Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Based on a comment from Sunday's post of Hoppipolla I just finished watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I just got a shiver down my spine. This movie reached into my spirit like Magnolia did and Memento didn't.

Read line 209 of Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard" (here)

Five years ago, my wife and I saw Magnolia with four Australian friends at University theatre at UBC while Dar was working for World Vision's Vancouver office and I was studying at Regent. I cried a lot after that one. I could barely walk back to our student housing. I kept doubling over in tears and snot. I couldn't walk straight. I don't recommend the movie. It tore my guts out and I don't think I'll tell you why. We didn't have children yet and I had been dealing with some childhood stuff.

Two or three years ago, I saw Memento in Waterloo, Ontario with a worship band from BC after they had led "worship" with my youth ministry and "marketed" their school. In our home, the students cracked out their sleeping bags and dvd collection. Some of the guys were ranting and raving about Memento being their favorite flick. I sat there dumbfounded through the whole movie. Why had these guys seen this a dozen times?

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind made me think of anyone I know who has lost someone they love to premature death, drug abuse, mental illness, or alzheimers. And, what would it really be like for people to hear what they really think of each other, and all those reasons why they want to erase each other from memory? Fascinating! For anyone who has seen it, the resolve at the end of this film didn't bring me back from the place the movie had been taking me to with relentless "fade to black". I got good and lost. And I won't be back for a while. This film got into my brain. I don't mind being nudged and influenced by decent art.

It's a bit like being mystified into darkness by a poet, enchanting sunset, revolving hope, cold shadows, silhouette, glowing furnace, gleaming Western sky


The power of memory is great, very great, my God. It is a vast and infinite profundity. Who has plumbed its bottom? This power is that of my mind and is a natural endowment, but I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am. Is the mind, then, too restricted to compass itself, so that we have to ask what is that element of itself which it fails to grasp? Surely that cannot be external to itself; it must be within the mind. How then can it fail to grasp it? This question moves me to great astonishment. Amazement grips me.

People are moved to wonder by mountain peaks, by vast waves of the sea, by broad waterfalls on rivers, by the all-embracing extent of the ocean, by the revolution of the stars. But in themselves they are uninterested.
Augustine's Confessions

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Alexander Pope

The memory of the righteous will be a blessing,
but the name of the wicked will rot.
Proverbs 10:7

Cascade and Sulphur

Warm here this week - 14 degrees today. Good for hiking. Yesterday morning I drove to Banff anticipating Rundle again. I arrived to Rundle swamped out in fog. As I came off the highway there was a rainbow to the right, so I drove toward it.

At the end of the rainbow was a little parking area, so I pulled over, got out to stretch and read this plaque.



It would be an adventure to train up and mobilize 10,000 young leaders.

Since I was already there, I decided to hike up as much as I could of Cascade. At the trail head I read this cryptic sign, "Have you closed your flight plan?" What on earth did that mean? Was it a sign from God I was going to die on the mountain? Kidding...


500 feet into my wet climb I came back down and wandered the trail at the base of Cascade.




I realized the earlier sign meant it was an emergency landing strip.

I found three planes in a little makeshift airplane refugee camp.

I hiked the length of the runway and then further beyond to get some pics of the back of Cascade and Elk Pass.


After some rehydration and snacks I drove into Banff and hiked the hour and a half up Sulphur, across the valley from Rundle. At 2:30 pm the clouds finally cleared off the top of Rundle. The whole way up Sulphur I prayed and preached and imagined whole spiritual armies of young saints uniting together as one for the sake of our cities.

Anything is possible while you're trudging through new fallen snow on a mountain. Everything is so fresh and clear and free.
Sometimes it's important to land the plane. But, a good plane won't stay on the ground for long.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

My family and I have listened to Delirious? The Mission Bell three or four times today. It's now after 11 pm, typically quiet time for blogging. I was going to post about how each song sounds like this or that vintage 70's or 80's tune. I was going to say something about album guests Toby Mac and Matt Redman, but something just happened here during Gerard Le-Feure's cello solo in 'Our God Reigns' that I need to write down.

I am now listening to Our God Reigns (hear a bit here) on repeat....

An hour ago I started a Google search of "for whom the bell tolls" and after a bit of Hemingway and Pink Floyd settled down on John Donne's "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623), XVII: Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris- "Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die."

A portion of Donne's sermon (also here and here) rang deep into my soul and spirit,

As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest.

If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.

The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Then, in my Google links was this October 25, 2005, "BBC: My Africa" blog posting by Moses Rubn entitled For Whom the Bell Tolls about recent happenings in Uganda:

Last week my country's former head of state Dr. Apollo Milton Obote, independent Uganda's first president, died in exile and while some Ugandans mourned his passing, others celebrated.

