Lost Season Five: He’s Our You

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Jason

This episode was OK for me. I liked that we finally got to see Sayid as a child (the first glimpse at his childhood that I can remember). Some of the trips through his timeline seemed a little choppy to me (I expected more of a conflict or a betrayal between Sayid and Ben after Sayid’s killing spree came to an end), but overall I give this episode high marks. I was just looking for more of a connection between Sayid the bloodthirsty henchman of Benjamin Linus and Sayid the “I’ll kill you if I ever see you again, Benjamin”. I guess he was just upset that Ben led him to believe there was a greater purpose to all the bloodshed. But we’ll get to Sayid’s “purpose” in a minute.

The episode’s title, “He’s our you,” is the line Sawyer mutters to Sayid when he’s introduced to Oldham. If you thought Oldham looked vaguely familiar, that’s because he is; actor William Sanderson is best known for his work as “Larry” from the TV show Newhart. I half expected his brother Darrell and his other brother Darrell to emerge from the tent, too. He played a creepy Dharma whack job torturer. One of my favorite bit characters in the series to date.

The real issue here is whether or not Sayid has altered history with his decision to take the life of a young Benjamin Linus. Earlier in the episode, Ben tells Sayid “You are capable of things most of us aren’t. It’s in your nature. It’s what you are. You’re a killer.” In the 1977 timeline, Sayid has clearly made the same estimation of Ben’s character and decides to attempt to alter the course of history by taking the life of Ben to avert all the pain that he will inflict upon so many. It’s the whole “if you could, would you go back in time and kill Hitler before he slaughtered millions” argument. And with that parting shot, Sayid decidedly answers “Yes, I would.” This, he believes, is his purpose.

But I’m doubtful that things will work out so easily. As we know, the Island has a way of course correcting when things don’t go according to plan. Moreover, the Island has a way of not allowing certain things to happen to you until it has decided that it’s “finished” with you. (See again: Michael’s unsuccessful off-Island suicide attempts.) We know Ben serves some sort of purpose in the Island timeline, so I have a feeling that Sayid’s shot didn’t do the trick. In fact, I have a feeling we’ll see that Sayid’s shot ultimately accomplished just the opposite: rather than killing Ben, Sayid’s murder attempt most likely will turn out to be one of the contributing factors that leads Ben to become the great Island manipulator. And that, my friends, is what you call irony.

Other interesting tidbits:

  • As Horace and his band of merry Dharma suburbanites are trying to decide Sayid’s fate, Radzynski threatens to call Ann Arbor. Of course, we know Ann Arbor is the home of the University of Michigan where Gerald and Karen DeGroot (founders of the Dharma Initiative) were doctoral candidates. I’m wondering if we’ll finally get a glimpse of the DeGroots at some point this season.
  • My friend SKID states this in his LOST ruminations: “There is a growing population who are staking their tents in the “Amy is an Other” camp . . . but argue that Paul was with DHARMA . . . and that it was Amy’s Ankh necklace, she was just taking it back after giving it to him. They argue that Ethan was the last baby delivered on the island, and that is because he is “Tainted” as a mix of Native/Newcomer blood. This tainted bloodline offended the Island and it stopped people from breeding.” If Amy is really an “Other”, this would make sense of the jungle confrontation scene where Paul is executed. I like this idea.
  • Why is it so important to keep “The Swan” model a secret? Radzynski just keeps prattling on and on about it. Enough already.
  • Another note from SKID: “Some have suggested that Sun and Ben were unable to go back to 1977 because they are already there (as children). This theory has gotten a lot of mileage on the web but still does not explain Lapidus not flashing unless you argue that he was never one of the original folks so his not flashing is like all the other passengers not flashing. It COULD be that Sun’s dad (Mr. Paik) has some connection to the island’s past since we know that he IS in some cahoots with Hanso, Widmore, and the like in his business dealings, SO it could be that Sun might have even been born on the island and is there as a child now, but I’m not sure I follow all of this and one reason being that Miles is there and everyone thinks that Miles is the baby of Dr. Chang . . . and of course the bigger reason being that Jin would have likely met little Sun”
Posted in Television | 3 Comments

