across the room in the high-back chair with the dwindling fire beside him.

He had not like hearing Jason say things like: “There is something greater than ourselves happening in life — surely, Charles, you can sense it.” Charles resented Jason. “Why couldn’t life just move along and leave Charles well enough alone,” he thought. “Why is there always this talk of something beyond us?”

Jason had actually done little talking the entire evening. A question here or there was all it took to get Charles going, and Jason was content to let him work things out in the conversation. Charles was haunted by the poem, hating chaos, and storms, wanting predictability and certainty. He had insisted on it in his own life, and now, everything had changed. Amanda’s death was completely unexpected and nothing Charles could have done would have prevented it. As much as missing her — no, actually more than missing her — he was angry at the unpredictability of it all.

Charles was scared of the chaos, the uncharted waters ahead of him, yet — like a whirlpool — it pulled him in. He cried, sometimes out loud, “it’s not fair.”

Somewhere between the cafe and the parlor, and before the bottom of their second pot of coffee, Jason had asked: “Charles, have you never looked at the stars, or a tree, or a sunset and felt a greatness pressing in on you?”

Despite his fighting, Charles had to admit he had a curiosity, even an ache, as well as the inability to explain to himself these things of which Jason spoke.

Since i am sort of on this Braveheart theme, i thought it was interesting this morning to read II Kings 18 and II Kings 19.

Providentially, these are the two chapters i was reading as i make my way through the OT. i think Braveheart, especially in scenes such as the Battle of Stirling, and Wallace's rampage through Scotland, comes close to capturing something of the situation in the passages of II Kings.

The King of Assyria is taunting God's people, seeking to subject them to his rule, and promising great comforts to them if they will stop their rebellion. Hezekiah, who is a godly king, has been moving through Judah to reclaim his land and his people from idol worship and return to the True God.

In a similar way, when watching Braveheart we see the King of England buying favor with the Scottish nobles to get them to comply with England's rule, which is actually tyranny. But, along comes Wallace _ much like Hezekiah _ to fight that tyranny. And at the end of II Kings 19, we see God Himself routing the Assyrians.

It is a picture, perhaps incomplete, but a picture nonetheless, of how the movie mirrors Biblical reality.

Braveheart

i am surprised nobody had any thoughts on Braveheart. i will keep my comments short, but i think the questions raised by Kassander & Jameson are good ones, and i think there are aspects of the movie which certainly parallel the life of Christ and the story of the Gospel. Breaveheart is an epic tale of good v. evil and one man's fight in particular, which ends up becoming a nation's fight for independence.

it would be wrong to call Braveheart a "Christian" movie because not everything in the movie is directly proportional to the Gospel, and i don't believe it was intended to be. William Wallace, the hero, acts in ways which are similar to Christ, making him a literary Christ figure. There are principles in the movie which i, as a Christian, find encouraging, comforting and challenging. There are certainly redemptive analogies and aspects of the dialogue which strike close to Scripture.

More than anything, i think Braveheart, the story, sheds light on our lives and brings us to a point of asking great questions _ primarily of ourselves. What kind of man (or woman) am i? What am i willing to fight for? What am i willing to die for? There are others, but you get the point.

While Braveheart is not a "Christian" story, its plot mirrors the great plot of all time, God v. Satan, Good v. Evil. In this way, the story touches on eternal themes.