At a birthday lunch today I announced to a nieghbour my excitement at my Weblogging adventure. ‘ What is the point ‘ she asked – a fair challenge I decided not to rise to. I’ll try another way next time!!

I went off to the cinema last weekend ( the Autumn is my film watching season) to see Atonement and like all good art it has stayed with me – slightly haunting with its images and music. A story about stories – the stories we tell ourselves and each other and the way that these stories are often muddled, self serving and even crippling. We all make some kind of mess of our lives unable to see clearly and truthfully. Sometimes we can mess up others lives in the process and that theme is explored in this film. The film gives the novel an added twist with the girl now a dying woman rewriting the story of the people’s lives she has wrecked to give them a happy ending that had been denied them.

What would a happy ending mean for our lives I wonder? How on earth do we begin to ammend for the things that we do wrong? Perhaps we cannot? In the film, part of the reparation emerges out of writing. Religion offers other alternatives – a theological framework within which our guilt is healed.

In this modern struggle of ours I hope that we can build places and relationships where acceptance beats at the heart of things. I hope we can be ready to be gentle with others’ mess and our own so that our experience can help us dig deeper.

I believe in the goodnes of people. We are all good with a few loose ends and unresloved bits – failings and disconnections. Perhaps the health of our human-ness is about how we deal with those loose ends? What a beautiful and rich life – and writers and film makers help us to see that in a way that theology so often fails!!

Now back to explaining my weblog!