Lost Season Five: A Theory Debunked

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Jason

Well, I’ve done an about face re: my half-cooked theory about why Sun didn’t make the leap back in time with the rest of the Oceanic Sixers. I thought it possible that she didn’t make the jump because she, like Ben, was already on the Island in 1977. I was thinking maybe the Island had some sort of paradox clause to keep you from traveling back to a time when you were already on the Island. I mean, what sort of ramifications would there be if you were to meet yourself in the past / future? Anyway, that was what I was initially thinking.

But, I’m wrong. Not only does Lostpedia confirm Sun’s birthdate as 1980, but we’ve also seen this season that the Island makes no such distinctions when throwing you back in time. Earlier this year, when Sawyer, Juliet, Locke and the crew were doing the nosebleed, timewarp thing, they went back to a point in Season 1 when Claire had her baby and Locke saw the light coming from the hatch. Sawyer walks out of the jungle and sees Kate delivering Claire’s baby. Anyway, all of those individuals who were traveling back in time were already on the Island at that moment in time. So there goes my theory.

I”ll have a full recap of last night’s episode later today.

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And I Did Not Know It

Posted on March 25, 2009 by Jason

Tomorrow is the 15th anniversary of my Mother’s death. I honestly can’t summon up the energy to write a fitting tribute for her as I’ve done in years’ past. (I’ve already written tributes to her here and here.) I just miss her so much and no amount of writing about it is ever going to assuage the pain of her absence. But I decided to honor her by posting a sermon I preached in her honor last spring. Fair warning: it’s lengthy. But these are my thoughts as I reflect on my Mother today.

_______________

“And I Did Not Know It” – Genesis 28:10-16

In the darkness…
In the night…
This refrain rises and rings out over the plain…
“Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.”

The Biblical account recalls Jacob as a rather despicable character. Our text for today comes fresh on the heels of Jacob’s deception of his father Isaac. In the Bible’s first account of identity theft, Jacob pretends to be Esau, duping his blind (!) father into conferring upon him the blessing that was the rightful possession of his older brother. But we should’ve seen this coming all along. When these twin boys were born, it was Esau who came first; Jacob, tenacious even in birth, enters the world clinging to his brother’s heel. His name becomes some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy; Jacob means either “he takes by the heel” or “he cheats”. As if swindling Esau’s birthright away (for a bowl of stew, no less), Jacob steals the family blessing as well. He cheats, indeed.

The text says that Isaac preferred Esau, the firstborn, the rugged “man’s man”. He liked to feast on the game his hunter-son would bring home. Jacob no doubt knew of this preferment. In fact, that seems to be what prompted the deception in the first place.

For Jacob, you see, was the favorite of his mother, Rebekah. She is the one standing in the corner, aiding and abetting the deception of her husband. She is the one who, in the aftermath of the deception story, convinces Isaac to send Jacob off on a journey to find a wife, a shrewd tactic to assist Jacob in avoiding the wrath of his older brother. And so we find Jacob in the midst of this journey. The text says he comes to a certain place and the sun is setting, so he makes the decision to spend the night.

It is here on the plain that we find Jacob. Here, in this darkness, in this night, he beds down alone. And in this darkness, in this night, loneliness begins to envelope him. This much is clear: he is not lonely because he misses his father. To tell the truth, he was accustomed to being without Isaac. Not being in his father’s presence – this is no new experience for Jacob. No, it is his mother that he misses! For she is the one who loves him! She is the one who nurtures him! Can there be any doubt that he is on his way to his mother’s homeland to find a wife that will love him the way Rebekah has? It is his mother that Jacob misses at this, the hour we stumble upon him.

And so, we find Jacob, alone in this darkness, in this night, with nothing but the barrenness of the plain, the barrenness of his own soul.

