Holy Rollah...

It was a pretty good day.  I woke up later than I wanted but was somehow able to hit the ground running and remain in a pretty good mood.  I got the lunches made, ate breakfast, got kids off to school, went to one appointment, went to another appointment, had a blood draw (I'm fine.  I'm fine!  Don't worry!), picked up some prescriptions (I said I'm fine!), picked up some .49 chex cereal at Kroger (that's right.  I got 12 boxes of chex cereal AND a marked down salad to eat for lunch for $7.17 AND that machine spit out a coupon for to get some lady care items for free), picked up the kids, brought the kids home, chilled and ate my tasty $1.29 salad, picked up some more kids, brought all the kids home, plowed through some papers and crap looking for some receipts that Hubs really really wants me to turn in to get reimbursed for, battled my son while he did homework.  My mood deteriorated a little at this point.  But I pushed forward and made some s'getti using turkey Italian sausage, jarred sauce, 1 cup of pureed beets and 1/2 cup of pureed zucchini and served that sauce over the new Ronzoni Garden Delight rotini because they sneak vegetables in that pasta and I thought that all the subterfuge would work well together.  And it did.  It was mighty delicious.  I give that dinner a total of 8 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.  What?  It's not chocolate mousse and I had to make it myself.  It's not getting 10 jewels that way!

After the kids were settled into bed and Hubs and I were settled into our regular spots on the couch and settled into our nightly habit of ignoring all the sound upstairs so that we don't have to get out of our regular spots on the couch and go kick some patoot.  Hubs picked a movie to watch and I agreed because I was pretty agreeable today.  I'd like to figure out what made that magic formula today so that I might get into my little laboratory (which I pronounce like lah-bore-ah-tory - with long Os to sound sinister and mad-scientisty) and replicate that.  I like being agreeable.  It makes life flow.  There's not a follow up adverb.  Not flow better or flow nicely or whatever.  Life just flowed today. 

So, we watched Legion.  I didn't have a desire to see this movie.  I decided a while ago that I wasn't interested in investing my time into movies of a particular dark nature.  Don't get me wrong.  I like dark.  Dexter is one of my all time favorite shows.  I'm drawn to the Crimes and Trials portion of the news on Yahoo news.    I'm fascinated by how different kinds of people maneuver through what our world has become.  But I don't do possession stuff.  And I don't do haunting stuff.  And I don't do what I think is referred to as the "torture porn" genre.  I mean, really.  Were we so hard up for shocking that we had to come up with stuff so bleak and nasty that the term "torture porn" had to be coined?  As for the other two, here's the deal.  Personally, I believe that there is an opposition to God and that is scary to me.  I watch movies to escape and watching movies that glorify or entertain about some topics just ain't my bag.  And I was worried about where Legion fell on that spectrum.  And it rode a fine line.  I don't know how much I should say, because if you are all interested in seeing the movie, I don't want to take that away from you.  But here is what I will say.  The movie portrayed God in a way that I wasn't crazy about.  But there was some redemption involved in how they handled it.  No.  You know what.  It wasn't.  I'm thinking about it all over again.  And I take it back.  Maybe.  Okay.  Here's what happened.  So, if you want to see it and you don't want me to blow it for you, go read a cereal box or something. 

