Interfaith Chocolate

by Dean J. Seal

The use of Chocolate (the movie) is a great idea that pastors Evelyn and Craig are employing in Lent. Lent becomes a season of withholding if we turn it into a competition of who can give up the most, and feel the worst. Feeling bad is how you measure what you have given up, innit?

What we are learning from the film is that the radical atheist chocolatier is more generous, more giving, more adventurous than any of the petrified Christians in town. They are not just petrified with fear, the fear of doing something wrong, the fear of losing face and being shamed. They are also petrified stiff with following the rules that have been around so long no one knows where they come from. Petrified in their paths. Not to spoil the ending, but by then end there is liberation for the lot of them. Chocolate4 has arrived. And fear of joy crumbles.

Fear of Joy is how an old buddy of mine used to describe the Twin Cities before she left for the West Coast. Why should it be bad for us to enjoy ourselves? Enjoy chocolate? Enjoy new ideas and all that jazz? She was a dancer, and there was a very palpable fear of enjoying the process of watching a body, usually female, do all kinds of cool and unusual stuff. It seems obvious now, but a recent study (published somewhere near France, I don't know) said that women would much rather look at another woman's body in motion, whether it be dance, basketball, tennis or just running, than look at a man's body pretty much any time. This town has improved since my pal left (about seven years ago) and in fact the Big Twin Towns are very much a Dance Mecca. Ask James Sewell. So we are learning, we do move, even at a glacial pace.

What Am I talking about? you may ask yourself, and me. Here's the Interfaith Message for today. In the Movie Chocolate, the Petrified Forest of Christians was liberated by a self-described atheist. She had something to teach them, and it was compassion. Also, the church we go to is reaching beyond the bell book and candle format to learn from a movie. That is a format-style of interfaith dialogue; learning from a different resource. We can also learn from plays, from dance pieces, heck, even other religions have something to teach us. The Native Americans had it all over the White man in respecting the earth, right? Dr. King studied Gandhi, and Gandhi studied Jesus. They all picked up stuff that was theme-compliant with the work they did, and made it their own. King did not become a Hindu, and Gandhi did not become a Christian (someone asked him why, and he said, "I might have become a Christian if I had not met so many of them.")

So. I'm a guy who has no problem saying there are many paths up the mountain. There is something wrong with every religion, every faith tradition, including my own. With patience, with some mild study or chance encounter with another person's viewpoint, we can pick up stuff that makes sense that helps even if it isn't in our Bible. Jesus said, " I have called you to live abundantly." Go get 'em.