Jacob drifts into a deep sleep, until…

Behold! He sees a ladder, a staircase, more precisely, coming down from heaven to the place where he lays on the ground. He looks and Behold! The host of heaven! Angelic beings surround him! These celestial beings are ascending and descending in the firmament between heaven and earth. And Behold! A voice booms from beside him. “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father, the God of Isaac!” And Jacob realizes that he is not alone after all. He is in the presence of God. Behold!

It must be noted that the text gives no indication that Jacob had ever encountered this God before. Oh sure, he’d heard the stories. He’d heard the stories of his grandfather Abraham and how God had spoken to him. No doubt he’d heard the stories of this God who had appeared to confer blessings and promises upon his father Isaac. But Jacob? He’d known nothing of this God. And yet, here He stands, beside him. “I am the God of your fathers, Abraham and Isaac.” The implicit question here is: Will I be your God, Jacob?

God offers blessing and He offers promise. “Behold, I am with you,” He tells Jacob. And Jacob awakes from his dream, and he says, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know.”

When I was 10 years old, my father passed away. He contracted a very rare form of lung cancer in the winter of 1986. We watched him die a very slow, painful death. He died on October 20, 1987. In the years that followed, my mother took on an even greater role in my life. She was still there to bind up my scraped knees with nurture and care and Sesame Street Band-Aids and chocolate ice cream. But she also started taking me to my baseball games. She bought me my first razor. She said real men love God. She even tried to have “the talk” with me; I wouldn’t let her, but she gets credit for trying.

In short, she became both mother and father to me. That’s what made the spring of 1994 so difficult for me. In the fall of ’93, we noticed a change in Mom’s energy level. Simple things, like working in the garden, would just wear her out physically. We also noticed a mole on her back that was beginning to concern us. She’d always had a half-dollar size mole on her back, and she was suspicious that it was changing shape and getting some jagged edges. She called her doctor and they told her to stop by. Said they’d “squeeze her in.” My mother, a teacher, left at the end of the school day and she was the last patient the doctor saw that day. He took a quick glance at the mole and told her she had nothing to worry about. Said he was late for his tee time, but if she noticed anything else that concerned her, she could give him a call. That was September, 1993.

Four months later, my mother was diagnosed with a full-blown case of malignant melanoma. I’m not a doctor, but from what I understand, malignant melanoma is one of the fastest spreading types of cancer a person can contract. She started chemotherapy treatments immediately, but it was too little too late. The doctors told us she had only weeks to live. 6 weeks later, she was gone. I was 17 years old.

The last time I ever spoke to my mother was at the hospital. I would go to school during the day and then come out to the hospital in the afternoon. I remember sitting on the bed with her and she was asking me about my day. “How is baseball going?” she asked.

“Fine,” I told her.

“When is your next game?”

“I don’t know.”

She asked me about this girl I was dating and I told her I didn’t want to talk about that. I told her I didn’t want to talk about any of this stuff. “We’re not supposed to be here, Mom! You’re not supposed to be here! I don’t like this and I don’t want to talk about anything!”

She looked up from her hospital bed and smiled and said, “Jason, I love you.”

That night, she slipped into a coma. Over the next day or two, she would awake only for a moment. In the end, the cancer spread to her brain. She died on March 26, 1994, 14 years and 9 days ago.

When we buried her, I made myself a promise. I promised myself that I would not cry. I promised myself that I would not give God the satisfaction of watching me weep. I became the epitome of the angry young man. I wasn’t sure if God was real anymore, but if He was, He sure wasn’t anything like this “God of love” I’d been hearing about all of my life. My experience told me God – if He existed at all – was at best benign and at worst a cruel sadist. I half-hoped He was real so I could have someone to lash out at. “What, taking my Dad wasn’t enough? You have to take my Mom, too?” If you can imagine every awful, venomous, mean-spirited thing one person can say to someone else, I said it to God. I hated God. And I told Him, “It’s gonna take a whole lot more than that for you to break me.”

