Volume XX, Issue XIX: The Redemptive Power of Story II
Hayley Mills in 'Tiger Bay'
When Walt Disney decided to make a film adaptation of the 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna, he was concerned that the lead actor might be too much of a ‘Pollyanna.’ Fearing that the role would become way too saccharine, he considered it very carefully. Upon viewing the film debut of John Mills’ daughter Hayley in ‘Tiger Bay,’ Disney knew he had someone who could add a dimension of reality to the character.
Hayley Mills and her father star in this gripping film.
Tiger Bay (1959)
[click to read]
Tiger Bay, released in 1959, marked the film debut of 12-year-old Hayley Mills and few actresses have had such an extraordinarily impressive start to a film career. This is a crime thriller but it’s also a bit more than that - it’s a film about friendship and loyalty and duty and moral dilemmas. (read more)
Through the Eyes of a Child
Eleven year old Gillie lives in a world of troubles and dashed expectations. Her parents are gone and she deals with life in the care of her aunt, street bullies and the need to fend for herself. Wonderfully portrayed by Hayley Mills, Gillie is a study in the child who builds a world of lies to protect herself perhaps from the brutality of life. Mills is brilliant in her role, often saying volumes with facial expression and simply with her eyes. A lot of us fell in love with Hayley in Pollyanna. Here I came to fully appreciate her depth as an actor.
Though my childhood was in no way as bleak as Gillies,’ I remember my own response to leaving the idyllic world of home and backyard building of little paper houses with my sisters, and entering the world of endless waxed hallways – the industrial school of the mid-Twentieth Century! I did not fit in well there. Just like Gillie, I ‘created’ in my mind my means of escape. Adults would call it lying and some of them were not amused. I had one teacher who would not allow us to erase anything. I remember once making a childish mistake in the marbled copybook. In my anger and frustration I blacked out the entire page with my pencil! My dad came to the rescue with an Exacto knife and cut out that entire page so skillfully that it could not be detected. He cheered me on as I ‘recreated’ the work.
Next to the pencil, the eraser would become my favorite tool! Now you wouldn’t think that one destined to design could get in trouble with a pencil – think again! In first grade we were issued those fat pencils meant to fit our chubby hands. I unthinkingly picked up a regular #2 pencil (I had been drawing and writing with thinner pencils for some time) and the teacher saw me. She broke the pencil over my hand! I began to believe the true lie: “I was a BAD KID!”
Later, a teacher, no doubt frustrated with me, tore up a very nice drawing of a T rex that I had done. I began to hide my drawings in a box under the bed. Later, not being drawn to athletics, I became the target of school bullies. Life was a series of gauntlets to be navigated. I loved to escape by myself to the beauty of the woods. My mother had to ring a cowbell to get me home for dinner. Sometimes I didn’t hear it and returned to a plate of cold victuals. To this day I do not complain about cold food!
All this is to say that in the character of Gillie I saw a wonderful portrayal of how we as children handle the complex dilemmas that the world presents to us. We ‘create’ a narrative that helps us navigate things. Those of us who work with children would do well to study this creative mythology.
And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.” – Mark 10: 13-15
Teaching People to Dream
Sometime in our past Century, we ceased to see the people. We saw the poverty and despair and attempted to solve the problem institutionally. Government programs could muster so many resources and initially they could indeed create new housing and feed the multitudes. But the truth is that the same despairs followed people into their rebuilt communities. Excerpts from the Redemptive Compassion DVD present a biblical call to holistic help by Lois Tupyi.
San Donato Val di Comino
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By Christopher F. Rufo
At six o’clock each morning, the alcoholics, addicts, and mentally ill residents of San Donato Val di Comino, Italy, emerge from their homes and congregate—sometimes together, but mostly alone—in the cafés around the town’s main square. Some of the hardened alcoholics order an espresso with a shot of liquor, then climb into work trucks and head out to farms and construction sites. The mentally ill—who suffer predominantly from depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia—order cups of coffee or sit at the patio tables emptyhanded, an indication that they have run out of cash for the month. (read more)
The lesson for Americans: culture matters. If we want to reverse the destruction of human life through addiction, mental illness, homelessness, and violence, we must reimagine our moral and cultural possibilities and seek to reestablish familial and communal bonds that can prevent the most vulnerable from falling into the abyss. No doctor, pill, or public policy can replace a truly compassionate society—one that loves the mad and the addicted but restrains them from harming themselves and their neighbors.”
