Marked with Shadow (John Hendrix)
I've always been fascinated by a simple paradox: Why does it feel good to sing a sad song?
In our house, we've been watching a lot of movies lately. It seems that nearly every night is "movie night" now. I've enjoyed the routine and the regular time we have together, but as you might imagine, we do not all have the same preferences. My daughter, in particular, loves tragedies. Once, we had selected "Bridge to Terabithia," and she was completely uninterested in the story until (spoiler alert) one of the main characters suddenly dies off screen in a tragic accident. Suddenly, she was riveted. Now she wanted to watch it all over again from the beginning, this time eagerly anticipating the rich sorrow to come.
What is it about sorrow in our movies and films that draws us? Why do we want to pass through it?
During the first 8 weeks of this global pandemic, I'm fairly sure that what I am going through would not be classified as “sorrow” or "suffering." But, I'm also fairly sure that it would not be "not suffering" either. With everyone else, I am passing through something far less than fulfillment and peace, and the process makes me long all the more for a world free from anxiety, suffering, and death. We want Shalom. But Shalom is hard for humans to visualize on its own, apart from the shadow that it escapes; and without passing through and beyond that shadow, shalom, on its own, seems to make for a fundamentally uninteresting story. This season, and my deep longing for a return to normalcy, has made me realize the awful truth. As living stories, whether we like it or not, and whatever way it comes to us, we all pass through a hardship that sharpens our sense of a joy still to come. The hardships for my family, right now, are small. They may deepen. They may lessen. But either way, the movie isn't over yet.
John Hendrix is director of communications for The Carver Project and professor and chair of design in the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Further Reading:
J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories," in Essays Presented to Charles Williams (1947)
Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia (1977)
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