And so, for a full year, I kept my promise. I did not cry. Not one drop. Fueled by my anger, I entered into my personal plain of darkness and isolation. I wanted to be alone. People would ask how I was doing and I kept them at arms length. “I’m doing as well as I can,” I’d say. I learned to quote Romans 8:28 to people before they had a chance to quote it on me. Oh, I heard them all: “She’s in a better place now.” “Everything happens for a reason.” And my personal favorite: “God must’ve needed her in heaven with Him.” I learned to hate this God who needed my Mother more than I did. And I learned to accept these pithy truisms with a smile and a hug if that’s what it took for people to leave me alone. By all outward appearances, I was a well-adjusted young man orphaned at the age of 17. On the inside, I harbored anger and resentment that I refused to let go of. Like Jacob clinging to Esau’s heel, I refused to let go of my anger.

One evening, a full year after my Mother’s death, I found myself literally alone. The family members I was staying with were all out of town for spring break, as were all of my close friends. I checked the youth group calendar, but to no avail; the next youth event was weeks away. All the things I’d filled my life with to keep myself busy (school, friends, family, church)…none of these distractions were available to me. The power went off at our house that night, so even watching TV or playing video games was out. To top it all off, I decided to run grab a bite to eat, only to find that my car wouldn’t start! So there I sat, alone in a big empty house, eating a peanut butter sandwich, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but sit and reflect on the barrenness and loneliness of my life.

The cumulative effect of sweeping my emotions under the rug for 12 months must’ve caught up with me. As I sat there that evening, watching the sun slip behind the horizon, I realized how utterly alone I was. I think I finally allowed myself to lay my anger down long enough to acknowledge how much I missed my Mother, her warmth, her love. In the end, that’s all it took. I began to feel something very much like sorrow brimming up from my heart and into my throat. My eyes turned moist and I thought of her final words to me: “Jason, I love you.” And for the first time in over a year, I thought of the God of my Mother.

I’m still not sure what it was that drove me to pray in that moment. I only got out one word – “God…” – before waves of tears washed over me. I began to sob uncontrollably as I writhed around on the floor. I grieved my dear Mother. I grieved my Heavenly Father. That one word prayer, born out of the darkness of the night, became my cry for reconciliation. “God…”

I really don’t have the words to describe to you what happened next. The best way to describe it is to say I had my own Behold! moment. I felt God’s presence by my side. Amid all the darkness and pain and brokenness of my life, I felt His presence and I felt His promise. And He spoke this word: “Behold, I am with you…and I always have been.” A sense of peace fell on me that I’ve honestly not stopped feeling since that day. And that peace has made all the difference in my life. That day, the God of my Mother became my God, too.

In the darkness…
In the night…
This refrain rises and rings out over the plain…
“Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.”

Posted in My Girls, Preaching, Scripture | 5 Comments

Lost Season Five: A Theory

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Jason

For the past few weeks, it’s puzzled me that Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid “flashed” off of Ajira Flight 316, yet Sun and Ben did not. At first, I had no good answer as to why they would remain in the present while the others were flashed back to 1977 in the days of Dharma. And while I’m still not sure about this one, it’s the best I can come up with to explain why Sun and Ben are in the 2007 / 2008 timeline while the rest of the crew went back to the Me decade.

Sun and Ben couldn’t go back because they were already on the Island to begin with in the 70s.

We already know that Ben was on the Island as a teen. But what if Sun has been to the Island before as well? What if, through some sort of connection that her father had (perhaps Paik Industries was doing business with Dharma?), Sun had visited the Island sometime earlier? Suppose she was on the Island in 1977 and that’s the reason she didn’t “flash” with the rest of the Oceanic Six-ers. Maybe the Island has some sort of paradox clause, some parameters to keep you from going back in time and meeting yourself. And that’s why Sun and Ben didn’t make the leap.

Am I crazy? Probably. (According to Lostpedia, Sun wasn’t born until 1980, so my whole theory is toast if that’s true.) But there may be something here.

