Broadchurch - By Grace Ye Have Been Saved

[The first of a series of posts which bind my twin loves, philosophy and TV detectives, for no reason whatsoever. Next up: Inspector Morse: The Transcendence of Art, Sherlock Holmes - The Aragorn Complex. Upcoming: Foyle's War and moral absolutes.]

“A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret...that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!”

~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities


Broadchurch isn't a murder mystery. Sure, there's a whodunit at the center of the plot, but that's not really what it's about. Instead of whisking in a clever clogs London detective who then, having dispensed almost divine justice, sweeps cleanly out of the aftermath, Broadchurch places its two main characters directly in the path of the storm.

The Lost Art of Lament - Boston, Texas, and Gosnell

The trench is dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters
Torn apart
 

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

How long...

How long must we sing this song?

How long, how long... 

~U2, Sunday,Bloody Sunday

We all know what it feels like to be homesick. The many months in a foreign land, the unfamiliar sounds of a different country. After the hours on the road, you drag yourself indoors, ready for the weariness and discomfort to cease, ready to embrace that unconditional lover: the couch. 

But sometimes, there are problems that have no solution. Ever had a dream in your head? Perfect and untouched, the idea for a poem, or a book, or a piece of art? But when you take up the pen, the words cannot describe it. You know exactly what you’re talking about, but everything you try feels wrong, a futile attempt to describe a greater truth. You throw language at an object, but nothing captures the essence of it. The painting is just a scrawled crayon glimpse of an uncapturable vision. Sometimes, we feel a hunger that nothing satisfies.

The Silence of God

Today, more than ever, I feel the deep brokenness of the world. That Man could do such things, such brutal, animal, cruel things to innocent children, makes one want to scream at the heavens, why? Why?

I am not one to ask why the world is broken, or what would have been if it was not - it is enough that it is. But I was sitting at the computer, wondering whether it was okay to be hurt about this. The world is broken, but am I allowed to doubt God? To ask why? If I believe in heaven, why does this hurt so much? Then I came to a song that I had heard many times, but as has so often happened before, this time I really listened.