A refreshing change

Toward the end of a summer with its share of blockbuster movies geared toward teenaged boys comes Hope Springs (PG-13), a movie for and about adults. It is a refreshing change in several ways.

First, despite some over-the-top elements, it presents a realistic situation—a couple married for 31 years who has fallen into a dull routine and lost any sparkle in their relationship. We witness no superheroes, no car chases or fist fights, no political conspiracies or bombs, no F-words.

Second, the movie offers frank discussion of sexuality in the context of a long-lasting marriage without depicting domestic violence or infidelity. By frank, I mean frank, though it is used not to titillate but to communicate, often with humor.

Third, rather than take viewers away from their current reality to some other world or fantastic situation, Hope Springs holds up a mirror to couples and nudges them look at their own marriages. In this way, the movie goes beyond entertainment and becomes an opportunity to reflect on one’s life. I should add that it does this without being didactic; it simply tells a story of one couple.

Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones) Soames sleep in separate rooms, share little physical contact and go through the same routines at breakfast before going to work and in the evenings at home, where Arnold falls asleep watching golf lessons on cable. But Kay is unhappy and signs them up for a week of intensive marriage counseling with Dr. Bernie Feld (Steve Carell) in a coastal town in Maine called Hope Springs.

Arnold refuses to go, but Kay tells him she’ll go without him, and besides, she has paid for it. He ends up going but is grumpy, complaining about the cost of everything and how worthless this endeavor is. But they meet with Dr. Feld, and in daily sessions he asks them increasingly frank questions about their relationship, including their sexual fantasies.

Though it improves in the second half, the film’s weakness is its screenplay, particularly its depiction of Arnold. His constant negativity and his aversion to touch seem extreme. And Kay’s obsequious behavior toward him at first also seems a bit much. But these two great actors overcome such flaws in the script and use their skills to make their characters believable. Carell, too, is good, playing against type as a calm, gentle counselor.

While the movie includes laugh-out-loud moments, it’s a serious drama that shows a couple going through the difficult exercise of reviewing their life together and having to decide if they want to do the hard thing and change or continue to drift apart.

Jeanne and I, who have been married 32 years, watched the movie with some recognition that certain ruts are easy to fall into. I laughed at moments and cringed at others. We came away talking about what changes we want to make in our relationship.

While Hope Springs can be seen as a cautionary tale or lesson, it’s basically a story of one couple’s relationship and can be enjoyed on that level. Even younger folks—and there were some in the audience—will enjoy this honest, heart-filled film. 

Are art and violence connected?

This summer’s tragic shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Madison, Wis., raise a question that often comes up with such events: the relationship of art and violence.

The July 19 shooting by James E. Holmes in Aurora happened in a cineplex at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. 

The shooting  on Aug. 5 at a Sikh temple in Madison killed six people and wounded three others. The shooter, Wade M. Page, had performed in notorious white power bands, such as Youngland, Intimidation One, End Apathy and Definite Hate.

Did the movie or the music contribute to the killings? Or do they reflect the violence in our culture? Or are the relationship of art to violence different in the two incidents?

In a July 26 New York Times article, “Don’t Blame the Movie, but Don’t Ignore It Either,” Stephen Marche claims the answers aren’t so simple.

He writes that while we have largely passed the point where we ask whether art causes such disasters, a new cliché has taken hold “that insists on an absolute separation between violent art and real violence.”

He claims that real violence and violent art have been connected historically. “Some of the most violent scenes in American history have emerged from theatrical spaces,” he writes.

One example was the Astor Place riot in 1849, which started in competing performances of “Macbeth,” one by the Englishman William Charles Macready and the other by the American Edwin Forrest. “The theater in that case brought to the surface underlying tensions that were rampant in New York at the time,” he writes, “between immigrants and nativists, between the lower classes and the police. More than 20 people died in the ensuing struggle.”

Further, he notes that John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln during the play “Our American Cousin.” Booth was an actor and was imitating Brutus from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”

Holmes allegedly said, “I am the Joker” before opening fire, and an employee at the jail where he was arraigned told a reporter, “He thinks he’s acting in a movie.”

This does not show that the Batman movie caused the shooting, but it does point to the power of art to affect individuals prone to violence.