Posted in Television | 4 Comments

No Room: Nazareth

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Jason

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. – Luke 4:28-29

Following his baptism and temptation, Jesus began his public teaching ministry “in the power of the Spirit (4:14).” As an itinerant preacher, Jesus became something of a cult hero in Galilee. “And everyone praised him (4:15).” Eventually, Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth with an invitation to speak at the synagogue Sabbath service. Reading from Isaiah 61, Jesus declared:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

In Luke’s Gospel, this text serves as Jesus’ mission statement. His ministry was a proclamation of good news for the poor, the imprisoned, the blind, the oppressed.

On the heels of this sermon, the crowd seemingly looked for Jesus to perform some miraculous work to accompany his teaching. “Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum (4:23).” Matthew tells us that Capernaum was a base of operations for the ministry of Jesus (Matthew 4:13-17, 23-25). If Jesus had healed the sick, the paralyzed, and the demon-possessed throughout the villages of Galilee, then one could only imagine what miraculous wonders he would perform here in his hometown.

The only problem is that Jesus refused.

In fact, he seizes this as an opportunity to emphasize another aspect of his ministry: his mission to bring the Gentiles into the Kingdom. After his announcement that no prophet is accepted in his home country, Jesus cites two prophets of old (Elijah and Elisha) who were each sent to non-Israelites. His “own people” become livid at these references to God’s mercy to Gentiles.

This hometown boy has gotten too big for his britches.

Who do you think you are? Aren’t you Joseph’s boy? We changed your diapers. We made you sit up straight and mind your manners. We taught you Torah.

And now you hold out on us?

What about us? Are we not poor, too? Are there no blind in Nazareth? No prisoners? None oppressed?

Perform your signs and wonders here or else you’re no longer one of us.

When he refused, they moved to kill him.

Displaced. Banned from his hometown. Can you hear the sorrow in his words? “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head (Lk 9:58).”

How lonely it must have been to walk such a path.

No room for you, even in your hometown.

Posted in Devotional, Jesus, Scripture | Leave a comment

This Is A Post To Say That I Have Nothing To Post About

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Jason

The title pretty much says it all.

I’m wondering if, after 4+ years of blogging, I’ve run out of things to say. I’m pretty much just blogging about LOST these days and I’d probably let that go if I hadn’t already started it. I at least want to finish out the season.

But I’m seriously contemplating putting this blog to rest for good. There was a time when blogging was a lot of fun and it helped me feel more connected in my relationships. That time has passed. So, this puppy may be on his last legs. I’ll let you know.

Posted in Blogging | 3 Comments

Lost Season Five: Namaste

Posted on March 19, 2009 by Jason

Sorry it’s taken me so long to make this week’s LOST post. It’s funny how little things like work and family leave so little time for blogging, eh? Anyway, last night we were treated to “Namaste”, a transitional episode that gets our players in place for the home stretch of Season Five. I know you can’t judge a season until you’ve viewed it in its entirety (Exhibit A: Season Three), but it is very difficult to not judge this season in light of the stellar Season Four. I’m still diggin’ it, but all the time-travel stuff has changed things for me. It’s getting hard to remember how it all fits together sometimes. Anyway, more to say about that at season’s end.

On to “Namaste”:

