By Karen Eifler
Explaining that lump in your throat. The lump you get in "A Christmas Story" when Ralphie spies the longed-for Red Ryder carbine-action, 200 shot Range Model air rifle hiding behind his dad's desk (before he shoots his eye out). . . or in "Groundhog Day," when caustic, cynical Bill Murray finally realizes that his heart's truest desire is to be the kind of sweet, thoughtful guy that Andie MacDowell admires, and disciplines himself to genuinely become that guy. Or when scrappy little Wall-E and sleek EVE finally lock their magnets together and plants blossom once again on the parched earth.
That is how I have come to see what fellow film buff Fr. Charlie Gordon, C.S.C. and I attempt with the Bringing Eyes of Faith to Film series that begins its second year on Sept. 30 with a free showing of "Kung Fu Panda" at 7:15p.m. in Franz 6. Over lunch one day we discovered that our favorite movies are those that can be enjoyed on multiple levels. Turns out that Fr. Charlie is a genius at finding religious symbolism in just about any movie.
Don't believe me?
Ask him to unpack "The Poseidon Adventure" for you sometime, and you will be astounded at how adeptly he mines what I saw as a low-budget disaster popcorn flick for legitimate Christological symbolism. It happens that every time a lump arises in my throat during that movie-or any movie-someone is making a brave, difficult choice, or two characters are experiencing an unexpected moment of reconciliation, or new life is emerging out of what appears barren, dead or hopeless.
Embracing one's vocation, no matter how challenging or counter-intuitive it might look to others (or to yourself), forgiveness and resurrection are another way to name those themes, and they are at the absolute heart of the Christian faith.
What a fine thing it would be, we thought, if we could expose similar elements in recent popular movies to an audience.
And so this film series was born.
We talk about it in terms of arousing a sacramental imagination.
What we mean by that goes beyond the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, although those are never very far away. In its broadest sense, a sacrament marks an instance of grace, God's boundless gift of love for all God's creation.
When our sacramental imagination is in gear, we actually take note of the miracles that always surround us.
Gerard Manley Hopkins captures sacramental imagination with typical elegance in his poem "Hurrahing the Harvest," in which a farmer trudging home from a sweaty day's work suddenly notices how stunning the autumn sky is, and the wheat and the hills-present all along, but unnoticed: "these things were here, but the beholder wanting."
Simply beholding, noticing, paying attention to miracles gentle and astounding are excellent starts to developing a sacramental imagination.
It's not that we want to ruin popular films for the audience, or make them think that there always has to be a secret religious meaning to every movie. It's more a matter of helping open people's eyes to themes of grace, redemption and vitality that lurk in all engaging stories; of helping them become beholders. People tend to see mostly what they already understand; bringing eyes of faith to films may help us see more.
Finally, in this era of iPhones, iPods, solitary iThisses and iThats, it's a wonderful thing to gather several people together in a room to watch a movie and pass the popcorn. Or the Kleenex, when you feel a lump building up in your throat.
Karen Eifler is an education
professor