In an Aug. 8 New York Times article, “The Sound of Hate,” Robert Futrell and Pete Simi write about “hidden spaces of hate” where Neo-Nazis, who often straddle the worlds of white power and mainstream society, thrive.

One of the most important of these hidden spaces is the white power music scene. “Neo-Nazis are particularly adept at incorporating music into just about every aspect of the movement,” Futrell and Simi write, “having grasped the medium’s capacity to bring adherents together into shared experiences and sustain communities anchored in Aryan ideology.”

This music scene drew Page to the movement. While the music conveyed anger, hatred and outrage toward racial enemies, it also created “a collective bond that strengthens members’ commitment to the cause,” they write.

Isn’t this what churches do? We use music as well as sermons and prayers in our worship to help bind us together as followers of Jesus Christ.

The obvious difference is that our hymns (we hope) do not promote hatred and violence but love and peace.

Art has power we should not ignore, but in itself it does not produce violence. That requires an already fertile field.

The power of yes

I've always leaned toward routine, finding comfort in the rhythm of operating each day much like the previous one. Change is OK, as long as I have some control over it.
Unfortunately, life doesn't usually cooperate with my plans, and change happens.
But when an opportunity comes along that may take me out of my comfort zone and ask me to do something unfamiliar, I usually hesitate, and my first inclination is to say no. Turns out, saying no consistently actually shuts down part of my brain.
Recently I read an article that gave me pause. It's called "Just Say Yes" by Jamie Stringfellow in the July/August issue of Spirituality & Health, a magazine I receive at work that often reports on scientific research about the benefits of spiritual practices.

Stringfellow writes: "When you say no a lot, your brain gets in the habit, literally paving more neural pathways and raising the speed limit on your knee-jerk 'No!' response. Luckily, as brain scientists have realized, we can rewire our brains." 

The brain likes efficiency, so if you say no a lot, it starts assuming you're going to say no and starts responding that way automatically. It reminds me of typing something on Google that I've searched before, and it remembers and goes there right away.

So how do we rewire our brains, and why should we? The no response often comes out of fear--fear of failing, fear of falling, fear of rejection. However, Stringfellow writes, "neuroscientists know that when you expose yourself to new experiences … your brain releases noradrenaline and dopamine, and the exertion brings on endorphins. This makes you feel alert and better able to enjoy that moment and the ones that follow."

I should know better. The times I've said yes have usually turned out well, and I've been glad I did so. In 2009, I traveled to Paraguay in July and to Jordan in September, and both experiences were rewarding, despite some difficulties, such as being stuck in Argentina (during its winter) in an unheated house for two days waiting for a flight. In late June I attended a conference and led a workshop on spiritual practices (based on my book Present Tense). It went better than I'd hoped, largely because of people's wonderful participation. I was glad I said yes to doing that. And recently I've faced another decision that required me to take a risk. And after reading this article and talking with my spiritual director, I decided to say yes and see where it led. I still don't know where it will lead.

Saying yes is also important for building relationships. Stringfellow writes that Dr. John Gottman, a leading marriage researcher, says that the simplest way to make relationships work is "to say yes as often as you can without sacrificing an important part of yourself in the process." He even suggests saying something positive five times for every negative thing you say.

Does this mean you say yes to everything? No, you don't simply comply with someone who intends you harm. And we all need to set limits for our own health. But, says Dawna Markova, "what's important is not so much the yes as the willingness to say it. It's the pause."

Stringfellow writes: "Just being willing to say yes means you've removed the barriers to new people, experiences and feelings." And it gets you out of that knee-jerk no response so that new possibilities arise. 

This may be easy for you, but I've been a pessimist all my life, and saying yes, or even pausing to consider saying yes, means I believe something positive may happen. So this really is a spiritual practice.

Saying yes takes courage. It is also an act of love when you say yes to another. Maybe it's something worth practicing. Yes, it is.

A break from bad news

We're surrounded by news of murders (Aurora), political polarities, economic woes, starvation, wars, you name it. Sometimes our spirits need the sweet air of good news or something to look forward to.
Here's one: the Olympics in London. The opening ceremony is tomorrow night, though some events have already begun. In talking with some people at work, I realize many people aren't as interested in the Olympics as I am. You, too, may consider them overhyped, boring, involving weird, uninteresting sports. One office co-worker said, Why don't they play football. They do, of course, but he meant American football, not what we call soccer, the most popular sport in the world.

