Stopping the Tape in the Middle - Thoughts on You’ve Got Mail

I really like the movie You’ve Got Mail, it’s so charming and sweet - except for the fact that they’re both living with someone. That’s unfortunately not a big deal these days. Next thing you know, Kathleen and Frank are talking about how they’re “perfect” for each other, but, funny thing, they just don’t love each other, and isn’t that amusing, and Frank walks out with his typewriter, and it‘s just a part of the plot that brings Joe and Kathleen together. .
Today I found a copy of Redbook magazine in the teacher’s lounge at the school where I work, and I brought it down to our office to read in the off moments, but I only made it halfway through before I couldn’t take any more raciness. When I was a child my mom read Redbook all the time.
Kids at my school talk about same-gender relationships in the same way they talk about the latest shoe styles.
Last Christmas, it seemed as though the Babe in the manger were slipping further and further away from our celebration, and with him, the magic - even though people make elaborate, fanciful substitutions to pretend the magic is still there. You can’t have magic for long , though, while ignoring the source. You can’t hold on to it because you’ve cut off the current that produces the glow.
Relationships aren’t supposed to be casual. I am not just waxing nostalgic here; we really are losing what is precious, precious and meaningful, and we are clinging more and more frantically to - what? Fluff. Insubstantial, elaborate, showy fluff.
Relationships were never meant to be casual. Ironically, that is the very reason You’ve Got Mail is so sweet and so memorable, because we know, deep down inside, that relationships are meant to mean something, to be substantial, to last. We just know that Joe and Kathleen will be forever.
But becoming “forever” would take a major change of heart for anyone caught in the sophistry of casual relationships. All that witty, cosmopolitan (sorry, Redbook), casual, racy magazine talk is so insubstantial, so cold, so devoid of meaning, so like eating cotton candy - all you’re left with is sticky fingers, for all its gloss and surface appeal. Why do we long for that stuff? We don’t. It’s just easier to come by, more available, more accepted. It’s only a substitute for the real thing, and we wonder if there really is anything more out there.
There is! There always has been and always will be, so much more. So much more. It starts with making and keeping promises. And it builds on a rock, and it stands through everything, absolutely everything, that life can throw at you. The Apostle Paul - yes, I will quote the Bible, and not some watered-down version of it either, because the Bible is more current and more real than any of your glossy, casual, sophisticated fluff, and ever will be! - the Apostle Paul said that we ought to seek after “whatsoever things are true…honest…just…pure…lovely…of good report,” anything of virtue or worthy of praise. He exhorted us to “think on these things.”
Don’t fall for the sophistry that has us eating cotton candy - or worse. The old virtues are still the real thing. It is still possible to live by them, to hold on to them. They will surely hold on to you, if you are true to them, they really will. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise!