Conspiracies.Every nation has its own secrets , perpetrating forgeries, plots, and massacres. From the unification of Italy to the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Priests, anarchists, satanists… But what if, behind all of these conspiracies both real and imagined, lay one lone man? What if that evil genius created its most infamous document? What if Aryanism, Malthusian rhetoric, Zionism, and World Wars were all the product of one sadistic document…that was the product of one man’s fevered imagination. But wouldn’t certain of these cabals contradict the plans of the other, I mean if they came from one man and all? What if the one was a two…what if he had a split personality…so that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. Until they met one another in the pages of their respective diaries and in the middle of their twisted doctrine conceived, as it were, in “The Prague Cemetery”.

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With Music from Matthew West

Lately, I have dealt with the reoccurring nuisance of migraine headaches. For some reason they seem to be much worse this year. I mean…I’ve always had them, they are in fact a family genetic trait. Just ask my niece Maggie, she has had one every day for the last 5-6 years! If you’ve never experienced one of these things, I have to say that you NEED to be on your knees thanking God every day that you don’t. It’s not you granny’s headache…we are talking pain so bad that at times you can’t see, that frequently causes you to throw up, and makes going out in sunlight an almost unimaginable chore. But here’s the thing…every time the thing goes away it’s like an epiphany. What I mean tnat pain going away is almost like Jesus just came back and there is nothing that will ever be wrong again! See? It’s hard to explain to anyone who dosn’t experience this type of pain. People just assume you’re being melodramatic. I know my wife thinks I over emphasize thepain…which is strange because I always feel like I’m playing it down. It’s probably because I also feel like severe pain (I also struggle with pretty intense athritis pain) gives me license to treat people poorly. My temper is shorter, my attitude frequently sucks, and I always feel entitled to act that way. If I am suffering and I am in pain, why shouldn’t I act however I want and lash out to include othersmin my suffering? That was rhetorical. But in case you haven’t answered it in your head already: It’s because one day the pain will go away. One day the suffering will end. One day it won’t matter how intense or how un-intense others thought your trial was, it will end. And how I’ve acted in response to that pain and suffering is all that will remain in the memory of my environment, myfamily, my community. See…it’s positively eschatological! For the last two days I’ve had a migrain and I have handled it so-so. You’d have to ask those who were around me how I handled it; I KNOW it was a doozy. But about an hour ago Jesus came back…I just thought you’d like to know.

When we lose one blessing, another is often, most unexpectedly, given in its place.

~ C.S. Lewis

It is amazing the things we will miss if we refuse to embrace the adventure of riding the tilt-o-whirl of Life.  It can sometimes seem scary.  It can be intimidating.  It can be not-fun and just plain tedious.   However, when we embrace the ride, as opposed to simply enduring it, there is not end of great things that might happen.  Walter had been like that.  He had been an animator for years in the privacy of his little bedroom.  Now as a teen, he had been given a scholarship to the prestigious Chicago Institute of Art.  He studied all kin of art, but was particularly intrigued by commercial art, as it used cartooning a lot and he was invested greatly in this.  He and his brother, a talented artist himself, decided to start a business together that used cartoons in advertising.  He supplemented this with the income he made doing political cartoons for local Chicago newspapers.  By this time he and his brother had developed a network of cartoonists and moved to Kansas City.  Here they began working with local PR firms who were using cartoons in film to do advertising on the big screen.  Walter convinced his boss from one of these firms to let him borrow one of the animation cameras, and in this way he taught himself what would become his lifelong passion…animation.  Walter was convinced that animating cells was the wave of the future, and all he needed was a good character (Felix the Cat was the most popular cartoon at this time) and he could begin making animated short films of his own.  His first tries were fairly successful.  He made films called laugh-o-grams that showed all over the Kansa City area…they caught on.  Now if he could just find that elusive popular character that the American public could buy into nationally.  His good friend Ubbe Iwerks would be the one to solve the puzzle.  The character was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit…he was an instant hit.  Thanks to the distribution of film producer Margaret Winkler, the films were put on show before the American public through Universal Pictures.  Unfortunately, it was also through Miss Winkler that the rabbit would be stolen from Ubbe and Walter.  For in the next few years Winkler married a man named Charles Mintz who took over the day-to-day operation of the film works.  Unbeknownst to Walter, Mintz hired away all his animators (except Iwerks who would never have gone) and tied up the copyright of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with Universal…making it so they controlled the property and not Walter.  He had struggled and strived for almost 20 years, just to get to the point where he had one property that America wanted to see.  And when he arrived what did he get?  Treachery, that’s what.  He would have to begin all over again. The heartbreak, the discouragement he must have felt must’ve seemed insurmountable at the time, but he had his good friend Iwerks and his brother Roy, and that was something.  All he needed was one good idea…one more hot property that would capture the imagination of the masses.  He experimented.  He kept at it, and it was a good thing he did.

