FIRST ENTRY

In the 1999 film, Magnolia,—called an "epic mosaic" by one critic— Earl Partidge (Jason Robards), an unfaithful man whose life is slowly ebbing away, speaks of the two he loved and hurt the most: "I'd come home and get in her bed... and say... ”I love you." This is Jack's mother. His mother, Lily. These two... that I had... and I lost. This is the regret that you make. This is the... regret that you make and the something you take and the blah, blah, blah, something, something. Gimme a cigarette. Mistakes like this... you don't make. Sometimes... you make some and OK. Not OK, sometimes, you make other ones. Know that you should do better. I loved Lily. I cheated on her. She was my wife for twenty-three years. And I have a son. And she has cancer. And I'm not there, and he's forced to take care of her. He's fourteen years old. To... to take care of his mother... and watch her die on him. A little kid, and I'm not there. And she does die."

In his slurred, post-modern-yoda-like speech, Partridge confesses to his grown son (Tom Cruise) that he was a scoundrel to both wife and son. His life was one long self-seeking, self-promoting, self-aggrandizing "blah, blah, blah" of self-absorption. I am not much different than Mr. Partridge. But like I told someone once, the older I get, the more I realize how royally broken I am, yet the less I condemn myself for being so. How is it possible to see one's own screwedupness more while being disturbed by it less? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord who alone has come into the world to save us from ourselves; i.e., our sins. My prayer is that through this "bedosay" dialogue we'll be able to compare notes on the journey and maybe get over ourselves in the process (no matter how inconsistent) so that we can be about the business of grace and goodness in this broken world. Feel free to respond with your own thoughts/observations/questions on being, doing and saying. Until the next post,

Under Grace,

Martin