Reflection This Week
JUST BELOW THE SURFACE

   My wife and I are not much for partying. We don’t drink because we just do not like the taste of alcohol of any kind. My friends claim I must have a defective gene, given my Italian heritage and my dislike for wine. We can’t remember the last New Year’s Eve Party we attended nor the last New Year we welcomed in by being awake. We spent most of this New Year’s weekend by watching movies of almost all kinds: Shrek, Cars, Little Miss Sunshine, The Merchant of Venice, Coach Carter and more.

   The one I am still thinking about was the last one we viewed and not because it was the last in line but because of its disturbing message. The movie was Crash, which won several Academy Awards last year. The point of the movie, or at least the point I took away from it, is that we are all prejudiced in one way or another whether we realize it or not. When the right button is pushed, our prejudices come to the surface. They might even explode.

   The recent tirades of Mel Gibson and Michael Richards are certainly reminders that there lie just below the surface feelings that we either think we do not have or believe we can control. When those feelings are manifested in embarrassing ways, we blame alcohol (like Gibson) or demons (like Richards). We simply cannot understand how we could have said what we just said – and so clearly and angrily.

   This should not be so surprising, should it? It’s even biblical. It’s Cain and Abel all over again. As that story goes, when it seemed to Cain that God preferred Abel’s sacrifice to his, he because so upset, so distraught and so angry that he killed his brother in a fit of rage. Sibling rivalry got out of control. Not a pretty picture, yet one that is played out over and over and over again every day everywhere, only the names and places and issues are different.

   Crash makes me think about the prejudices I have, prejudices I try to either hide or deny, prejudices that may come to the surface and explode at any moment. Why do I have them? From where do they come? My parents never taught me to be prejudiced. In fact, they taught me to be just the opposite. And, for the most part, I think I am a very open and kind and caring human being.

   Yet I know me and I know that there have been and will continue to be moments when prejudicial thoughts enter my mind and I have to be very strong to simply keep my mouth shut and not say what I am thinking. I suspect these thoughts arise in those moments when I somehow begin to feel inferior and for whatever reason I feel that way even if my reason, like Cain’s, is both foolish and false.

   Crash, like the story of Cain and Abel, is a disturbing film and tells a disturbing tale. Yet, like the biblical story, it is one that needs to be told and one that needs to be heard and one that needs to be taken personally, as painful as that might be. God loved Cain just as much as God loved Abel just as much as God loves each and every one of us.

   Perhaps we will never understand why we , at times, feel the way we do even when we know better.   What is important is that we realize and admit that there lie just below the surface prejudicial feelings that, allowed to surface, can be so very destructive. Not a pleasant thought but one, I believe, we must face no matter how uncomfortable.                                             WJP