It snowed today in Seattle. Four inches piled up on our front porch railing in the time that passed between eggs and second breakfast. (We measure time in meals. My children think they are hobbits.) The kids loved it! The grown ups loved it! I don’t think we’ve had this much snow in 6 or 7 years. People even tried to snowboard down the hill at Gasworks Park. Such joie de vivre when it snows. Lovely.

My dear friend Amber and I also went to see Big Fish today. The ad copy says, “From the imagination of Tim Burton…” and they aren’t lying. This is a visually stunning film about myth and it’s ability to carry truth, and how our ability to grasp that brings us to deeper understanding, to real knowledge. (Which nonetheless remains a slipper thing.) There’s a very interesting bit about our choice to become, or not to become, storytellers, and how that impacts our relationships with the other members of the tall tale in which we live. The movie has wonderful whimsical metaphors, and an interesting subcurrent about fate and determination and how the two meet and mix. (There are a lot of films out there dealing with fate these days. If I were to do another degree right now my dissertation would defintely be on fate in post-modern filmaking and what our artists are telling us about how our sociological and theolgical understandings of fate and faith are morphing. But that’s another story.) Anwyay, I loved Big Fish. Check out the website at www.sonypictures.com/movies/bigfish. The song by Eddie Vedder is downright gorgeous. One of those, stay-’til-the-credits-are-over-to-see-who’s-singing-that kind of tunes. Haunting and Lovely. Then go see the film and tell me what you think.

Speaking of wonderful works of art and what they have to say about truth….I also read this great quote in Cold Mountain last night. Two solidiers from the South are sitting on a ledge looking over a battlefield. The land is scarred and torn, littered with bodies and limbs. Utter carnage. Inman, the older of the two, points out a star in the Orion constalation and tells the boy it’s name is “Rigel.” The younger replies,
“- How do you know it’s name is Rigel?
- I read it in a book, Inman said.
- Then that’s just a name we give it, the boy said. It ain’t God’s name.
Inman thought for a minute and then said,
- How would you ever come to know God’s name for that star?
- You wouldn’t, He holds it close, the boy said. It’s a thing you’ll never know. It’s a lesson that sometimes we’re meant to settle for ignorance. Right there’s what mostly comes of knowledge, the boy said, tipping his chin out at the broken land, apparently not even finding it worthy of sweeping a hand across its contours in sign of dismissal.
At the time, Inman had thought the boy a fool and had remained content to know our name for Orion’s principal star and to let God keep His dark secret. But he now wondered if the boy might have had a point about knowledge, or at least some varieties of it. ”

Myth. Truth. Knowledge. Mystery. What fine balance shall we strike between these pairs?