Episode 316 - The Ballad of John and Walter

What a load of uncharted material is out there for people who are looking for Grace! Here I have spent almost 60 years "trolling" for redemptive material, words and music, especially the Seventh Art, that would speak, and hopefully heal. And now I find, near the advent of my 70th birthday, literally **TONS **of main-line examples of transformative Christian art that I never even knew existed. Take movies like Journey into Light (1951), with Sterling Hayden and Viveca Lindfors. Or Miracle of the Bells (1948), with Frank Sinatra and Fred MacMurray. Or, just this week, Of Human Hearts (1938), with Jimmy Stewart and Walter Huston. Where have I been? All I ever got, back in the day, was Sergei Eisenstein and Michelangelo Antonioni and Godard and ... The Graduate (1968). We worshipped The Graduate. I remember seeing it the week it opened. But had anyone ever referenced Miracle in the Rain (1956) or Gabriel over the White House (1936). Are you kidding? Niemand ! It's funny, it's as if the Hollywood movies that depict Christian faith as it actually is ... got almost instantly forgotten, and even if they made a ton of money. At any rate, I wasn't supposed to know about them -- except maybe the Universal monster movies of the '30s and '40s, for the reverence due Dracula and Frankenstein overrode the explicit religious message behind those movies. "Put away the Cross, Miliza!" (House of Dracula, 1945). Well, maybe this cast can give you some reassuring TV time before you get vaccinated. Oh, and these vintage movies with their explicit good religion end up talking about real people and real impasses and real losses. Turns out I'll take The Mortal Storm (1940) over 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) any time.