I may not like all the Olympic sports, but I enjoy most of them, and I admire all the athletes' abilities, which far surpass mine. I also like the fact that the Olympics at least try to be international and nonpartisan.
The triple jumper Voula Papachristou was kicked off Greece's Olympic team for her comments on Twitter mocking African immigrants and expressing support for a far-right political party in Greece. One can argue free speech, but I'm glad the Olympic spirit opposes such jingoistic prejudice.
Another headline in today's paper was, "Nine Olympians suspended." I'm glad the Olympics at least tries to uphold standards of fairness and punishes doping.

I'm glad we myopic Americans obsessed with football, Nascar and golf get exposed to other sports. My favorite is track and field, but I also will try to catch table tennis, badminton, tennis, soccer and as much else as I can.

Another bit of good news: An article in the July 30 issue of Time (its Summer Olympics Special) looks at "The Undroppables," a social media campaign that plugs staying in school.

Documentary filmmaker Jason Pollock is gathering video testimonials from students who have decided to stay in school, despite difficult obstacles. Kayla Webley writes that Pollock "is trying to harness the power of social networks to keep an estimated 1.2 million students from dropping out of school each year." He points to the success of campaigns such as It Gets Better and wants this project to have as great an impact on young people's lives. The tagline for the campaign is "I am undroppable."

In June he uploaded short clips of 70 or so students who have decided to stay in school or go back to school. The bulk of the proceeds from his documentary will go to charity.

Both the stories Pollock presents and the campaign itself are good news.

As we slog through the toxic political speech of this season and the plethora of bad news in our world, let us take time to breathe the fresh air of good news. That air can give us energy to face the injustices around us with greater hope.

Maybe the Olympics don't lift your spirit as they do mine. OK. Find something that does.

Only the news that's allowed

I imagine few of you read Columbia Journalism Review, which I receive at work and which is a key periodical in my profession as a journalist. This mag offers insights into trends in the industry and uncovers interesting stories of journalists and their work.

One point CJR makes often is that the industry has changed dramatically over the years in ways that have serious consequences for our citizenry and learning the truth about what’s happening in our country and around the world. For example, here’s a quote from CJR I’m using in the magazine I help edit, The Mennonite (in our August issue, page 11): “Six companies dominate TV news, radio, online, movies and publishing. Another eight or nine control most of the nation’s newspapers.”

What this means is that for much of what you read in these media, “the news that’s fit to print” (the tagline for the New York Times) means the news that won’t hurt the business of the corporation that runs that news outlet. There are alternative sources of news out there, but they don’t reach many people, and their funds are limited.

Anyway, the July/August issue of CJR offers an example of this in a story called “Cell Coverage.” CJR’s Alysia Santo interviews Paul Wright, who began his journalism career behind bars. He spent 17 years in prison and was released in 2003. While in Washington State’s prison system, he co-founded Prison Legal News.

PLN began as a 10-page newsletter but is now a 56-page monthly magazine (hmm, just like The Mennonite) with subscribers in all 50 states and several other countries.

In the interview, Wright tells how he came to start this newsletter. He says he was surprised by the treatment of prisoners and decided that “regardless of what I’d been convicted of, I deserved to be treated better than I was.”

Wright studied law in prison and filed complaints about the violence and racism he witnessed. In 1990, he witnessed a beating of a black inmate by white guards and wrote press releases about it to all the media outlets he knew but got no response. So he ran the story in PLN, and prison officials “infracted” him for “lying” about staff. Later they put him in solitary confinement.

Wright says: “One of the ironies was that I got no media interest in the beatings themselves, but my being retaliated against for writing about the beatings made it to the front page of The Seattle Times.”

He says one of the reasons he started PLN was to make people aware of what happens in American prisons, which he says is “pretty indefensible.” He says he can only try to make people aware of what’s going on. “If people don’t care about it once they know, I can’t do anything about apathy. But I can do something about ignorance.”

