DaVinciCode

I saw the movie last Sunday. I read the book a couple of years ago.

I had thought that except for the controversial part about Jesus and Mary Magdelene, big exception, that it was a B novel at best. Parts very good. Where the encryption gadget and you had to come up with the password. A few things like that, good on their own merits. But it depended a great deal on history, an intriguing distortion of a lot of it, but very interesting for what was true, or close, or sort of close. It got you to thinking, then defending or with a gotcha. Fun in that regard and it made the book.

The critics are tearing it up. I felt bad for Ron Howard. I like him and his work, what I've seen. I thought the critics too critical. It did get pretty heavy and long. It did need some romantic or comic relief to spice it up some where now and then. Just a bit, I thought, not that much. Brown in his book did put a bit of romance in it. Howard left that out, I guess, he wanted to concentrate on the parts that made it such a smash as a book.

I loved the way he did his historical flashbacks. I'm so into history that maybe that was why I was more forgiving than the critics seem to be. But a bit of relief, a break now and then, would have been nice, but it did have a lot of material to cover and I guess Howard wanted to get it in there. The material was great.

Even then, parts that were distorted or lying with the facts in parts, did make me cringe a bit. A couple of places the Tom Hanks character changed his part from the book, to defuse some of the controversy. One was saying it's what you believe that's important. The other one, I loved.

Teebing, the rich guy, said like in the book, how Constantine forced all the priests and scholars to accept his view, etc. How Constantine distorted the Christian religion, etc. I've heard that before by people that want to suck you into their point of view, like in the book. Tom Hanks came out immediately in the movie and said, that isn't true, and explained that the Christian church was in a lot of turmoil then and at each other's throat, etc. over doctrine. Hanks explained it very nicely actually. He didn't name the Arians by name, but it was them he was talking about. They didn't believe in Christ's divinity, he was a great prophet, the stance Mohammed took three hundred years later as he converted many of these Christians into Moslems. I loved that Howard corrected that. He let Teebing have his say and come up with the Gnostics, also a heretical group, but one with a lot of insight, and a group I like certain things about. But they distorted many historically correct Christians and traditional doctrine too. Constantine simply wanted all the factions to come up with something he could adopt as a state sponsored religion. For political reasons, stability being one of them.

But even where he got some facts straight, it suited him to distort the truth. It mentioned how Constantine was a pagan and remained so until his deathbed baptism. Factually, that is correct, but it paints a totally false picture. Conveniently again, like a lot of people need to do, especially with Constantine. Constantine did what many, maybe even most, Christians did in those days. They waited until the last second to get baptized. They believed for whatever reason, that if they got baptized upon conversion, or beliefs into Christianity, and then sinned or backslid, that they were doomed to hell. No redemption. So, they waited until it was basically too late to backslide, at their death.

And again, either in ignorance, or because people need to believe it, they take the Gnostic Gospels so literally. Dan Brown and the movie did too. The Gnostics didn't even do this. They wrote gospels and stories and created images for symbolism, for effect. They did believe it in a vague sense, like a dream has meaning.

It was an incredibly interesting part of history. A lot was. I loved the movie for this and many other things. The fact that it crammed so much of this serious stuff in, I can appreciate that in the entertainment world you can only take so much of. And Hanks' character and the girl's, they were so stiff a lot. Some criticism is warranted, but nothing like the moans and groans I hear.

I was shocked actually. The way they tore into Mel Gibson's movie on Christ, when it was overall very well done. Anything to knock the established version, tradition, etc., that's the norm these days and like the TV series Commander-in-Chief, it bombed bad, but the critics adored it. They even had to lie about Gibson's, to make you think worse of it.

But they hated the DaVinci Code enough in spite of it tearing the traditional church apart. Shocked me. And all because it was too seriously done, in temperment. That was a problem, but only a bit. The intrigue was still very much there and again, the flashbacks were hypnotic, they were so well done.

