On the Camino in Spain recently, I saw a piece of graffiti, written in French by a delicate hand. What it said loosely translates to:

There are flowers everywhere, for those willing to look for them. 

This is a difficult moment, if the moment only includes politics. It’s also a beautiful one, if we know where to look. It’s also just a moment - not an era, or an epoch, or a generation. Just a moment. Some of us are suffering terribly. Some of us are working hard for the common good. Some of us are realizing that we have lots of opportunities, right now, to devote ourselves to love - of the transcendent, of ourselves, of our neighbors, no matter who they may be?

If we want to change things, we need to think carefully about how we talk about them. Here are some reflections on how to tell the story of what is happening, and what we can do about it.

Silence, Martin Scorsese’s film from the novel by Shûsaku Endô, is about two young Jesuit priests, searching 17th century Japan in hopes of finding their mentor who, it is rumored, was tortured for his faith. Beneath this surface, it is about the question of finding meaning in life, and showing mercy on that path - to each other, to ourselves; the evolution of religion - as an oppressive power or a way of understanding the nature of life and the common good; and about the possibility of being transformed from within by love, even amid a swirl of noise and aggression that aims to terrorize all dissent. Scorsese was first made aware of the novel when promoting another film based on a story by a challenging spiritual seeker, The Last Temptation of Christ. That movie, released in 1988, was met with protest by folk whose experience of Christianity skewed toward repressing doubt, lest the recognition that someone else might think differently somehow pollute your own faith. But not all Christians felt that way - a helpful bishop, pronouncing The Last Temptation “Christologically correct" sent Scorsese a copy of Silence; for nearly thirty years now, he’s been trying to make it a movie. It’s an astonishing work, fully alive, a portrait of faith and love, willing to confront rage and terror, refusing anything other than the most disciplined path, taking seriously the question of just what life is. I imagine I will never forget it.