Just Enough

Dave Brisbin | 9.16.18 Movies are our dominant storytelling media these days, and though we can say it’s a shame people aren’t reading as much anymore, sometimes the combination of a great script, great actors, and great pictures really brings a message home. Spinning the dial, I came across the movie Jackie and became involved in the story of Jackie Kennedy coping with the first seven days after the assassination of her husband/president. But what riveted me was the series of scenes between her and a priest counselor in which she asked the classic questions of grief, loss, and life in general. She questions God and his cruelty, she questions her actions and what she did to deserve the trauma and pain, and she questions her life as she reveals she’d been praying every night to die. The priest carefully tries to steer her down a middle course between the extremes of an indifferent God and one who actively creates or allows pain, but ultimately confesses there are no answers. Delivered by the great actor John Hurt just weeks before his own death to pancreatic cancer, a death he knew was coming, makes even more pointed the truth that at its most mature, our spiritual journey ceases as a search for rational answers that aren’t coming—and becomes a conscious immersion in moments we may not understand, but that God in his infinite wisdom has made sure are just enough for us.