Wright talks about private companies profiting from using prison labor, including some of the world’s largest. “Microsoft and Starbucks used prison labor for packaging,” he says. “Boeing had prisoners making aircraft parts. Planet Hollywood, Eddie Bauer and Union Bay were all using prisoners as garment manufacturers. The height of irony was when Nintendo was using inmates at Twin Rivers Correction Center, which houses Washington’s sex-offender treatment program, to package children’s video games.”

In 1994, Wright says, a conservative Republican named Jack Metcalf was running for Congress in the district where Wright was in prison. Metcalf campaigned on being tough on crime and supporting the death penalty. But he was using a company that employed prisoners to do his telemarketing.

Wright called a lawyer friend who had media contacts about running a story about this. But The Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer said this was not a noteworthy issue. So two alternative papers, Counter-Punch and The Stranger, broke the story a week after the election. Eventually it became a page one story in The Seattle Times.

Let me add one more of Wright’s stories, and then I’ll stop.

In 2007, PLN settled a censorship lawsuit against the state of California. But when Wright talked to the Los Angeles court reporter for the LA Times, he said, “Well, we don’t really think this is of interest to our readers.” Wright points out to him that “Los Angeles County sends more people to prison than any other county in California, so surely those prisoners have family members that are going to be affected by these changes.” The reporter says, “That’s not really our advertising demographic.”

There it is in a nutshell. It’s about the money and about what’s good for the corporation that owns the media outlet. I know there are many dedicated reporters that want to break such stories, but in many cases their hands are tied. The advertisers pay the bill and get to make the rules. It used to be that subscribers paid the bill, but too few people subscribe nowadays.

If you want to take this as encouragement to subscribe to a newspaper, go ahead, though I’m not too hopeful. If you want to take this as encouragement to dig for sources that tell us what’s happening to mostly voiceless people such as prisoners, please do. Dig.

Electronic cocaine

Before I get to that title, a few stories from this past week:
• On Saturday I was in Oklahoma City, attending the annual assembly of Western District Conference of Mennonite Church USA. That morning I led a workshop (organizers called it a "learning community") on spiritual practices. I'd barely begun when someone's cell phone went off. I said (to laughter), "Maybe a spiritual practice could be to turn off our cell phones."
• On Wednesday afternoon a friend of ours who moved to New Zealand in January stopped by for a visit, one of many stops during her two-week or so visit back to see family and friends. As we talked about the differences between New Zealand and here, she mentioned that there people are more active, less sedentary, less obese. And, she added, less obsessed with cell phones. She had visited a friend (here in the U.S.) who spent much of the time they were together texting. And there weren't others in the room; just the two of them.
• Later that evening, I went to our local grocery store to pick up something. On my way to the checkout counter, I passed a young boy, maybe 7 or 8 years old, walking behind his mother. He held a device that held his attention. As I passed him I saw that he was playing some kind of game on it. He seemed oblivious to others around him.
Then I came upon this article in the latest Newsweek called "Is the Onslaught Making Us Crazy?" by Tony Dokoupil.

I won't take the time to go through the article thoroughly but merely highlight some of its points. (Read it if you can.) 
First some stats:
• the average teen processes 3,700 texts per month;
• one-third of smart phone users go online before getting out of bed;
• in a poll of millennials (13- to 30-year-olds), most said they felt "exhausted" by their online activities;
• the brains of Internet addicts scan a lot like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts.
Have you ever heard of "phantom-vibration syndrome"? That's when everyday cell phone users report feeling their phone vibrate when in fact nothing is happening.
Dokoupil writes that "research is now making it clear that the Internet is not 'just' another delivery system. It is creating a whole new mental environment, a digital state of nature where the human mind becomes a spinning instrument panel, and few people will survive unscathed." 
Susan Greenfield, a pharmacology professor at Oxford University, says, "This is an issue as important and unprecedented as climate change."
Peter Whybrow, the director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, says "the computer is like electronic cocaine" (there's our title), fueling cycles of mania followed by depressive stretches.
Dokoupil goes on to refer to several different studies that show that overuse of the Web actually rewires the brain. A Chinese study showed that Internet addiction has led to "shrinkage of 10 to 20 percent in the area of the brain responsible for processing of speech, memory, motor control, emotion, sensory and other information."
The new Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders, due to be released next year, will include for the first time Internet Addiction Disorder.
One psychiatrist, Elias Aboujaoude, points out that ADHD diagnoses have risen 66 percent in the last decade and adds, "There's little doubt we're becoming more impulsive."
Maybe that's enough. If we're dealing with addiction, then it won't be easy to change people's behavior. But in terms of spirituality, let me just go back to that incident in my workshop. We laughed, but maybe limiting our use of the Internet should be a spiritual practice. That may at least be a place to start.

