Tearful Resurrections
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​Loss, Grief, Anger, Forgiveness? All are processes. You don't wake up one morning, decide to forgive, and then it's over. You forgive, fall back into anger, and then do it again.
There may be cathartic moments, but the grief continues.

​Relationships are built in grief, not outside of it. In anger, not outside of it. The opposite of love is not hatred; it is indifference.

That's part of what you learn from the movie Mass. It's one of the best movies of 2021.  Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast introduces the movie this way:

Mass is a volcanic, unflinching depiction of four parents navigating the unthinkable. Years before, Linda and Richard’s (Reed Birney) son opened fire on his classmates at his high school, before going to the library and taking his own life. Gail and Jay’s (Jason Isaacs) son was one of the victims.

Neither couple is certain what they’re after by participating in this meeting. Forgiveness? Acceptance? An explanation? Their lives are forever tethered. Maybe conversation can do something for their grief, the pain that has overwhelmed their lives in so many different ways.

In the spiritual alphabet of humanity offered by Spirituality and Practice, "F" is for forgiveness and "C" is for connection. You'll see both in Mass. But you might want to add some other letters: "P" for persistence amid irresolvable pain. And "Q" for questions that never get answered.

And you'll get new ears for Silence, too. Not the contemplative silence of closeness with God, but the silence of so much pain you can't find words for it.

Mass is an unforgettable depiction of people who have had to endure unspeakable tragedy, apart yet together. The film does offer hope. There's some reconciliation at the end. Blest be the ties that bind. But it is not hope of the adventurous kind. It is more like a tragic hope, a tragic beauty, in which sadness and pain are never lost, but somehow endured by true grit and divine grace, woven together in tears, partly shared with one another and also shared (I believe) with an eternal Companion to all who suffer.

In Christianity a religious Mass is an activity in which people experience the presence of God through acts of praise, lamentation, confession, promise, tragedy, and joy. A Mass is a coming together of many human emotions, all present to the eternal.

In the movie Mass there's also a coming together, but not in a way that belies the crosses of life by hiding in Easter Sunday. The movie is about coming together on a good Friday, with people who cause you pain, all the while hoping for a hint, a taste, of resurrection, but not expecting one that will, in the words of the Book of Revelation, wipe away all tears.

​If the history of the universe somehow ends with pure joy where all tears are wiped away, this Mass is not that end. This Mass is more honest, more human, more poignant, and more painful. And maybe, in that kind of way, more Christlike. God doesn't become flesh to get rid of flesh. God becomes flesh to partake of the agony and poignancy of terrestrial life, apart from which there is no heaven. God is in the ties that bind, whether beautiful or painful or both. God is in the relations.

- Jay McDaniel, 5/9/2022
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The Actors Speak

"One of the things I think that human beings struggle with forgiveness is they think that if you do this or that, then you can forgive. Then you change your thinking, and then you can forget. Of course it’s not that way. Forgiveness is just the beginning, because you have to keep doing it. It’s a behavior. It’s not an action, and you keep going back and forth. It’s a process. It opens the door to a world that’s been unseen. That’s terrifying. That’s what we fear about it.”

- Martha Plimpton, on playing the role of Gail (mother of the victim)

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“All of us have experienced grief to some degree. This is to the exponential. But I remember in periods of my life when deep grief was present—I would say in the death of my father— the world changes. You are in your own world. Tragedy is everywhere you look, of course. But I remembered in my own experience that people are going about their business. They don’t realize the world has changed for you.”

- Ann Dowd, on playing the role of Linda (mother of the shooter)

Mass

Directed by Fran Kranz

A fictional story that proves how open-hearted
conversation can lead to healing, even after a terrible tragedy.
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film review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
reposted from Spirituality and Practice

​In their important book The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, Jillian Peterson, a psychologist, and James Densley, a sociologist, describe the work of a nonpartisan research center aimed at investigating mass gun violence. They created a comprehensive database about the life histories of more than 170 mass shooters, and also interviewed the victims' families, first responders, and experts to create a better understanding of why such events happen and what might be done to put an end to these tragedies.

The statistics are shocking. More than 1,200 lives have been lost, and Americans from high school age down, have never known a world without a mass shooting. More than half of American teenagers worry about a shooting at their school, and a lifetime of active shooter drills, locker searches, and locked downs at school has seeded in them an overwhelming fear of imminent death.
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Peterson and Densley point out that millions of dollars have been spent in the hunt for what many call "these monsters." But this study reveals that there is no one profile of a mass shooter, only multiple pathways to approach mass shootings, each filled with missed opportunities for prevention and intervention.

Mass is a harrowing drama written and directed by Fran Kranz which points out the trail of pain, horror, grief, anger, and guilt left behind by one troubled teenager who murdered 10 classmates and then committed suicide. The film focuses on two sets of parents -- Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd), whose son was the shooter, and Jay (Jason Isaacs) and Gail (Martha Plimpton), who son was killed at school. A social worker (Michelle Carter) has arranged for them to meet in a small basement room of an Episcopalian Church years after the massacre. They see this as an opportunity for some healing and perhaps closure.

The meeting gets off awkwardly. Linda has brought flowers, and they can't decide where to put them. They have brought pictures of their sons, but find it hard to settle on one story to share with the other couple. Gail finally says the obvious: "I want to know about your son because he killed mine." Did they intuit something was wrong? Was it pathological? Do they regret what happened? Do they blame themselves?

Richard and Linda explain that there was not one thing to point to in their son's behavior and reactions. Maybe bullying, computer games, not fitting in, bad therapy, secrecy, an inability to empathize. As for their own responses after the event, they didn't know what to say. They mourned too. They want to remember their son for what he was not for what he did.

This is a hard conversation, made vivid and real by outstanding acting by the cast and a script that touches on many levels of grief and the difficulty of talking about forgiveness, let along practicing it. We encourage you to stick with it and let it become your opportunity to listen to the effects of mass shootings and develop your own capacity for empathy with all those involved.

Mass premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021 and in December won the Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award which paid tribute to director Fran Kranz and the ensemble cast. In an interview with Sky News, Kranz noted that he wrote the intense drama in order to explore the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation, feelings that to those faced with the darkest of situations might seem impossible to come by. He explained that the film was inspired by true stories about parents of shooters meeting parents of victims and by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a restorative justice body set up in 1996 to investigate human rights abuses after the end of apartheid. Like those examples, this fictional story shows how open-hearted conversation can lead to healing, even after a terrible tragedy.

GOING DEEPER

In her book The Rising, Wendy Wright points out the importance of the ethical theme of Mass:

"Forgiveness seems to remain a theme waiting to be explored in depth in our present age. This deep and extensive kind of loving of enemies . . . seems to have become a theme of special urgency in the contemporary world."

Mass offers us an opportunity to ponder forgiveness as a spiritual practice. Here are four quotations to start your reflections and inspire applications in your own life.

"Forgiveness is the final form of love."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr in Heart of Forgiveness

"The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world."
-- Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love

"In the end, forgiveness simply means never putting another person out of our heart."
-- Jack Kornfield in The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace

"On the wings of forgiveness is carried all other wisdom."
-- Honey J. Rubin in Compassion
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More quotes on forgiveness.