Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Kendra and I watched Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the other night. Warning. If you haven't seen the movie yet and want to be surprised by the ending; SPOILER ALERT. What I want to write about takes place toward the end of the movie.

Here goes...

Extremely Loud tells the story of nine-year-old Oskar Schell whose father dies in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. In the days following the funeral, while rooting through his father's closet, Oskar discovers a small envelope with a key. Oskar, who is somewhere on the autistic spectrum, believes the key is a clue left for him by his father. The only clue about the key's purpose is that the name "Black" is written on the outside of the envelope. To discover why his father left the key, Oskar resolves to search out every single New Yorker with the last name "Black." A large part of the movie tracks these humorous and awkward encounters.

The apparent climax of the film comes when Oskar finally discovers to whom the key belongs. As it turns out, the key has nothing much to do with Oskar's father. It most certainly was not anything Oskar's father intended for him. It wasn't a clue about anything. Oskar finding the key was just an 'accident.'

That discovery (the key's true owner) is interesting enough, but the real climax of the movie comes when we discover what Oskar's mother has been up to during his search. Up to this point the mother appears distant, passive, and engulfed in her own grief. She seems concerned that her nine-year-old is sneaking off every Saturday but she does nothing to stop him. However, when Oskar's search is over, when in despair he confronts the harsh reality that his father is never coming back, when all of life seems completely pointless and random, Oskar's mother reveals what she's been up to while he has been traipsing all over New York.

She was going before him.

She knew the mind of her son. She got into his way of thinking and made the decision to go and visit every single New Yorker with the last name "Black" before her son got there. Every person Oskar met had been met before by his mother. Every door he knocked on, every doorbell he rang, every rejection he experienced had been met before by his mother.

Our pastor Rachel is fond of giving a blessing at the end of worship that affirms the fact that we go nowhere that God is not with us. This is the Holy Spirit's work. He (or she?) inhabits our mind with the mind of Christ and prepares the way for us. There is nowhere we go, no person we encounter, no situation we face but that has been prepared by the Holy Spirit.

John 14:1-2 "Let not your hearts be troubled...I go to prepare a place for you."

"U.S. Foster Care System is in Crisis"

Here's a great article from Presbyterian Children's Homes and Services' March 2012 newsletter:

The U.S. foster care system is in crisis – a crisis of capacity, stability and quality.

A crisis of capacity. Each year, nearly 500,000 children are temporarily removed from their parents’ care for reasons ranging from neglect and abandonment to abuse. There are only 240,000 or so foster families to care for them.A crisis of stability.

A crisis of stability. The average foster child remains in care for just over two years. One in three foster children lives in more than three homes per year. Compounded trauma occurs to an already traumatized child when moving from home to home.

A crisis of quality. Statistics and stories show that children in foster care have a much higher risk of very negative outcomes in adult life (poverty, homelessness).

Only highly screened, properly motivated, committed, well trained, and supported quality foster families can change this crisis. This requires doing something different.

PCHAS is working on a solution. That solution is the Church. PCHAS believes churches can act as a delivery channel for foster care, solving the problems of capacity, stability and quality that are endemic to the current system.

The church has a scriptural mandate to engage in a foster care ministry. Children in foster care are today’s modern day orphans that exist in the church’s backyard.

PCHAS believes the current crisis provides an opportunity to access the unique resources that only churches can offer. Important resources churches are known for are “paying, praying, and giving stuff away”. However,while these are important, they are not the most essential acts now required by churches to help hurting foster children. Hurting children need authentic, loving relationships with caring adults. Could this be a core ministry of your church?

PCHAS plans to pursue new relationships with congregations willing to solve and take ownership of their community’s foster care crisis. With these model congregations, PCHAS will equip them to establish their own foster care program. At its core, trained church members will voluntarily form a circle of support around fellow members willing to be foster parents. By recruiting quality foster parents from their membership, and surrounding them with strong support, the foster children they serve will experience the love and stability they desperately need.

These circles of support provide an unparalleled support system to their foster families and foster children. They help find resources, such as clothes and toys, and act as an extended family, providing respite services,mentoring, tutoring, special recreation and extra-curricular activities.

Providing this kind of support is critical if we want to encourage good, stable families to become foster families. Nationally, almost half of all foster families drop out every year due to foster parents feeling overwhelmed by a system that lacks the resources or personnel to help them. The circle of support this model requires ensures foster parents will have the help they need, when they need it.

PCHAS’ new Church Engagement Project plans to invest in local churches to do what only they can do…provide biblical “hospitality,” which translated from Greek is “welcoming the stranger”. Churches and church foster families will be invited to revive this ancient but powerful concept when they use the gifts of their families and the gift of their homes to welcome God’s hurting children into futures of hope and healing.

We are grateful for congregations whose essential mission is to share love, through relationships that, by God’s Spirit, heal and transform … the lives of foster children, church foster families AND the church!

(http://pchas.org/news.php)