Photo by Samuele Tocci.
Further Up and Further In
By Bob Kirchman
Fiction inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.
A new painting by Kristina Elaine Greer captures the magic of a journey to Narnia!
Tearfully, she held the family photo close and remembered the happy times. Indeed, there had been joyous times with her three siblings in their small London home. Then followed the terrible sirens and explosions. Neighbors perished and gaping holes smouldered in once-quiet neighborhood's. The evacuation came next, which meant leaving Mum and Dad behind; we siblings boarded a train and headed for the safety of the countryside and extended family.
Don’t love anything too much,” she had whispered to herself back then. “It will be taken away from you.” She missed Mum and Dad terribly but held it in.
Gradually, she and her siblings found adventure in the great, countryside house— particularly, in one great, wondrous wardrobe—but a seed had been sown: people and the things you love go away. That held true many years later when, growing up way too fast, she had believed a young man loved her. But he, too, went away, taking a part of her with him.
Her teachers at school had told her that reason was a virtue and belief in unseen things was folly. She resisted at first, but, gradually, she embraced the notion that reality was composed of what could be seen. Reason was something one could get their hands around. Faith was fickle.
Is there a fine line between faith and foolishness?” she wondered.
Her thoughts went to the latest stir over the Cottingley Faeries. Two young girls had borrowed a camera and gone down to a creek where they photographed what they said were faeries. She’d seen the photographs. They looked like paper cut-outs to her. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the master detective Sherlock Holmes, believed the faeries were real. Many other adults were fooled as well.
But what of her fantastic adventures with her siblings and that wardrobe? They could only have been the product of an elegant myth—one they had created as children to ease the stress of war.
Youth,” she mused, her thoughts turning to more contemporary events. “Joys are fleeting. Only life’s sorrows last.”
Indeed, what people in London simply referred to as “the wreck” had come as a shock. A signal malfunction had set two British Rail trains on the same track, destined for a horrible head-on collision. Coaches crumpled into one another, and many were killed. Susan had lost not only her parents in that wreck but all of her siblings as well.
The accident had left her quite alone. She caressed the photograph. Everything warm and wonderful in her home had been reduced to black and white. That, too, would fade with time.
A distant aunt had taken her in, but she soon went off to university. More logic and reason were taught in the lecture halls. She felt empty, but neither did she have an antidote.
She visited a church but found it dry. Yet, the new world developing around her offered different experiences, and a new myth would embrace her and bring true happiness. Myth, she would discover, was not an untrue fantasy so much as a vehicle for inexpressible concepts. She had ended up registering for Medieval Literature to fill her schedule. She had done so with an inward groan.
This stuff will be colossally boring,” she had confided to her friend Alastair.
He had readily agreed. “I’ll bet the professor is some horrid old goat who smells of tobacco and brandy!”
When the class commenced, the two freshmen were surprised. The “old goat” turned out to be a young woman who seemed not much older than they, but she must have been. She was the kind of teacher who brought her material to life. She painted book covers on the wall of her classroom and took her dog on long walks around the campus lake. Susan and Alastair met her one day, and they walked together. This became a regular thing. One day, Susan said to her professor, “It is a shame that all the great myths are just that. MYTHS! None of them are true!”
Oh, but they are, for they communicate great truths!”
How can that be?” Susan wondered. As they walked along, a bit of wind lifted some leaves, sending them spiraling in flight.
Unseen truths need a special language of their own,” the professor answered. Susan’s change of heart towards the world of the unseen was not quick, but, like many great thinkers, the change was gradual. Dying gods, heroism, and unconditional love were the stuff of things imagined. But her professor had said that if one could imagine something in this world, the possibility must necessarily exist for its fulfilment.
Her thoughts turned to lions and then the fact that, for one who was not so athletic, she was a fine archer. That puzzled her. The stories of her youth, though myth, still felt more real than the things she was chasing after in everyday life. But, were those youthful experiences, like the Cottingley Faeries Sir Doyle felt were only visible to virginal young girls, no longer possible for her?
Surely, it is too late. For me, truth must be simply that which I see before me. Reconciliation with the Divine cannot be possible.” The silence engulfed her. But, was that a growl she imagined? No, it was a voice, a kind, low voice!
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9 NKJV).
She could choose the silence and loneliness. But, might there be the promise of another—hidden—path? Clearly, the truth was more complex than it seemed. Cracking it would require some hard examination.
