Lee McKusick

It’s always bittersweet finishing a captivating story. It’s an close on an exciting and captivating chapter, but there are so many good memories.

Enough nostalgia, let’s move to the waxing philosophical.

(Again, there may be spoilers so you’ve been warned.)



So I just finished watching Serenity, the movie set after Firefly. At the very end, as Mal and River are flying Serenity up and out of the storm, we find another instance where we can catch a glimpse of God’s nature.

Mal: Ain’t all buttons and charts, little Albatross. You know what the first rule of flying is? Well, I suppose you do, since you already know what I’m ’bout to say.
River: I do. But I like to hear you say it.

People have grappled for centuries with the question that “if God knows our hearts and minds, why do we pray?”. Questions of predestination aside, if God knows what we think and what we are going to pray, why should we bother actually doing it?

The simple answer would be because God wants us to. He didn’t create us so that we could just go our own way and live on our own, apart from him. He did it so that we could experience his goodness, love, and community, and so that He could love us in return and take pleasure in our lives. It is God’s joy, and therefore our own, that we pray and talk with Him. He may know what we’re going to say. But He likes to hear us say it.

Mal: Love. You can know all the math in the ‘verse, but you take a boat in the air you don’t love, she’ll shake you up sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down. Tell you she’s hurting before she keens. Makes her a home.

I don’t know any biblical parallel to this off the top of my head, other than Paul’s description of love, but this is such a powerful quote.

Love is the fuel that a true home runs on. If your home isn’t built on a foundation of love, it’ll fall right out of the sky and crash to the ground in a fiery wreck. But a home built on love has the power to soar high above the clouds, lifting you and yours above anything that threatens to tear you apart.

Speaking of which, we might as well finish out the scene:

River: Storm’s getting worse.
Mal: We’ll pass through it soon enough.

Persist through the storms of life, and you will come out the other side. Like Serenity emerging from the clouds to journey back out among the stars.

Shiny!

When I watch a movie, it’s usually because I want to be entertained. I want to immerse myself in another world, another plotline, another story. And when I come back from that other place, I want to feel better, more positive, or at least more thoughtful for the experience. I want movies to leave me with a smile for some reason or another.

I just finished watching No Country For Old Men, and I can honestly say that I found no form of escapism. I’m no more thoughtful because of it, it’s certainly not a happy movie, and I feel no positive repercussions from it.

I’m certainly not smiling…