On Being Thankful for Maya

I awoke tired.  The long week won and my body lost. Caffeine didn’t help. Being tired makes me cranky, just like with little kids when they  wake up after a night of too little sleep. Being cranky in turn makes me anxious, and I can say “Don’t worry about tomorrow” a thousand times and I still am anxious.  Being anxious makes it impossible to be  creative, so there is no point in doing the work I had planned for the day. I tried to relieve my symptoms at the piano, but to no avail.  So, at 3:45 p.m., being tired, cranky, anxious and dull,  I got up, left my study and headed for the movies.

I settled in on Zero Dark Thirty, the story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  I am not a movie reviewer. I do not recommend movies.  The “interrogation scenes” made it tough to get through the first hour. Two grown men left the theatre, and I don’t think it was to go to the bathroom.  I am not saying what I took away from the film is what the movie is about, or what the writers wanted me to see. But, what I saw is a young woman, Maya, who is a CIA spy trying to break the ring of criminals who live to destroy the United States, my religion, and everything else they have been brain-washed to think we stand for. When Maya is spared from death by a suicide bomber she sets out on a personal mission to find and kill bin Laden. Her motives become personal and her passion for revenge deepens. As I sit all alone in the theatre watching the credits roll I am thinking these things: -there are people who hate me because of my skin color, my religion, where I live, and if they could, they would destroy my family and my home; -there is a real Maya, and many like her, who make it their business to make sure that doesn’t happen.  I want wars to end. If there is no Maya evil triumphs.

I went home and my wife, visiting our grandsons, called me and invited me to tell my “da Boyz” a story via Skype, which I happily did.  When the story was over, and as the last image of those little boys faded from the screen I thanked God for Maya.  That seems wrong to me on many levels.  But, Maya’s singular passion, her overwhelming sense of being “called” to redeem the memory of her friends killed by the enemy bomber, seems so essential to me.  I hate that we need Maya.  I love that Maya lives. If Lent is about anything, it is about learning that we all need someone who will make a personal, passionate sacrifice and engage in a relentless commitment to disciplines because of a  love so intense that one would do anything, even die for people, people you love.  And we should try to be like that Someone.  I went to bed tired. Conflicted. Thankful.