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You'd think I'd learn. I am A) a big sap, B) in love with Barbara Hershey, and C) a fan of music. Why did I watch "Beaches" (the end) again? At least I turned away at the climax, so I didn't cry again.

I don't care what you say; that's a good movie. I'm not a Bette Midler fan per se, but I can't hear "Wind Beneath My Wings" without thinking of the movie. By contrast, her song "From A Distance" is hideous, deistic crap. God is not in fact watching us from a distance; He's about as near as you can get. Get thee to a tabernacle, stat!

I digress. Perhaps I was in a frame to cry, because I found "For Love Of The Game" on one of the movie channels, too. I've seen this movie 4 times now. Love it. Great baseball movie. Vin Scully announcing the game. Yankee Stadium. Aging pitcher. Kevin Costner. Love story. Is there any way this could be a bad movie? Just trust me. But it got me choked up again, at the end. Confirmation Sponsor Lady says it's predictable. Well, you know what else is predictable? The story of redemption. God help me if that ever gets old. [You just compared the salvation of humanity to an overwrought baseball movie.--ed.] All I'm saying is, I live in a world where the good guys win, the bad guys lose, there's forgiveness, and everyone is happy. We need more stories like this, not less. Our culture, when it's not trying to numb us, prod us toward irony and cynicism, and otherwise ruin us, is obsessed with being "gritty" and "real." But have you noticed that our broken humanity is an end in itself? We're not supposed to rise above ourselves or the world, we're just supposed to accept ourselves, if we do any celebrating at all.

Forget that. I don't want to look any closer at the world; I know it sucks, left to itself. Frankly, there's a limit to how much introspection I should do, too. I was a Calvinist; we're experts at feeling bad about ourselves. Let's cut through it, shall we? Who's world is this? And what has He done to save it? Any place or moment that I'm not with that program, OK, I renounce that. But this is not a sad story! God is not an ogre. There is in fact a Hell, but the interesting thing is, you only go there if you want to. That's what I heard the man say. If we are open to Love, we can have as much as we want to.

How do you grow up in a pew, and not hear that? Sheesh. Not that I did. I'm just saying.

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