The Sam Whitmore Sampler

Happy Thanksgiving

In my high school freshman-year religion class, a fellow student asked the teacher, Brother Linus, why he was so sure God existed.

The teacher walked to the open classroom door and craned his neck to the right.

 "As you can see, the corridor on this floor bends about 60 degrees to the right," Brother Linus said. "Let's say you began sprinting down the corridor at top speed. What if, just around the corner, a furniture crew was moving a big heavy desk just out of your sight -- and there you were... sprinting top speed right for it? You'd never know until it was too late.

"Now imagine a benevolent God seeing all this unfold, and removing that furniture crew, and that big heavy desk, just before you rounded the corner. You'd never know He did it. It would never occur to you that He had done his work." 

I'm not especially religious... but on this Thanksgiving Day, I express my thankfulness for all the furniture crews and all the desks that disappeared from my path without my knowing it.

What if He Answers?

I was typing a thank-you note earlier this month to our friends at Krause-Taylor Associates , a subscriber of ours who invited us to their Christmas (holiday) party at their San Jose, Calif. offices. I thumb-typed the message on my Blackberry, which uses "predictive" typing technology.

Typing -K-R-A-U-S suggested a most intriguing option:

J-E-S-U-S

We hope Santa is good to you tonight.

Jesus — and The Apostle

Times have changed. The image on the right is from a flyer being distributed these days by Jehovah's Witnesses. I guess Jesus is on my mind lately. Last night I watched The Apostle, to my mind a truly great film written and produced by Robert Duvall. Here's the trailer. Ten years old, the movie made only $20 million at the box office. By contrast, the latest Harry Potter movie made $77 million in the US last weekend alone.

On your next visit to Blockbuster, consider renting The Apostle. This review excerpt may persuade you:

To fully appreciate the depth of Duvall’s work in The Apostle, you need to know the story behind its making. You need to know that Duvall not only stars in it, but that he also wrote and directed it, and that after 13 years of trying to secure studio financing, he finally put up its five million dollar budget himself. Duvall believed in this film the way Sonny believes in the power of the Holy Ghost. In doing research he visited many a church and spoke with many a real-life evangelist; this preparation allows him to view Sonny's world from the inside out. He then cast the film largely with non-actors, who inhabit it so authentically that it appears as if he just stopped by one Sunday with a film crew and made up the picture on the spot.

No Wonder They Don't Like Us

What an unfortunate mispelling...