Long before anyone built a projector, there was a fire, and a circle of faces around it, and someone who could not stop talking. That is the oldest technology we own. Somewhere far back in our story, a human being discovered that if you tell a tale well enough, the people listening will recognize themselves in it, and something true will pass between you that no one could have said straight out. We have been doing it ever since. Cave walls, psalms, folk tales, stained glass, campfire ghost stories, and now a screen in a dark room with a bucket of popcorn in your lap. This October we are calling our series Popcorn Theology, and I want to explore the meaning behind both halves of that name.
Popcorn, because this is going to be fun. We are taking four films most of you already love, or will love by the end of the month, and treating them the way our ancestors treated their sacred stories: as texts worth reading closely, arguing over, and carrying home. The Muppet Movie on October 4, with our first annual Pet Blessing after the service. Cloud Atlas on October 11. The Greatest Showman on October 18. The Witch on October 25, the Sunday before Halloween. A light lunch follows every service, so plan to stay and talk.
Theology, because I mean it. I know that word carries weight for many of you, and some of that weight is bruising. When I say theology, I am not pointing at a god far above the clouds. I am pointing at the depth that runs through every one of us: the miracle of consciousness looking out through your eyes right now, the mosaic of the divine scattered across every person in our chairs on a Sunday morning. The old stories were earlier attempts at the same recognition we are still making. A film is a newer attempt. The question is the same: what does this story know about being human, and what would it cost us to live as if we believed it?
Carl Jung believed that beneath each of our private minds runs a shared sea he called the collective unconscious, and that certain figures rise out of it in every culture and every age. The seeker who leaves home. The trickster. The shadow we refuse to look at. The wise companion who appears when we are ready. Jung called them archetypes, and he said they are the reason a story told in one century can break a heart in another. Watch a frog leave his swamp with a banjo, and you are watching the oldest journey we know. Watch a family in 1630 hunt for the devil inside its own house, and you are watching the shadow at work, the part of ourselves we would rather find in a neighbor than face in the mirror.
That is where the analytic work comes in. Every one of these films is built around a wound and a loop. Someone has been told, somewhere along the way, that they are too much or not enough. They build a life around that verdict, and the loop tightens until an honest meeting with another person opens a door. In The Muppet Movie, it is Kermit and the strangers who become his family. In Cloud Atlas, it is Adam Ewing, the lawyer at sea in 1849, and Autua, the stowaway who should have been his enemy and saves his life. In The Greatest Showman, it is Lettie Lutz, the bearded woman, leading the troupe as they sing their way back through a shut door. In The Witch, it is Thomasin, the eldest daughter, standing at the edge of the woods and deciding whether the theology she inherited was ever hers. The divine in these stories does not arrive from above. It shows up in the space between two people who are finally willing to meet without performance.
To help you watch with those eyes, we have made a Watch Guide. It is a short booklet, and each Sunday has its own page: what the service will explore, where to stream that week’s film, one line worth remembering, and five questions for the ride home. Some of the questions are gentle, and some will poke at you. Read the questions before you press play, keep them nearby, and when the credits roll, take turns. Let each person answer before anyone responds. If you have children, two of these films are made for them, and two are rated R, and each page tells you which is which. Then carry one of your answers with you on Sunday, because the best theology happens when we bring what we noticed to people who noticed something else. Bring your popcorn. Bring your doubts. Bring your dog on the 4th.
Peace,
Rev. Dr. Harold Marrero