I love watching
television. Most of all, I love watching
dramas – hospital-based dramas, detective dramas, legal dramas, period
dramas...I love the telling of stories, over a longer arc of time than it is
possible to develop characters in the cinema...how we form attachments to characters,
by degrees. When Dr Mark Greene died, in
ER, I was utterly bereft for about
three weeks. Some might think it tragic,
to go through a (albeit foreshortened) grieving process for a fictitious human
being: I would respond that the gift of good drama is that it trains us to
experience and express the full range of human emotions, it allows us to
rehearse emotions we will be called upon to exercise at some point or other.
TV is brilliant. But it is also all-pervasive. It enters us, like an alien life-form, and
walks around in our body. Over time, our
responses to certain types of people or situations change – and this can be for
the better or the worse, but is problematic because it is almost always
unthinking: and if we respond rightly to another without having thought-through
why it is the right response, then that is not really any better than
responding wrongly, because we have been passively conformed to a way of
thinking without having our own understanding actively transformed.
It is good to watch TV;
better to share the sofa with Jesus: to engage in a conversation where we allow
God to ask us, “What do you think about that?” and where we ask God, “What do
you think about that?” And if we involve
the other people we are watching along with, that is even better still.
What does this
programme say about the world we live in?
About the nature of humanity?
About human relationships with other humans; animal and plant life; the
earth itself? About God? About the past, that is sewn to our (Achilles)
heel like Peter Pan’s shadow? About the
future, that throws dignity to the wind in its rush to embrace us? About the endurance of faith, hope and love? About seeking justice, loving mercy, and
walking in humility? About
forgiveness? About the deepest default
longings of the heart?
Advent:
making room for Jesus – in front of the TV
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