Michael comes down to earth to protect this woman who is very pregnant.  She is not married, she doesn't want the baby and there is a dude who is totally in love with her that she doesn't really love back.  She lives in a teeny tiny town that consists of maybe around 7 people.  And they run a restaurant and a garage.  I'm not really sure how they stay in business but you don't question these kinds of things - it's a movie.  Okay, so, there's a rich stranded couple there with their late teen rebellious daughter, a cook with a hook for one of his hands, an unwed pregnant waitress, the crusty bitter owner, his lovelorn, frowny face man of few words son - the mechanic, and a dude who is passing through town on the way to a custody hearing who happens to be carrying heat.  The only reason we know that he is going to a custody hearing is so that we can have context for all the times he falters and doesn't kill the evil child demon angel and risks his life as well as the lives of others because his heartstrings got all tugged.  So,this old lady comes in and orders some food and is all sweet and kindly  But then flies start swarming around her and her extra rare steak and you know something isn't right.  So she starts talking some ugly talk and turns all evil and wants to kill everyone and gets shot dead.  And then Michael shows up and says some bad stuff is going down because God is all mad at us again and before it was a flood but now the angels are coming and they are going to do an extinction.  But this pregnant chick is carrying the baby that is the hope for all humanity and everyone has to be all brave and kill all these angels who are acting like evil possessed people who are trying to kill the baby.  And it turns out that Michael stopped being an angel the night before because his orders were to kill the baby but he didn't like that so he quit.  And you could tell he was serious because he cut off his wings AND he stitched up the wound.  I don't know.  I guess if you don't take the time to stitch up the wound with a handy curved needle and thread that happened to be in the first aid kit he found in the dimly lit bathroom, those suckers can grow back.  So, Michael decided that he wasn't going to give God what He asked for, he was going to give God what He needed - which was the same faith in humanity that he, Michael, had.  So, everybody shoots up all the evil angels and gets tempted and confused and then sees the light and starts sacrificing themselves for the good of the baby and Michael gets killed by Gabriel who came to obey God and kill the kid.  But Michael comes back just in the nick of time to save the heroic lovelorn dude who was protecting the unwed now mother and the baby.  And Gabriel is all like - wait!  I killed you!  How can you come back as an angel after you dissed God.  And Michael is all like - hey Gabriel - I told ya.  You gave Him what He asked and I gave Him what He needed.  And Gabriel tells Michael to go ahead and kill him and Michaels says no, you can't boss me.  He doesn't say that but he galliantly refuses to off Gabriel so that he is a good example and such.  And both Gabriel and Michael ascend into heaven and the unwed mother falls in love with the lovelorn dude and they drive off into the sunset with a crap-load of semi-automatic weapons in the back seat for protection.  Aaaaand scene.

Here's my deal.  I don't like that the angels were portrayed as evil.  I get that angels could be intimidating and it frightened people when they showed up because they were total bad-asses and, also, because they were, you know, not from earth and stuff and appeared out of nowhere and said that God was telling them stuff.  But I don't think that they are, nor have they ever been black-eyed, sharp toothed menacing creatures that were looking to say vile curse words and pretend to be children to lure people into a position of vulnerability so that they could kill the one lone hope of the world.  That is just not jiving with what I know of the bible.  And granted, I'm not a scholar, but this feels for real off base.  Now, the other side of this is that God gets totally over us and I could see that.  We do some wicked stuff down here.  And it seems to get worse rather than better.  But I don't think the rainbow was a promise of never flooding again.  I don't think that He was being all fancy with His wording so that there was some wiggle room.  I think He really did mean that He was promising that He wouldn't ever wipe us out again.  In any way, at all.  Ever.  I don't think you take yourself, pour yourself into a human form, go through child-birth - which I feel certain isn't a picnic for either party involved, and also - God is all infinite and He squished Himself into a baby size which I have to believe was a little cramped up for Him, go through painful, awkward puberty, become a man and face ridicule and opposition and scrutiny and cruelty and betrayal and death to show someone (which in this case means EVERYONE - including you) just how in love you are with them only to decide it wasn't worth it and it's back to the drawing board.  I mean, He could.  He's God.  He reserves the right to WHATEVER.  But it just doesn't make sense.  What's the point?  So then, I was thinking, okay, so, Michael changes God's mind.  And I believe that can happen.  I believe that even though God knows how things will go, His heart can be moved.  He can change the nature of things so that they can turn out differently.  Now, this could for real scramble my brain if I think about it too long - if He knows how things are going to go, is it going that way because they were originally going a different way and then He changed His mind and all that is part of the process of how it ended up going this way in the first place?  Do you see what I mean??  But then, what bothered me is the portrayal that Michael knew better than God what God needed.  It makes it sound like Michael is wiser than God.  And I'm not into that.  And then it occurs to me that this is an awful lot of consideration about a movie with an Oscar-nominated actor or two (hollah to Dennis Quaid and Paul Bettany!) and a B-list script at best. But, I think that soul-searching can often times come in the most unexpected places.  So maybe I'm just exploring my stance in some ways right now - and being a bit surprised with the results. 

I would give the way that my mind is spinning and processing right now 9 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.  I like when the juices get flowing and synapses fire in new ways.  And no, I'm not giving Legion the satisfaction of more jewels as if the movie specifically gives the credit for that.  It gets 4 out of 10 Jenny's jewels and that's that. 

I gotta pack it in.  I think I'm supposed to go dust off my bible and memorize some verses now.  For real though, check out Isaiah 1:17 to be inspired.  It's a really big verse for my life right now as I amp up for an extraordinary event called Unbound.  So.  What's inspiring you these days?