When his body was brought home from Zambia this week, the same pattern followed. Mourners, especially in Eastern and Northern Uganda turned up in their thousands to mourn their fallen "hero." Some Baganda, though, who considered him an enemy of the Buganda kingdom despite his marrying a Muganda went out to celebrate in a stadium outside Kampala where they bull roasted and drunk, carried out a mock funeral and lifted a dog up in the air calling it Obote's heir.

When Saddam Hussein was arrested in a rat hole by the Americans and his pitiful pictures appeared on CNN, my niece Sheila cried. She did so not because she adored Saddam Hussein but because she was moved with pity to see a former head of state in a pitiful state.

Later on when Uganda's former dictator Idd Amin Dada passed away in exile in Saudi Arabia, my mother was filled with sorrow to see him die in the loneliness of exile. She felt very sorry when she learnt that he had been buried nearly as soon as he had died in line with Islamic traditions. She felt that he should have been buried in a more decent way befitting a former head of state.

Mom never loved Amin but she was moved by his death anyway. On the night of October 10 2005 when I broke the news of Obote's passing to Mom she lost sleep over it, so she told me in the morning.

Well, that is Mom and I wonder what is in her that moves her to such compassion. I believe, though, that it is the true human spirit that recognises that no man is an island of himself, for both fortunes and misfortunes do come to us all no matter who we are or what state we might be in. The good book too, says that mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice...

I wonder, though, in what spirit some of my fellow countrymen, some of whom claim to be Christians, celebrated. I would rather they ignored Obote like he never existed. Check out the poem below if you will, for you might ponder anew what humanity is really like or about.

Moses completed his post with John Donne's sermon.

First thing I did after reading Moses' blog was open my Operation World to Uganda. Operation World is a book that guides prayer for all the nations of the world over one year (online version here). Last week, I had put a green sticky note in Uganda (November 9) because, for some reason, I wanted to come back to it again and pray more for Uganda. It's the only green sticky note in the whole book, and I put it there last week. When I saw Uganda in Operation World, Moses' blog in front of me on the screen, Our God Reigns lament playing on the stereo behind me... I just started weeping for Uganda. My heart nearly burst. But, there is One who's heart 'did' burst for Uganda!

Our God Reigns

40 million babies lost
to God's great orphanage
it's a modern day genocide
and a modern day disgrace
if this is a human right
then why aren't we free?
the only freedom we have is
in a man nailed to a tree

100 million faces staring at the sky
wondering if this HIV will ever pass us by
the devil stole the rain
and hope trickles down the plug
but still my chinese take away
could pay for someone's drugs

our God reigns, our God reigns forever your kingdom reigns

the west has found a gun
and it's loaded with 'unsure'
nip and tuck if you have the bucks in a race to find a cure
psalm one hundred and thirty nine
is the conscience of our selfish crime
God didn't screw up when he made you
he's a father who loves to parade you

yes he reigns, yes you reign, yes you reign
for there is only one true God
but we've lost the reins on this world
forgive us all, forgive us please
as we fight for this broken world on our knees

...and change your clothes!

Soldiers give up the right to wear whatever they want. They wear what they are told to wear.

Colossians 3:12 (MSG), "So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline."

Last year, at the end of 24 hours of unbroken prayer and a three hour worship service with 150 students I had a vision of an Australian Aborigine standing by a large cross pointing at a rack of white robes beside him prompting me to change my clothes. That was strange. What was I doing seeing an Australian at a cross? I was in Ontario, Canada in a room full of singing students.

Now, that flukey thing may have been my imagination. But, at the time of that vision there were two students laying hands on me in prayer. I had been sitting at the back of the worship marathon, after midnight, minding my own business, sitting there praying silently. I began seeing something in my mind's eye. I said to myself, "No way! It can't be." I was getting a tour of the whole world... Europe, then Africa, Asia, then Australia. Very hard to explain!

Simultaneous to my doubt, two students walked up to me, laid hands on me and prayed there on my shoulders for an hour. They had no idea what was in my head. They just showed up and started praying for me. And they didn't leave until the moment the vision was over. While they stood there and prayed for me, the vision got more and more intense. Then I saw the Aborigine point to the white robes...

And to top it all off the girl leading worship said into the microphone (at the same time as this Aborigine showing me white robes in my 'vision'), "Jesus said that Solomon wasn't dressed like the lilies... but you know what, sometimes you have to change your clothes. You have to change your clothes."

At that moment, I said out loud to God, "Ok, I'll change my clothes." And in my imagination, or wherever I was, I put on a white robe from the Aborigine's rack... And seriously, I began to ascend the hill of the Lord. I have no idea how to explain what I began to see and experience. Honestly though, I think I saw the city of God... the size of a whole mountain range.

Then God said to Jacob, "Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau." So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes."
Genesis 35:1-2

But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy mixed with fear - hating even the clothing stained by corrupt flesh.
Jude 20-23