Because the next character he created was a little fellow you may have heard of…Mickey Mouse.  It was on this day in 1901 that Walter Elias Disney…Walt Disney…was born.  He would be with us exactly 65 years and 10 days…way too short a time for a man who won 22 Academy Awards to live.  I wonder whatever happened to Oswald the Rabbit.  In 2006 when NBC wanted to have Al Michaels host Sunday Night Football, they had to buy his contract from ABC.  Did you know that ABC I owned by…Walt Disney Company?  Did you know that NBC was owned by Universal?  Guess what ABC asked for as part of the remuneration for Al Michaels contract buy out.  Welcome back to Disney Oswald…you Lucky Rabbit!

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

As long as you don’t forgive, who and whatever it is will occupy rent-free space in your mind. ~ Isabelle Holland

It has been said that convictions are born where Truth runs up against real life. It is one thing to make an intellectual assertion, and quite another to physically live out that assertion.  For instance, if the rights of individuals in America have been an evolving thing, then black women were definitely the last in line.  Nowhere in art has then been demonstrated more clearly than in the novel and subsequent film, “The Color Purple”.  Through this story we are able to feel what it must’ve been like to be a black women in the early days of freedom.  However, the term freedom is one used here loosely…there was more like a new kind of slavery that appeared as much as anything else.

Celie, the protagonist and narrator of The Color Purple, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen year-old black girl living in rural Georgia. Celie starts writing letters to God because her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once. Celie gave birth to a girl, whom her father stole and presumably killed in the woods. Celie has a second child, a boy, whom her father also steals. Celie’s mother becomes seriously ill and dies. Alphonso brings home a new wife but continues to abuse Celie.

Celie and her bright, pretty younger sister, Nettie, learn that a man known only as Mister wants to marry Nettie. Mister has a mistress named Shug Avery, a sultry lounge singer whose photograph fascinates Celie. Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, and instead offers Mister the “ugly” Celie as a bride. Mister eventually accepts the offer, and takes Celie into a difficult and joyless married life. Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie’s house. Mister still desires Nettie, and when he advances on her she flees for her own safety. Never hearing from Nettie again, Celie assumes she is dead.

Meanwhile Mister’s son Harpo marries a tough modern black woman, Sophia.  Played in the movie by a new almost unknown weather woman (Oprah Winnfrey) she represents more the type of woman we will come to associate with black women in general.  In fact, many of the abuses enumerated in the story happened to a young Winnfrey, and indeed mirrored much of her own story.  Sophia had suffered many of the same things Nettie had suffered at the hands of whites and men in general…but she refused to be cowed.  She refuses to work as a maid for the Mayor and when he strikes her for her insubordination she strikes him back, for which she is sentenced to being his maid anyway…for 12 years!  Disgusted with the lack of help from Harpo she puts him away as her husband, shocking Celie that a woman would treat a man so…especially in the face of the terrific beatings she would receive whenever she stuck up for her rights.

