The Real Body

Watched “Lars and the Real Girl” last night.
It depicts how a family, their physician,
their small-town Minnesota community,
and their likely Lutheran church live into
a really difficult, actually pretty intractable problem:
the seeming deepening insanity of a sweet
but socially maladjusted young man.

Reminds me of my Nouwen blog yesterday,
of Henri dressing and feeding Adam
at L’Arche Toronto (Daybreak).
Adam was about 20 or 30, severely handicapped.
As I remember he vocalized but not meaningfully.
His movements were spastic at best. He needed to be
in a wheelchair or a bed at all times.
Henri, this 50-year-old Dutch priest, lecturer and writer,
was himself gradually transformed
from being annoyed (and feeling profoundly guilty)
by the simplicity of caring for and coming to know a person whom others
in our culture would simply abandon to their families or to care institutions...
People are transformed at L’Arche, not by big statements,
but by living presently, deeply, authentically with people of needs.

In the movie, “Lars Lindstrom lives in the converted garage behind the house he and his brother Gus inherited from their father. His pregnant sister-in-law Karin's persistent attempts to lure him into the house for a family meal are usually rebuffed, and on the rare occasions he accepts, their conversation is stilted and he seems eager to leave as soon as he can. The young man finds it difficult to interact with or relate to his family, co-workers, or fellow parishioners in the church he regularly attends.

“One day Lars happily announces to Gus and Karin he has a visitor he met via the Internet, a wheelchair-bound missionary of Brazilian and Danish descent named Bianca. The two are startled to discover Bianca is in fact a lifelike doll Lars ordered from an adult website. Concerned about his mental health, they convince Lars to take Bianca to Dagmar, the family doctor who is also a psychologist. Dagmar diagnoses Bianca with low blood pressure and advises Lars he needs to bring her in for weekly treatments, during which she will attempt to analyze him and get to the root of his behavior. She urges Gus and Karin to assist with Lars' therapy by treating Bianca as if she were a real woman.

“As time passes, Lars begins to introduce Bianca as his girlfriend to his co-workers and various townspeople. Aware of the situation, everyone reacts to the doll as if she were real, and Bianca soon finds herself involved in volunteer programs, getting a makeover from the local beautician, and working part-time as a model in a clothing store. Due to their acceptance of Bianca, Lars soon finds himself interacting more with people. At work, he takes notice of Margo, and when she reveals she has broken up with her boyfriend, Lars agrees to go bowling with her while Bianca attends a school board meeting. The two spend a pleasant evening, although Lars is quick to remind Margo he could never cheat on Bianca. She replies she would never expect that of him and tells him she hopes one day to find a man as faithful as he...” (Wikipedia)

I imagine myself in a similar situations, which our everyday lives (especially raising kids) provide us in abundance, and sense that I’m a lot like the older brother. I want to externalize the “problem,” I want others to agree with me that Lars is nuts and we deserve sympathy or can’t afford care. Or I’m like some in the town’s church council (not the pastor) who meet with Gus and Karin to discuss what to do when Lars turns up with Bianca on Sunday at church – one elder riffs that it’s “idolatry,” a robust and intriguing theological concept, but totally out of touch with Lars’ struggle, and who Lars is.

It’s the physician who takes the behavior as pointing to something important, and she “goes along” with Lars over the months, and she’s the one who gets to the bottom of it. Her vulnerability and presence remind me of Henri, one of whose most important books was “The Wounded Healer.” My idea of authentic “saints” implies people with a deep connection to real people, their foibles, their losses, their gratitude, in general.

(Note on being raised as a Christian – when I criticize myself, it’s ultimately a very hopeful move, a move which keeps alive the possibility of being a good person, or a “saint.” What I find incredibly sad is when people observe my self-criticism, and pile on, assuming that their life-choices and behaviors would gain a pass. Our hope and optimism is contingent on a self-awareness which embraces a robust self-criticism, and is scandalized by people who aren’t earnest, sincere, and true to (or at least cognizant of) the principles against which we measure our behavior.)

In relation to the film, Roger Ebert comments on this clarity of vision: "There are so many ways [the film] could have gone wrong that one of the film's fascinations is how adroitly it sidesteps them. Its weapon is absolute sincerity ... It has a kind of purity to it." Purity. Saintliness.

In his Letters and Papers from Prison, where Dietrich Bonhoeffer was held and finally executed for his participation in a plot to blow up Adolf Hitler, the young (39 year old) pastor writes on this same subject of an authentic life of faith. Bonhoeffer was recalling from prison a conversation with a young French pastor, the pacifist and peace activist Jean Laserre, whom he had met 13 years earlier in the US.

‘We were asking ourselves quite simply what we wanted to do with our lives. He said he would like to become a saint (and I think it’s quite likely that he did become one). At the time I was very impressed, but I disagreed with him, and said, in effect, that I should like to learn to have faith. For a long time I didn’t realize the depth of the contrast. I thought I could acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, or something like that.

“I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of one self, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous person or an unrighteous one, a sick person or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world – watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes human and a Christian.” ("Letters and Papers from Prison")

“Metanoia” is the word most often translated from the Greek New Testament as “repentance.” It’s what Jesus offers the searching and suffering crowds that come to hear him talking about the hope he brings ("repent!" or "turn your heart around"). I think it’s a measure of “real” (as in “Lars and the “Real” Girl) that the possibility of profound personal transformation at the very foundation of your life (setting aside the red herring of “original sin”) is, to most people, a profoundly hopeful one, greatly to be desired. People almost by their nature want to be more “real,” have a greater capacity for kindness and beauty, want to work everyday “miracles.” In light of this, I wonder if it was Bianca or Margo who was the most “real,” the most miraculous, of Lars girls?

What I haven’t been able to get a handle on in my own life just yet is whether the liberal religion I’ve been pursuing the past couple years has a stomach for this kind of “real,” this “incarnate-ness.” There are wonderful stories in WWII-era Europe of “right action.” But what about the local, the personal, the recent? It’s a deeply important issue for me at this point. Can I help? Would the liberal religious community be willing, as was Lars', to "repent" of preconceived notions, and embrace significant transformation, for the sake of others, for the healing of the world?

Anyway, in “Lars and the Real Girl” you can see Dagmar the physician, Karin the sister-in-law, the pastor, and a whole community make this crucial move. They go from taking seriously their own sufferings, to taking seriously the sufferings of the authentically, honestly human (a designation for Jesus in the Christian bible was ‘the human one’) in their world.