March 8, 2005

My first encounter with Christian fasting was in a Russian kitchen in the provincial city of Krasnodar in 1991. It was November and my host, a university professor, was preparing the evening meal at the beginning of the Orthodox fast called Little Lent, which is a bit like what Catholics and Protestants call Advent. While we boiled and chopped beets, carrots and potatoes, she explained that we were making a fasting salad. She added pickles and parsley and tossed the salad in sunflower oil, salt and pepper before serving it with brown bread.

Viktor Yushchenko’s 52-to-42 percent victory over Viktor Yanukovych in the December 26 election in Ukraine reflected not only the centuries-old schism between western and eastern Ukraine, but also the split between the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).

At this time of the winter countless high school basketball teams are trying to dribble, pass and shoot their way to a state championship. Glamorized in small-town lore and big-budget movies, reaching the state tournament is a dream shared by most any student athlete who has put on a basketball jersey (or soccer cleats or football pads or a wrestling singlet or softball glove). It takes hard work, dedication, commitment, teamwork, preparation, sacrifice.

In September 1862, Union troops were soundly defeated by Confederate forces led by Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee at Manassas Junction, Virginia. The North called it the Second Battle of Bull Run. President Abraham Lincoln’s somber mood afterward was recorded in a diary entry by Attorney General Edward Bates, who wrote that Lincoln “seemed wrung by the bitterest anguish—said he felt almost ready to hang himself.”

A church I pastored in Portland, Oregon, ran an after-school children’s program. One afternoon someone came to tell me that twin brothers, aged six, had pushed a little girl during a play period. Although she recovered quickly, we had some anxious moments. She had hit her head hard on a concrete floor and needed a CAT scan to make sure that there was no serious damage. After we had seen to her care, I left to visit the boys’ home and inform their parents of the misdeed.

Juliette Foster, by Phil Angotti (Jam Records). Acoustic pop.

Angotti has composed a soundtrack for an imaginary movie. Its billowy acoustic textures are reminiscent of Eric Carmen, Zombies, Left Banke and other classic pop artists. The record is sublime and thoroughly engaging, relying on Angotti’s supple tenor and strident rhythms to cast its spell. The title track gets a welcome propulsion from cello accompaniment, and fans of Paul McCartney’s first solo album might think they’ve stumbled on an album of lost outtakes.

Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar’s The Sea Inside is a triumph-of-the-spirit picture with an unconventional premise: the hero, Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem), a quadriplegic for two decades as the result of a diving accident, is seeking the right to end his life. The Sea Inside is also a social-problem film with a strong and clearly stated point of view: that in Spain, where church and state are historically intertwined, the legal grounds for considering a case like Sampedro’s are unfairly determined by Catholic morality.