Through a series of subsequent events, though, we discover that Nettie is still alive, and that Mister has been keeping them from Celie.  It turns out that letters indicate that Nettie befriended a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, and traveled with them to Africa to do ministry work. Samuel and Corrine have two adopted children, Olivia and Adam. Nettie and Corrine become close friends, but Corrine, noticing that her adopted children resemble Nettie, wonders if Nettie and Samuel have a secret past. Increasingly suspicious, Corrine tries to limit Nettie’s role within her family.

Nettie becomes disillusioned with her missionary experience, as she finds the Africans self-centered and obstinate. Corrine becomes ill with a fever. Nettie asks Samuel to tell her how he adopted Olivia and Adam. Based on Samuel’s story, Nettie realizes that the two children are actually Celie’s biological children, alive after all. Nettie also learns that Alphonso is really only Nettie and Celie’s stepfather, not their real father. Their real father was a storeowner whom white men lynched because they resented his success. Alphonso told Celie and Nettie he was their real father because he wanted to inherit the house and property that was once their mother’s.

Nettie confesses to Samuel and Corrine that she is in fact their children’s biological aunt. The gravely ill Corrine refuses to believe Nettie. Corrine dies, but accepts Nettie’s story and feels reconciled just before her death. Meanwhile, Celie visits Alphonso, who confirms Nettie’s story, admitting that he is only the women’s stepfather. Celie begins to lose some of her faith in God, but Shug tries to get her to re-imagine God in her own way, rather than in the traditional image of the old, bearded white man.

Celie and Mister reconcile, and begin to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Now independent financially, spiritually and emotionally, Celie is no longer bothered by Shug’s passing flings with younger men. Sofia remarries Harpo and now works in Celie’s clothing store. Nettie finally returns to America with Samuel and the children. Emotionally drained but exhilarated by the reunion with her sister, Celie notes that though she and Nettie are now old, she has never in her life felt younger.

It’s as if she has been born again.  In fact, that is what has happened.  In the beginning she could only express her true feelings, without regard to consequence, through her letters to God.  She thought she was writing to some old benevolent white man, but finally realizes that we are all the sum of the choices we make…even when we believe we have no choice.  Each of the characters in the Color Purple demonstrate to us a different consequence for different choices made.  How many of us would not give most all we have to be able to see the different routes our choices might make our life take, if we could but just see them all from the beginning.  For Celie, it becomes a little bit easier to see the others choices as how they survive…they become just a little bit easier to forgive.  Realizing all this, that each person is responsible for their own choices and has to make their own peace with God and the world, she is at last able to enjoy the satisfaction of living out loud and being herself…of showing who and what she really is without apology.  Things just seem to work better then.  That’s how it is with Jesus and us.  When we realize that he isn’t just some angry old codger who is continually put out with us, but is lovingly correcting us through our choices, then we are able to live more boldly.  We know if we stumble he has covered us in his righteousness, and that he has given us instruction in the meantime on how to make good choices…obedience.  And obedience is better than sacrifice.  Celie saw the Truth and the Truth set her free…go and do likewise.

It was on this day in 2005 that The Color Purple, now produced by Oprah, opened to rave reviews and much success on Broadway.

John 8:31 Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

33 They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

34 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. (James 4:14)

