Return, ye children of men

"Thou turnest man to destruction;
and sayest,
Return, ye children of men."
- Psalm 90(89):3 of the KJV

Tonight the little city of Burlington was coated in a fresh layer of snow. Fittingly, I finally saw Children of Men and now it is sticking to my ribs like the sludge that is covering the roads. I am not even sure how to put my reactions to this movie into words.

I couldn't formulate thoughts at our post-film greasy Denny's meal, or while driving home through the thick layers of flakes, and not now sitting here trying to blog about it. Words escape me. They seem flimsy and inadequate.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about hope. And how, as I age, I am beginning to lose hope. This is a terrible thing. It could be caused by the sad state of the world today; this long, dark winter; my destined to be depressed genetic DNA coding; the gut wrenching play I am in; my biological clock echoing in my head; or maybe a combination of all these things. No matter the causes, it is a sad state of affairs.

And as Theo and Kee walk slowly past the glum faces of the lost and the forgotten ones, the hard and the cold, the blood thirsty and the violent, and joy sprouts fresh as they fall to their knees and grab at the infant's tiny foot - that is when I felt it too, I felt a surge of hope.

You can't buy hope. It can't be distilled, marketed, packaged and put on a shelf at the local mall. They try but it never lasts long. Hope is elusive and impossible to buy or sell.

And why is it that at our lowest ebb, in our darkest moments, we manage to go forward? Such as in this play I am rehearsing, The Trojan Women. When all the men have been killed and our city sacked and we are awaiting our various awful destiny's - slavery, death, rape.

Why is it that in these black moments, it is possible to go on? To place one foot after another and move forward? And why is it that women are often the ones leading this call towards hope? Towards life? Away from death and destruction?

Mourns Hecuba after she loses her daughter:

O my daughter, O Cassandra! whom gods have summoned to their frenzied train, how cruel the lot that ends thy virgin days! And thou, Polyxena! my child of sorrow, where, oh! where art thou? None of all the many sons and daughters have I born comes to aid a wretched mother.

Why then raise me up? What hope is left us? Guide me, who erst trod so daintily the streets of Troy, but now am but a slave, to a bed upon the ground, nigh some rocky ridge, that thence I may cast me down and perish, after I have wasted my body with weeping. Of all the prosperous crowd, count none a happy man before he die.

Children of Men wove a spell of hope around me. It builds on the terrifying futuristic visions of Brazil, Mad Max and Blade Runner and takes them to the next level. It is the future I have spent my whole life waiting for and dreading. But in the midst of it all, there is a sparkle, a glimmer of that elusive heart warming something, that whiff of hope.

And without it, humanity is truly doomed. Without hope, we are not even real anymore. Go see this movie and for a nibble, watch this montage - WARNING: contains spoilers:



WES: 90:3 Turnedst - But as for man, his case is far otherwise, though he was made by thee happy. and immortal, yet for his sin thou didst make him mortal and miserable. Saidst - Didst pronounce that sad sentence, return, O men, to the dust out of which ye were taken,

Gen 3:19.MHC: 90:1-6 It is supposed that this psalm refers to the sentence passed on Israel in the wilderness, Nu 14. The favour and protection of God are the only sure rest and comfort of the soul in this evil world. Christ Jesus is the refuge and dwelling-place to which we may repair. We are dying creatures, all our comforts in the world are dying comforts, but God is an ever-living God, and believers find him so. When God, by sickness, or other afflictions, turns men to destruction, he thereby calls men to return unto him to repent of their sins, and live a new life. A thousand years are nothing to God's eternity: between a minute and a million of years there is some proportion; between time and eternity there is none. All the events of a thousand years, whether past or to come, are more present to the Eternal Mind, than what was done in the last hour is to us. And in the resurrection, the body and soul shall both return and be united again. Time passes unobserved by us, as with men asleep; and when it is past, it is as nothing. It is a short and quickly-passing life, as the waters of a flood. Man does but flourish as the grass, which, when the winter of old age comes, will wither; but he may be mown down by disease or disaster.