  • This episode confirms what I beleived to be true for the past few weeks: the survivors of Ajira 316 are in the “present”, circa 2007. Remember in Season Three when Kate and Sawyer had been captured by the Others and they’re told they’re breaking up rocks in order to make a runway? Now we know that was the truth. I suppose the runway could’ve been built in anticipation of something else, but personally, I have a feeling Ben had some sort of prior knowledge of the Ajira crash. Knowing he would be on the plane in the future, he commissions the construction of a runway to save his hide. That Benjamin Linus is a sneaky one, let me tell ya.
  • Is it just me or does Ilana (the law enforcement agent who had Sayid in her custody) remind anyone of Ana Lucia? Not sure there’s anything to that, but I had to register that here. I might be on to something. Doc Jensen at EW says she muttered the name “Sarah” when she woke up during the turbulence. If that’s true, what does that mean?
  • Josh Holloway is a great actor. He completely sold the reunion shot with the Oceanic Three (Jack, Kate, Hurley). But Sawyer also quickly moved to save his old pals by getting them Dharma-ized. Anybody else think Sawyer had something to do with Jack being assigned janitorial duty? That made me laugh. There’s a part of me that thinks Sawyer is secretly hating the fact that his old friends have returned. His Dharma life with Juliet was better than anything he’d ever known; now Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid have jeopardized that. I think it’s all going to come crashing down on him very soon. And I hate that, because I rather like this new Sawyer.
  • One thing that bugged me: the dialogue between Sawyer and his pals re: the time travel. After referring to Hurley as “Kong”, Sawyer drops the bomb: the year is 1977. And Jack and Kate and Hurley are like, “Oh, OK. That’s weird.” I guess the writers were trying to get us to a certain point in the narrative, but we labored through so many episodes early on this season where Sawyer and Juliet and the crew are trying to wrap their brains around this time travel stuff. And now the Oceanic Sixers are just supposed to roll with it? I don’t know, seemed kinda lame to me. But I digress.
  • I’m guessing Sawyer’s reference to Farraday (“He’s not here…anymore.”) is a tease about an upcoming episode. My guess is that Farraday somehow hooked up with Richard Alpert and the Hostiles / Others. You’ll remember from the opening sequence of Season Five that Farraday eventually infiltrates The Orchid. I’m guessing his M.O. will be to turn the donkey wheel again, perhaps in an effort to go “back” to the present (or prior to his time on the Island) in order to save Charlotte. The real question: over the course of the past 3 years on the Island, has Farraday finally decided to take off that ridiculous tie?
  • Did you catch Ben’s comment to Lapidus before Sun capsized him with the raft oar? When Lapidus says he doesn’t want to leave his people, Ben says something like, “Well, I have people I have to take care of, too.” Who is he talking about? The Others? The Oceanic Six? Is he lying? As always, you can take anything he says a hundred different ways. Is there another character in this series (or on network television, for that matter) who requires as much interpretation as Ben?
  • Speaking of Ben, I LOVE the creepy young Ben at the end of the episode. Hope we see more of that kid. His eyes look just like Michael Emerson’s.
  • In the scene where Sun was talking to Christian in the cabin, a blonde haired individual can be seen standing behind Sun. Any idea who this is? Claire? Garth from Wayne’s World?

The next two bullets are, in my opinion, the most important pieces of information to come from this episode. These two items get at the heart of Season Five and all this time travel stuff. I think this season hinges on two key questions: Can you change the past? If so, does that mean you can change the future? Two pieces of information for us to discuss:

  • Amy & Horace’s baby is Ethan. Interesting. There has been significant debate as to whether or not Sawyer and Juliet were “supposed” to save Amy from the Hostiles. If they hadn’t come upon them, it’s safe to assume that Amy would’ve died and her child would never have been born. But in the Island’s timeline that we’re familiar with, of course we know that Ethan plays a major role. It seems that Sawyer and Juliet didn’t change the past at all; in fact, they were simply playing the roles “fate” or the Island had predetermined for them (or something like that). When Sawyer approaches the Hostiles in “LaFleur”, one of them fires at him but misses. It could be that the Hostile has lousy aim; but it could also be that the Island won’t let Sawyer die because of the role Sawyer must play. Remember, we’ve seen this sort of thing before (when Michael kept trying to kill himself or when Jack was going to commit suicide by jumping off the bridge in the Season Three finale). In this regard, the Island is some sort of grand puppeteer and our castaways are simply players in the Island’s drama. (If that’s true, isn’t it interesting that Radzinsky was watching 1977 episodes of the Muppet Show over at the Flame? Perhpas that’s a significant nod to the fact that the Island is indeed some sort of puppet master?) As for why Ethan doesn’t have the last name “Goodspeed” (we’ve always known him as “Ethan Rom”), I have no idea. I do think it’s interesting that Ethan was one of the individuals who accompanied Richard Alpert when he recruited Juliet; in essence, he recruited the woman who gave birth to him. It would seem that Sawyer and Juliet didn’t change the past / future at all. In Farraday’s cryptic words, “Whatever happened, happened.”
  • I’m still curious as to why Sun didn’t make the jump back in time. As she and Lapidus dock the boat, they see / hear Smokey. As they enter the Barracks area, you could hear the whispers and then we see Christian again. But that’s where things got really interesting, because the Barracks don’t look anything like they did when we last saw them. You’ll remember last season when Keamy and his crew had Ben baracaded in his home and Alex was murdered. That prompted Ben to “call” Smokey, who proceeded to unleash his smoldery wrath upon them. But in that time frame (late 2004), the Barracks had been Other-ized. That is, there were no Dharma Initative logos on the doors, no building labled “Processing Center”, certainly no dusty old pictures of Dharma recruits hanging on the wall. This means that either a) between 2004 and 2007, someone has reconstituted the Dharma Initative on the Island and it has subsequently been wiped out (again), thus the Barracks are left in the disheveled state we see; or b) the “past” (which Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Sayid, etc are all living in) has in fact been changed to the degree that the Barracks were never populated by the Others. Despite the evidence we’ve seen so far, I’m of the opinion that the past can be changed and the future can be altered. (And I think Farraday will make an about-face on this issue, too; that’s why I think he’s infiltrating Dharma). I’m thinking somebody (Sayid, as the previews would seem to indicate) is going to spill the beans to the Dharma folk that a purge is coming. That will set off a chain of events that will ultimately keep Dharma in power. That is, until the Island chooses to “course correct” and the Dharma peeps are wiped out some other way. Maybe Widmore is responsible. Maybe Ben and Richard simply purge them later. Maybe resurrected Locke walks on water from the Hydra Island and blows up the “new” Dharma stations like he did with the Swan. And the Flame. And the sub. I’m sure there’s plenty of dynamite left in the Black Rock. All of this to say, the debate is still ongoing, at least in my mind, as to whether or not “past events” can be changed, thus leading to an alternative future. Time will tell if this is true or not.
Posted in Television | 11 Comments

Hope for Today

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Jason

These are hard days we’re living in. The economy is on everyone’s mind. Words like “bailout” and “corporate bonuses” have caught our ire. I have several friends and loved ones who are looking for jobs right now; even those who have jobs are worried about how a drop in production will affect them. I have even more friends who are either dealing with an illness of some kind or they have a family member that is very sick. The circumstances of life sometime seem to conspire against us. Hope becomes something of a commodity.

It’s hard not to get down about all of this. As I pray this morning, just about the only solace I can find is in God’s Word. I’m reminded of Paul’s words in Romans, words that have become something of a little mantra for me in 2009. May the words of Holy scripture produce in you overflowing hope in these dark days:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. — Romans 15.13

Posted in Devotional, Hope, Kingdom Values, Scripture | Leave a comment

Bracketology

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Jason

Well, once again it’s time for that most ancient of March traditions. No, I’m not talking about sprinkling pre-emergent herbicide on your yard with that little mini-wheelbarrow thingy. It’s bracket time, baby and I’m stoked because that means it’s time for the 3rd annual Already & Not Yet NCAA Tournament Pick ‘Em Invitational. The defending champ, Allen J, has already signed up. Who else is invited, you ask? Why, you are, intrepid reader.

Just go to Yahoo and sign-up for Tournament Pick ‘Em ’09. Our group name is What’s a bracket? with an ID# of 81818. Password is “bigtime”. It’s that simple. See you on the hardwood.

Posted in Sports | 2 Comments

Yankee Irving / Cardinal Joshua

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Jason

Tonight we watched one of our favorite movies, Everyone’s Hero. This has been one of my favorites for the past year or so. And tonight I finally figured out why.

Posted in Baseball, Kids, Movies | 4 Comments