It’s hard when an icon dies…that part of Americana that has always been with us is suddenly missing. I wonder why that is? It was that way when Natalia Zacharenko passed away. Don’t remember her? Little Natalia first came to our consciences in the 1947 Christmas Classic “Miracle on 34th Street”, when she played the believing little lady…she would go on to star opposite Orson Wells, Claude Colbert, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis and many more superstars in an estimated 20 more films as a child. As a teen she set her sights even higher, receiving an Academy Award Nomination for he co-starring role in “Rebel Without a Cause”, opposite James Dean. She graduated from Van Nuys High School in 1956, and wasted no time moving her career to the next level. In fairly quick succession she starred in “West Side Story”, “Gypsy”, “Splendor in the Grass”, and “Love with a Proper Stranger”…the last two of which she received Best Actress nods from the Academy Awards for. It was not so much that she had been a star in so many of the classic films that define our culture, as it was that she was a star as a child, a teen, and then a young adult, that had made her an icon. She was a Queen Victoria of sorts that ruled the Great Britannia of our movie f=going for almost four decades! And then suddenly it was over. Late one night while partying with co-star Christopher Walken and husband Robert Wagner, she somehow slipped overboard and washed up only day later…another Hollywood tragedy. So why is it so hard when someone like Natalia dies. I believe it is because we are terrified to look at our own mortality. We refuse to face the fact that we will all die. We don’t like thinking about the how, the why or the when. But when confronted with the loss of one of our icons, death becomes all too real. For the believer, though, death has no such hold…or it ought not to have. Jesus has redeemed, we have been saved from the Dark Eternity. We have not so much been made into good people from bad people, as we have been made from dead people into living people. Death therefore is just an instantaneous transition from glory to glory…from life to Life. It may seem we the same fear of death, but in many ways it is a fear of Life.
Because for us, the pensiveness brought on by the passing of an icon is more one of, “What have I left undone. How can I make each moment count?” Those are no bad things. They are in fact the very questions we should be asking ourselves everyday. After all, there was only one death of an icon that could really ever have lasting meaning…and that was the one death that brought us life, and that everlasting.
It was on this day in 1981 that an American Icon Natalie Wood, was found drowned near Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California. She was 43 years old.

1 Corinthians 15:54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?” 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Really great yarn tying the stories of HG Wells, Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes, Victorian England and adding in Henry James and Bram Stoker to boot! What would it be like if we could travel through time, what does the future look like when we imagine it? And what does that say about each of us, That’s the meat on the wonderfully written rabbit Palma has us chasing down ever more winding and deeper warrens. I must say I enjoyed the hunt.

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November 22

The Man of La Mancha, or the man of stained reputation if you prefer the hidden meaning in his name, is one of the most Christo-centric plays ever to be brought to Broadway.  Ostensibly it was written as a tribute to the great Spanish novelist Cervantes.  In both, the main character is one Don Quixote…a last name that hearkens to its meaning “quixotic”, meaning, the foolish and impractical pursuit of lofty and unattainable ideals.  Indeed this is precisely what Don Quixote is and what he does.  Because he had has gone a little loco in la cabeza , the nobleman Alonso Quixcano decides that he is a knight errant fro his country and must forthwith set out to right wrongs and rescue those who need rescuing.   But first, being a good knight, he musts find a page.  In reality he finds a poor farmer Sancho Panza, and presses him into service.  In the course of their travels, the protagonists meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherds, soldiers, priests, escaped convicts, and scorned lovers. These encounters are magnified by Don Quixote’s imagination into chivalrous quests. Don Quixote’s tendency to intervene violently in matters which do not concern him, and his habit of not paying his debts, result in many privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often getting the worst of it). Finally, Don Quixote is persuaded to return to his home village.  The libretto from the play is much the same although, in an effort to explain the broader meaning of the book and story, it has Cervantes (the author) defending his new, nearly finished manuscript to a group of fellow prisoners.  They are all spending some time in goal as guests of the Spanish Inquisition.  Of particular note is one Aldonza who is a self-described whore…though judging by her name a sweet one, Aldonza means sweet.  Quixote is convinced that she is the lady Dulcinea, a name that also means sweet by the way.  He treats her so royally and chivalrously, that she eventually believes it herself.  Despite the fact that she and Sancho think Quixote is a bit ridiculous, and totally insane, despite the fumbling and bumbling into the, somehow, correct solution to problems, despite the skipping out on every debt he incurs upon his quest, she becomes convinced of her worth…simply because he says she is worthwhile.  In the closing scenes, at his death, Aldonza has come back to tell Don Quixote that she will believe no matter how preposterous in his vision of things “as they should be”, and is willing to follow him in his “Impossible Dream”.  Alas, in that moment as he is re-energized and straps on his armor for his lady…he falls dead.  When Sancho calls her by her name to comfort her she says not to call her Aldonza, “My name is Dulcinea.”  And isn’t this the way it is for us as Christians.  Just as Sancho the illiterate peasant becomes a the clever, proverb-quoting book-wise, squire in the royal household, and Don Quixano the shopkeeper becomes Don Quixote the knight of the realm, and even a whore becomes a royal lady, so too we have all been changed from the poor wretched worthless things we thought were into the beautiful things God sees in reality.  Just like many of the people living around Cervantes could not see true reality, and true faith, obscured as it was by the Inquisition, so too we are blinded by religiosity and dogma.  But if you peek under the curtain, if you show a little backbone and are unafraid to be called a rebel or a heretic and go beyond the vain traditions of men towards a real relationship with a living God…you just might find a world more real than reality.  You just might find Jesus waiting to bring you into a full and complete understanding of the miracles and wonders all around you every day…dragons that need slaying or princesses that need saving.  On the title page of the 1605 first edition of Cervantes masterwork, it reads “El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha”.  Translated literally it means: the ingenuity of the son of royalty, the blood stained (man) of the stripes…and it is when he lays down and dies that Aldonza is at last convinced of her true identity Dulcinea.

