I had this great idea – let’s take the new minister to a movie. It will be great. I’m not much of a movie guy, but it’ll be fun.
You’ve seen Invincible? And World Trade Center? Okay, let’s go see Hollywoodland. It’s supposed to be kind of like LA Confidential. Could be fun…
For those that do not get the joke, you must realize that Hollywoodland has zero redeeming value. ZERO. There is no way to pull a good thing out of this movie. No, the ending doesn’t even come close, though it is the most positive part of the movie. Ugh! Over 2 hours of continuing misery that just leaves you feeling grimy. Seriously, this movie starts depressing and sinks into some worse-than-life cesspool of 50s era Hollywood gone awful. I think Holywood is sleazy and depraved in places, but really.
So let me tell you what I really think about this movie. đŸ™‚
The minister was good about it, though I felt really badly.
The talk we had afterwards, though, was encouraging to say the least. I think I had just wanted to thank him for the sermon on Sunday and thank him for the ILC 2003 in Dallas. The first I enjoyed as probably the best thing I’ve heard from a pulpit in quite a long time. The latter because it gave me an opportunity to talk to some people that I really needed to talk to, thus starting my journey to make sense of my ICoC experience.
After that, we talked about family and some common church experiences. We shared about a lot of things, really. I had expressed a real interest in going to Abilene for the conference, but I cannot afford to go. He offered to let me room with him. Maybe we can go to another conference in the near future, he said later. We talked about some things that have happened, but also just about what it means to be here in this city and part of this congregation.
I left feeling very encouraged. Not because I was heard on some crucial issue, my windmills are obvious to most everyone, but because I had to have a good conversation with a minister. I wanted to have a conversation with the right amount of spirit, frankness, levity, and divulging to build respect for someone concerned about the spiritual health of the church I attend.
Like I told him, it’s just good to have a good story every once in a while.