Dear Frankie ... a simple little film set in Glasgow and in Greenock. It is nothing flash and maybe I'm being nostalgic about Scotland just now, but it it is the story of nine year-old Frankie and his single mum Lizzie who have been on the move ever since Frankie can remember, most recently arriving in a seaside town of Greenock. Wanting to protect her deaf son from the truth that they've run away from his father, Lizzie has invented a story that he is away at sea on the HMS Accra. Every few weeks, Lizzie goes thorugh this complex 'ritual' of reading Frankies's letters to his 'da' sent to a PO Box which she then writes sending news and a stamp from some far off places, pretending to be his dad. It is a big cover up to keep Frankie safe. But she is always afraid.
As Frankie tracks the ship's progress around the globe, he discovers that it is due to dock in his hometown. With the real HMS Accra arriving in only a fortnight, Lizzie must choose between telling Frankie the truth or finding the perfect stranger to play Frankie's father for just one day. See the movie for the rest, but for me it offered hope and said something about love that sets us free again. Lizzie needs to re-learn and in the end you are left to make your choice on these things. But I think its humour, its touch and story speak of hope in the realities of life and asks of us what are we afraid of to be loved and move on in hope?
Today we came nearer to the end of our sojourn with the Book of Lamentations (in case you wonder it is not that I am morose, but we worship in Roslyn 1 and 3rd Sundays of the month, so it takes a bit longer!) We thought about it's teaching resistance as a means of being able to 'lament' and share the stories of our pains etc in a safe place/space together in God's presence, further one that is a resistance borne out of our very weakness in which God's strength is shown and known. Indeed, resistance through lament weakness begins to untangle the mess and knots of greif, woundedness, despair and violent rage that so pervades society. So often resistance is NOt that of the child graspng for the stronger hand of the parent, et tha is what I sense is here and gives us hope to be agents too of different practices in mission. Practices that allow us to be less individulaistic as a church and more of a community sharing faith and life in Christ.
The movement from hostility to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties...So today we had some new families present, one with Paul who cannot speak and was in a wheel chair. What touched me was to see and hear how people from the congregation responded and welcomed and laughed with this family. It was not forced or awkward. I pray we continue to grow into being a congregation that with Christ in our midst, and in our weaknesses practices resistance and has the identity as a people who care with the fervour of God and reveals that care in hospitality in and through the precious gift of friendship. LAment encourages us to be such in these 'exile days', and we too must ask and face the honest question 'What are we afraid of in the face of love?'
But still - that is our vocation: to convert the hostis into a hospes, the
enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood
and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced. (Henri Nouwen in Reaching Out , p64)
Go see Dear Frankie if you can, not with blockbuster expectations, but quiet enjoyment of life touched by a stranger.