Revelation 2: 17 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.

It was on this day in 1965 that “Man of La Mancha” opened at the Washington Square Theater in Greenwich Village in NY City.  It’s still tilting towards wonder today.

Most of the women who have serious jobs today in film and TV owe a debt of gratitude to Margaret.  She refused to play the ditzy, dippy, empty-headed beauty so en vogue in most of the shows she was a part of…and there were a lot of them.  Her father was already an actor of some note by the time she arrived on the thespian scene.  She, of course, put in her obligatory time at college (she graduated from USC with a degree in teaching) and from there the local LA scene…bit parts in commercials and episodic TV.  However, in 1961 she had a breakthrough role on the Joey Bishop Show, and quickly followed that success up with a recurring role on The Dobie Gillis Show.  More roles followed quickly, almost always recurring, Doctor Ben Casey, My Favorite Martian, and even Bonanza.  Even though her quick rise was impressive, her real accomplishment was the work she devoted herself early on to…that of empowering women.  It became obvious in her next role.  Margaret played (what else) an actress (Ann Marie) who has move to NY City to make it in the acting business.  This may seem unremarkable as you read this, but in the year that it was made (1966) it was quite unique.  It marked the first time ever in American TV where a young single girl’s struggle to make it, as opposed to one living at home or as a domestic for a family, was being portrayed as a viable lifestyle.  Up until then women were mostly cast in the sidelight of men, and when they weren’t they would be married to the main character of the show.  However Margaret’s devotion to women’s equality did not stop merely at the foot of the stage.  She also put in to practice the very things she was acting out in front of the camera.  Ostensibly created by the much-lauded team of Persky & Denoff  (The Dick Van Dyke Show), Margaret was widely known to be its real creator. It was in fact the reason she created her own production company (“Daisy Productions”), a thing unheard of at the time.  Daisy Prod was even credited with being the production company.  As believers, we want our women to be respectable…that does not necessarily preclude them from being present and active and even leading, in the marketplace of ideas, or indeed any marketplace they may choose.  A close reading of the dictates of Proverbs 31, often quoted to demonstrate true womanhood from God’s perspective, shows a woman who is involved in the daily operation of her home, but also in the market making sure her husband and family are getting the most bang for their buck.  In other words she is a production company of sorts…jus of a different order.  Margaret took her skill as an actress, and coupled it with he belief that women deserved the same recognition and chances as men did to develop creative ideas, and bring them to TV.  After all, half of the American audience was women.  Because she was unafraid of losing her job or losing a part, Margaret became a stepping-stone on which many women after her, Mary Tyler Moore, Carol Burnett, Bea Arthur, were able to build careers and production empires of their own.  In fact, any woman in comedy who had a TV show after 1970 owes their career and a debt of gratitude to this extraordinary woman.  It was on this day in 1937 Margaret Thomas a.k.a. Marlo Thomas a.k.a. “That Girl” was born to veteran actor Danny Thomas, and opened a whole world of possibilities for the “Other Girl”.