Why do men refuse to get help?

Why is it that most American men refuse to get help when they suffer from depression? In their article “Why Won’t Men Get Help?” in Pacific Standard (July/August), David Freed and Betsy Bates Freed tell stories of specific men and point to alarming statistics about men who suffer from depression and other maladies.

In 1998, the Freeds write, “about 1.47 of every 100 men in the United States sought outpatient help for depression; by 2007, it was 2.12 men per 100, according to a study sponsored by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.”

And most of those who do go for help prefer pharmaceuticals to “talk therapy.” In 1998, 56.2 percent of those who sought help used the latter treatment; in 2007, that percentage dropped to 42.5. And those who chose pills increased from 68.8 percent in 1998 to 73.3 percent in 2007.

This failure of the vast majority of men to seek help has dire consequences, especially since the economic recession. “Suicide overtook blood poisoning to become the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2009,” the Freeds write. And men account for nearly 80 percent of suicides in the United States today.

Those rates have been rising in the past 25 years, and the rise in recent years of overall male unemployment will likely send them higher, unless something changes.

Why are men so reluctant to seek help from professional therapists--or even from medical doctors for that matter? It’s something they learn growing up. 

But it turns out they aren’t born that way. “Studies show that most male babies actually start out more emotionally expressive than females,” the Freeds write. But by age 2, boys are less verbally expressive than girls.

Psychologists have a word for the “strong silent type” masculinity that many American men hold on to: “normative male alexithymia,” which literally translates as “without words for emotions.”

Another reality men face who do go for help, the Freeds write, is that “nearly three in every four licensed psychologists who hold doctorate degrees are female, as are almost 80 percent of master’s-level students in psychology-related fields of study.” This can pose both an advantage and a disadvantage for male patients.

On the one hand, men may regard a woman as “more nurturing, empathetic and less threatening.” On the other hand, “female psychotherapists … run the risk of alienating men by trying to counsel them, however subtly, to be like them.”

Once men do get into counseling, they tend to do better. In fact, research has shown that men benefit from talk therapy just as much, if not more, than women.

I mentioned this to some friends of mine who are therapists, and they thought this made sense, since most women are used to talking about their feelings, so therapy isn’t as new an experience as it is for most men.

Men with cancer also don’t usually ask for or get as much support as women. Betsy Bates Freed in her article “Did You Hear the One About the Guy with Prostate Cancer?” (in the same issue) compares breast cancer and prostate cancer, “two diseases that are diagnosed in almost equal numbers each year in the U.S., and take a similar emotional as well as physical toll. As of May, published, peer-reviewed studies on ‘breast cancer and support’ outnumbered those on ‘prostate cancer and support’ by 56,000.”

The macho mentality that we shouldn’t ask for help may be American, but it’s far from being Christian. "God helps those who help themselves" comes from Ben Franklin, not the Bible. 

There are some Christian writers in the field of male spirituality who complain about the "wimpy Jesus" others promulgate. They call men to be strong. I suggest these writers are not only wrong but dangerous. They reinforce a male stereotype many of us have grown up with that has caused much pain. 

I suggest it takes strength to admit when we are hurting. It also takes discernment, wisdom, to even recognize it sometimes. Many men carry great pain and anguish inside and feel unable to face it. Too often that inability leads to addictive, destructive behaviors, such as alcoholism and drug abuse, which not only hurts ourselves but others, particularly spouses.

We men need to encourage one another to talk about our problems and seek help when we need it. That is a truly countercultural, Christian response to the lies we've been told, such as, "Suck it up." "Be a man." "Don't cry." It is also true strength and needed wisdom to talk about our pain and seek help.