My Favorite Singer

My first ever favorite singer was my dad. Sweet of me, but it was my dad. He was the first one I remember singing. I would hear things on the radio or record player, but I probably heard my father first. He sang all the time. On the tractor (we were farmers), in the pickup, at church, in the living room, often with me on his lap as he did so.

Once my mother brought some things down from the attic that had been stored. One was a beat up old guitar, scarred and partly broken. I wanted to learn to play it, but he didn't teach me. It turns out that he used to dream of being a Country singer. Then the war broke out, then he had a family.

He used to be the most requested solo singer in church, and when they formed a Gospel quartet, big thing in those days, he was always the lead singer. I was proud of my dad and loved hearing him sing publicly. Easily the songs moved me to tears.

I visited him a couple of months ago, semi-invalid, and he had just found an old casette tape. It was of a quartet his church had with him in the lead role. I had forgotten how good his voice was. I would have been shocked that it was my dad it sounded so well done, even though not from a studio. It gave me the opportunity to tell my boys some of the stories of having him as a dad growing up.

Ten years ago he gave my oldest son his war medals. Medals he had won as an ace pilot in World War II. Among them was the Distinguished Flying Cross. I knew my dad was a war hero and used to look at his war scrapbook quite a bit. But I did not know until I saw the Distinguished Flying Cross in the box of medals he gave my son, that he had been that decorated. He also gave his captains bars.

Later Stephen Ambrose wrote a book on B24 bomber squadrons. My dad's was not mentioned, but some were that he flew in conjunction with. I bought four copies of that book and had my father autograph it.

Me and the boys went to see him this past weekend. He wasn't doing well and seemed to be suffering. He couldn't eat anymore for the last two monts, just after I saw him last, and was feeding with an IV directly to his stomach. My half brother had bought him Stephen Ambroses B24 book, Wild Blue Yonder, read on CD for him to listen to as he was now bed ridden.

My dad, my first ever favorite singer died this afternoon. I just wanted to pay tribute to him.

My oldest son last year had given him a model of a B24, which my dad immediately had mounted and placed next to a picture of him with us near Corsicana where he was born. It was in front of an old sharecropper's house that had been his grandfathers.

My youngest loves baseball and told him last Saturday that he would get two hits for him. My dad's last night on earth, my son delivered. Two hits, a single and a double, knocking in two runs to win the game. When we got the news today of my father's death he cried and cried and cried. He said he didn't get to tell him that he fulfilled his promise. He hugged me and begged me not to die before I reach a hundred. My oldest said that it might be better to die rather than be a vegetable. My youngest made me promise to live even as a vegetable. He hates good-bye. But we made him understand that he's with grandma again. Singing to her and Jesus all those Gospel songs he used to sing to me growing up. And I knew that he was probably one of Jesus' favorite singers come home.

Carl Jung

The only psychologist/psychiatrist I had heard of growing up was of course Sigmund Freud. Later in college when I took psychology courses the one that really caught my eye was Carl Jung. Later I lived eleven years in Bern, Switzerland which had a Carl Jung Institute.

Psychology is just about the newest life science. Freud pretty much blazed the trail. Jung was one of his proteges. But still Jung is the one that interests me. I read one of his books a couple of years ago and am rereading one from my student days again now.

It is so fascinating to see how psychology relates to many religions. Since religions take themselves, rightfully, so seriously, how much so may be a problem, sometimes they resent any scientist, including Jung, who disagrees with them. But as I read his theories of the psyche, it just flabbergasts me how related to so many religions they are. Jung even thinks that is a major purpose of religion. The psyche thing in them.

I won't give examples.

I'm also reading an archaelogical account of the Bible. This is a very religiously biased account, no complaint, a lot of interest. I'm still in the Old Testament part of it and you want to take your hat off in awe and gratitude to the Jewish contribution to the world.

It is a mind boggler how this tiny, picked on, bumpkin group in a sliver of the world that world powers wanted, came up with some of the most socially prominent doctrines and systems in the world. I'm not just talking the religious part. But they were the first in world history that had such an elaborate social system. One that cared for even the most insignificant and weakest segments of their society. It is now engrained in world religions.