Oh man, the first part of this is so beautiful and I mean - really something. I haven't got to the modern part, but the first part is doing a great job of making me not want to leave, causing me to feel like there is something ahead that is going to ugly up the beauty and simplicity of the first part with complexity and dissonance. I honestly just feel like...ugh. I don't want to go from this part, I just want this part to fill up the whole film. Ha! Too bad...but I grew up in the 90's so maybe I just have this feeling that ugh, I know what's coming - but then so did the monks when they got in the boat to head West. So I suppose we have to go with them into death with the same dread/hope. Now, the part where the nuns walked together with this sense of "...being alone with you, what will it be like?" and they talked about being soul friends - well. Up to this part the whole beginning was a tension of beautiful things, and this moment with the nuns had me weeping - it reminded me of me and Jared, especially when she says "But we have to stick to virtue" - ah! So I was in tears on the couch - Jared looked over at me and was like "something really had an impact". Lol. Now I will definitely have to follow this all the way through. I really really hope this does become a film some day - hopefully someone will make it beautifully. I'll say something more when I finish the whole thing. Thank you for sharing this with us, it really is beautiful.
Well, shoot, now you have me crying. But that's only because I know what you have ahead of you, and it's exactly as painful as you expect. But if you keep in mind what Amma Eireen says about saints of the future, you'll be able, Christ-like, to endure what it takes to meet them.
Amma Eireen's monologue on friendship, by the way, is adapted from St. John Cassian's Conferences, that lodestar of Latin Orthodoxy. I took a lot of things from the Conferences for the Irish story because those teachings would have been current among those characters.
Ahh my heart! My heart...I just finished the screenplay. Today is my 44th birthday. Happy birthday me...an aching heart! There is so much to this story. I have to thank you for the tenderness and grace at the end, that Sam went back and snuggled up with his sister. There's mercy, for you. It's good too that the pagan priest skull had that talk with the guy in the first part. I've thought a lot about that moment when he can see just start to see his neighbor's face...There is hope in it all throughout - but the heart has to grow a lot. So much. To hold it.
Now I have to go have my birthday dinner with red eyes and face from crying. God bless you, this was truly an unexpected and rich Christmas and birthday gift to me. I would say more, but it's off to dinner we go. Thank you for your story - for letting things be as they are... it's good for the heart to hold it all, it makes the heart grow. But ouch. Ha!
Happy birthday, Diana, and thank you dearly for your generous reading. The story of the skull is told about St. Macarius the Great in Sayings of the Desert Fathers. All the most powerful points — the placement of Christians, seeing the neighbor's face when prayed for — are directly from there. It reads like something written by an existentialist in the 1950s, but it's from 4th-century Egypt!
Oh man, the first part of this is so beautiful and I mean - really something. I haven't got to the modern part, but the first part is doing a great job of making me not want to leave, causing me to feel like there is something ahead that is going to ugly up the beauty and simplicity of the first part with complexity and dissonance. I honestly just feel like...ugh. I don't want to go from this part, I just want this part to fill up the whole film. Ha! Too bad...but I grew up in the 90's so maybe I just have this feeling that ugh, I know what's coming - but then so did the monks when they got in the boat to head West. So I suppose we have to go with them into death with the same dread/hope. Now, the part where the nuns walked together with this sense of "...being alone with you, what will it be like?" and they talked about being soul friends - well. Up to this part the whole beginning was a tension of beautiful things, and this moment with the nuns had me weeping - it reminded me of me and Jared, especially when she says "But we have to stick to virtue" - ah! So I was in tears on the couch - Jared looked over at me and was like "something really had an impact". Lol. Now I will definitely have to follow this all the way through. I really really hope this does become a film some day - hopefully someone will make it beautifully. I'll say something more when I finish the whole thing. Thank you for sharing this with us, it really is beautiful.
Well, shoot, now you have me crying. But that's only because I know what you have ahead of you, and it's exactly as painful as you expect. But if you keep in mind what Amma Eireen says about saints of the future, you'll be able, Christ-like, to endure what it takes to meet them.
Amma Eireen's monologue on friendship, by the way, is adapted from St. John Cassian's Conferences, that lodestar of Latin Orthodoxy. I took a lot of things from the Conferences for the Irish story because those teachings would have been current among those characters.
** *SPOILER ALERT (ha!) ***
Ahh my heart! My heart...I just finished the screenplay. Today is my 44th birthday. Happy birthday me...an aching heart! There is so much to this story. I have to thank you for the tenderness and grace at the end, that Sam went back and snuggled up with his sister. There's mercy, for you. It's good too that the pagan priest skull had that talk with the guy in the first part. I've thought a lot about that moment when he can see just start to see his neighbor's face...There is hope in it all throughout - but the heart has to grow a lot. So much. To hold it.
Now I have to go have my birthday dinner with red eyes and face from crying. God bless you, this was truly an unexpected and rich Christmas and birthday gift to me. I would say more, but it's off to dinner we go. Thank you for your story - for letting things be as they are... it's good for the heart to hold it all, it makes the heart grow. But ouch. Ha!
Happy birthday, Diana, and thank you dearly for your generous reading. The story of the skull is told about St. Macarius the Great in Sayings of the Desert Fathers. All the most powerful points — the placement of Christians, seeing the neighbor's face when prayed for — are directly from there. It reads like something written by an existentialist in the 1950s, but it's from 4th-century Egypt!