The Hiding Place

Moving into film

Transforming Ministry is now experimenting with film reviews, and Andrew Carr has started the process with a review of The Hiding Place, about Corrie Ten Boom. We are keen for everyone to see this review, as it is a first for us, but we anticipate future reviews being available in the Subscribers’ area of the website.

If you would be interested in reviewing a film for Transforming Ministry, please contact editor@transformingministry.co.uk in the first instance.

 

 

The Hiding Place (2023 USA film)
Certificate: 12A
Runtime: 153 minutes
Director: Laura Matula
Cast: Nan Gurley, John Schuck, Carrie Tillis

Based upon Corrie Ten Boom’s memoir, this is an emotive film version of a stage play of her moving and powerful book. I was reminded of a quote from movie satire The Player (1992) “No stars, just talent!” which summarises the quality of the three lead performances, especially Carrie Tillis (Betsie Ten Boom).

It’s not an easy watch, its subject matter and theme are sombre, turning as they do to a dark page in human history. The staging and lighting with the narrative switching effectively between the characters’ past and their then-present is played out on a revolving stage. The theme broad – Anti-Semitism, Hatred of the Other, the Holocaust; the focus narrow – what would you personally have done in the same situation?

The sequences in Ravensbrück camp are powerful yet understated, the communion scene in particular is extraordinary. It stays with you… ‘forgiveness must first be a scandal if it is to have any power at all’ which is said and shown by Corrie (Nan Gurley) forgiving a former Nazi captor.

Not a film to passively watch, but to be engaged with and to ask ourselves why we are potentially allowing the circumstances that caused the events back then to happen again today?

ANDREW CARR

 

July – Ben Jonson: On my First Son

Shakespeare’s contemporary Jonson is best remembered as a playwright, but in this poignant and very personal piece his own feelings are laid bare.

He ponders on the paradox of faith and grief – why grieve for someone who has gone to glory? Is it ourselves we grieve for in the absence of a beloved one?

The poem also plays upon the fact that both father and son have the same name – Benjamin (Genesis 35: 18). So the line between the child Ben and his father Ben is blurred. The father’s pain at the lost diminishes him. But by drawing attention to the meaning of the name, ‘child of my right hand’, Jonson recalls the biblical parallels – not only with the youngest son of Jacob but also with that other Son who now sits at the right hand of his Father. And this reminds us that God has walked not only the path of pain before us, but also the path of agonising grief.

            Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
                My sin was too much hope of thee, lov’d boy.
            Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
              Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
            O, could I lose all father now! For why
                Will man lament the state he should envy?
            To have so soon ‘scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage,
                And if no other misery, yet age?
            Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, ‘Here doth lie
                Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.’
            For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
                As what he loves may never like too much.

June – Christina Rossetti: A Birthday

Like her brother, the painter Dante Gabriel, Christina was fascinated by medieval tales and imagery. But while it is tempting on a superficial reading to see this work as a straightforward love poem (albeit with rather fanciful language), there is another way to look at it.

Christina Rossetti was a woman of great faith, which combines with her love of the middle ages here. The poem recalls the mysterious language of the Corpus Christi Carol where Christ is portrayed as a wounded knight on a bed with rich hangings. Colour is important in both poems. And it is Christ who leads us in calm places of refreshment, who makes us fruitful, who brings us peace. It is in Christ that we are born again. The moment when we first become fully aware of Christ’s presence can indeed be described as the Birthday of our life.

 

My heart is like a singing bird
                  Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
                  Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
                  That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
                  Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
                  Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
                  And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
                  In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
                  Is come, my love is come to me.

 

William Blake: ‘London’

Blake’s best known poem, ‘Jerusalem’, set to music by Sir Hubert Parry (a favourite
composer of the king) has been sung at many services over the coronation weekend. But
while that poem imagines the Kingdom of Heaven as an ideal for our nation, ‘London’
describes a place where God seems all too absent.

The wretched inhabitants of Blake’s London are slaves to gruelling work, to misery and to
fear. Today, we may no longer send children up chimneys, but poverty, social deprivation,
ill health and homelessness are real and growing evils. While some of us enjoy a relatively
luxurious life, others have to choose between keeping warm and going hungry despite
working long, joyless hours. While Blake’s poem tells us that social inequalities are nothing
new, it also reminds us that these are wrongs that need to be tackled. As people of faith,
who pray every day for the coming of the Kingdom, we cannot ignore them.

 

I wander through each chartered street,
wwNear where the chartered Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
wwMarks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
wwIn every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
wwThe mind-forged manacles I hear;

How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry
wwEvery blackening Church appals,
And the hapless Soldier’s sigh
wwRuns in blood down Palace walls.

But most through midnight streets I hear
wwHow the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new-born Infant’s tear,
wwAnd blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

 

CMD and lifelong learning

The Central Readers Council is committed to supporting ongoing development and lifelong learning for Readers/LLMs. With this in mind, a number of learning packages are being developed.

We are delighted that the first of these, a module on Funeral Ministry which has been written by Alan Stanley, is available now.

This module is free of charge for a limited period – download it here.

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