LINK: LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE REVIEW

Olive Hoover is a 7-year old girl who loves beauty pageants. Her wayward drug using grandpa thinks Olive is the most beautiful girl in the world and coaches her dance routines for child beauty contests. Olive’s overstretched mother, Sheryl, is a busy working mum; she holds down a job, looks after the household and watches over her suicidal brother Frank. Uncle Frank is the pre-eminent Marcel Proust scholar in the U.S., but is at an emotional low due to unrequited love of his student, professional misconduct and the consequential dismissal from his job. Dwayne is Olive’s 15-year old Nietzsche obsessed, half-brother who has taken a vow of silence, partly until he gets to flight school, and partly because he hates the way his family is. Richard is Olive’s dad who has financially put everything on the line for his self-penned ‘Refuse to Lose’ nine step self-help program, which he hopes to get published. Together the Hoover’s are a family on the verge of a breakdown.

The film starts when we find out that Olive, runner-up in the Florida state Little Miss Sunshine beauty contest, has actually won the title due to a default by the winner, thus making her eligible for the national contest. In order to fulfil Olive's dream, the precariously cash-strapped family decide to drive the 800 mile trip from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Redondo Beach, California, in their old yellow Volkswagen van.

This highly enjoyable and uplifting film is basically a dysfunctional comedic road-trip movie, where the acting is played for pathos and not gags. The characters are maybe a tad stereotypical: innocent Olive; stressed mum; hapless dad; angsty teenager; rebellious grandpa, but they are fleshed out with dreams, defects and dignities. None of the characters are going to achieve their idealized dreams, this is poignantly highlighted when Dwayne reads an eye test pamphlet and finds he’s colour-blind, thus destroying his life goal of enlisting in the Air Force. After freaking out and running from the van Sheryl tentatively approaches him saying, “Dwayne, for better or worse, we're your family...” Dwayne stands up and yells, “No, you're not my family, okay? I don't want to be your family! I hate you fucking people! I hate you! Divorce? Bankrupt? Suicide? You're fucking losers! You are losers!”

The Hoover’s are poles apart from ‘the perfect family’; the father’s fixation on winners and losers emphasizes how far away they are from worldly success. However, on the journey to Redondo Beach they begin realise that even in the face of adversity, be it, debt, divorce, depression or death, that the love of a dysfunctional family is better than the phoney-ness of the rest of life.  Again, Dwayne brings some insight to the situation when talking to his Uncle Frank he comes to this realisation: “You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. You know, school, then college, then work, fuck that. And fuck the air force academy. If I wanna fly, I'll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest. His Uncle Frank light-heartedly replies, “I'm glad you're talking again, Dwayne. You're not nearly as stupid as you look.”

The beauty pageant in the film seems to be a metaphor for the way western society’s success culture has a tendency to airbrush out imperfections and the self-delusion that we can all achieve our dreams.  The fact is we can’t all become beauty queens, or fighter pilots, or millionaire self-help gurus, or highly esteemed academics, or sexually fulfilled pensioners, or even happy families. Nevertheless, we can find faith, hope and love amidst the unfulfilled dreams, chaotic relationships and the randomness of life.

Marcel Proust wrote:  ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.’ So, not so much fulfilling life’s dreams, but seeing life differently. These ‘new eyes’ could be seen as ‘eyes of faith’, the writer of Hebrews states: ‘Faith makes us sure of what we hope for and gives us proof of what we cannot see.’ Or in other words: ‘The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.’ (Hebrews 11:1).

Faith and hope go hand-in-hand, and love is the means. Hope is more than wishful thinking and pipe-dreams, its faith ‘in’ God, and hope ‘in’ Christ, empowered to love by the Holy Spirit. Dreams are like morning mists: elusive and intangible. Hope is a person: Jesus. When we find this hope we have something solid and no matter what life throws at us we can trust in him. What will you put your hope in today?

PIONEER MINISTER LOGO

I have found the metaphor of a 'bridge' useful when thinking about church and the pioneering. The Church's role is to reconnect people with God, frustratingly the culture that separates us from God is constantly moving and just when we think we've got a grip on it, it changes. This story is reflected in the design of logo for the ministry. The orange represents the dawn of a new day, the Orwell Bridge identifies it with Ipswich, and we only see half the bridge because we don't always get the full picture with God, we have to take a step of faith.

THE MODES OF SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

I've been doing some thinking about how we got the Christianity we have today and came up with this graphic (start at the top and go clockwise).

Miracles: The good news of the Kingdom of God often broke out in the miraculous. Whether it was Jesus’ prophetic re-framing of Israel’s salvation story through the seven signs reported in the first twelve chapters of the Gospel of John, or the various exorcisms, healings, raising the dead and supernatural happenings, we find in all the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. All these and ultimately the greatest miracle of all, Jesus’ resurrection, convinced many of the validity of Jesus’ Way.

Meals: Jesus ate with sinners, and they were transformed by his love, he gathered his disciples around a simple meal of bread and wine and it became a new covenant. In Acts 2:46-47 ‘They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.’ The generous and loving hospitality offered in home after home spread the gospel across neighbourhoods and nations.

Martyrs: The death of Stephen in Acts 6 set a precedent of persecution for the fledgling faith, but instead of killing it off it sent it out further, wider and with greater conviction. Remember, all but one apostle was martyred for their faith in Jesus, however this didn't stop it spreading.

Missionaries: Jesus the sent one, sends the Apostles, sends Paul to the Gentiles, who sends others and the gospel spreads around the known world. It’s strategic, Spirit-led, and sacrificial, it costs them much, but contextualizes the gospel in non-Jewish cultures and sets a methodology of Church planting.

Mystics: After the great persecutions of Christians in the third century AD some Christians escaped and became hermits, ascetics, and cenobites, living in seclusion in the Egyptian desert. These people became known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers.  The most well-known was Anthony the Great, by the time he died thousands of monks and nuns had been drawn to living in the desert following his example. The solitude, austerity, and sacrifice of the desert was seen by Anthony as an alternative to martyrdom, which was formerly seen by many Christians as the highest form of sacrifice. Anthony also viewed desert solitude as a way to focus one's attention on refining and purifying the spirit which birthed the mystical tradition of interior silence and continual prayer. The writings and practices of the desert became a major influence on the development and spread of Christianity.

Monastics: Anthony the Great became known as both the father and founder of desert monasticism, St. Benedict and all of the monastic revivals of the Middle-Ages looked to the desert for inspiration and guidance. The blossoming of the religious way of life as a vocation for God, through devotion to spiritual practices, and the creation of centres of learning, prayer and hospitality, allowed Christianity to embed in the landscape. Some orders were inward looking; others became missionaries and set up new monasteries.

Monarchs: The Christianising of the Roman empire by Constantine normalised and ratified the faith. The of conversion to Christianity by emperors, kings, tribal leaders and family heads meant that wholesale adoption by a people group could be readily be achieved. Whether the subjects of such leaders would consider themselves as disciples of Jesus is debatable, but the nominal acceptance of a cultural Christianity let is spread.

Media: Through the stability of empires and kingdoms ideas easily spread through writings, arts, oratory, music, plays, architecture, language etc... Christianity became the air-we-breathe, the meta-narrative, and the norm.

Questions:

• How do these eight modes of practice relate to our post-modern, post-Christendom, individualistic consumerist western context.
• Are there any modes missing?
• In what ways are they relevant/irrelevant to God’s mission today?
• How can they be reinterpreted by the Church for today?