Fifty Summers Ago and One Big Shark!

You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”              --Chief Brody, from the 1975 film “Jaws”

Welcome to this, the first day of summer, June 20^th.  The day in the northern hemisphere when the earth’s tilt towards the sun is greatest, and when the arc of our sun moving across the sky is at its highest and longest. Counting today we have 95 days of summer left, three months, and three days. You could also argue the unofficial start of summer was actually Memorial Day and its unofficial end will be Labor Day, but let’s not quibble about the calendar.

Summer is absolutely here. It has arrived. Thank you God! Thank you Mother Earth! Thank you globe for finally changing your attitude and angle for these cherished few months.

But I’d like to propose that we also mark this day as one that forever changed the way that movies are made and seen and enjoyed by us.  One day when a film debuted that was so scary, so suspenseful and so intense, that some folks still won’t swim in the ocean because of this celluloid tale.

Happy “Jaws” day!

Fifty years ago, on June 20^th, 1975, the movie “Jaws” was released in more than 400 theaters in the United States.  And summer, at least summer at the movies, was never the same again. “Jaws” was the first true summer blockbuster, a film that took a bite out of the myth that no one goes to the movies in the warm summer months.  “Jaws” proved that given the right film, summer was a great time to release widely popular and widely profitable movies.

The summer “Jaws” came out I was 14 years old and just beginning my love affair with cinema. For $1.75 ($10.50 in today’s dollars) I could go to my local “Cinema 1 to Infinity” (14 screens actually) and for two blessed hours leave behind my awkward and sometimes very lonely adolescent life. It was my escape into reel life. Into movies that took me away, dropped me into some amazing or exotic or compelling fictional setting. In the case of “Jaws” I traveled to the  island of Amity. There a twenty-five-foot, three-ton great white shark terrorized the people of that place, and yes, the people in the movie theater too.

That summer I went to see “Jaws” five times and so was born one of my favorite summer pastimes. To go to as many movies as I can in the hot and humid days of June, July, and August.  To step out of the heat into the cool of a darkened theater, a tub of popcorn, slathered in butter, resting on my lap, and a large diet Coke in hand, in a cup covered with chilly drops of condensation. Then comes the scenes of coming attractions, even more movies for me to see! Finally, the main show. A superhero movie. A horror flick.  A rom com. An odd art house film. It doesn’t matter. I am omnivorous in my cinema outings.

To me, summer means movies. And I pray and hope that you have some summer love too, like me and my films.

Maybe it’s a summer sport or a summer hobby or a summer place or a summer ritual or a summer activity that warms your heart and celebrates these few months of abandon and cherished idleness and joy.  Most of us as adults can’t embrace an endless summer like we did as kids, but we can have our own special kind of fun these precious days.

So, return to a favorite ice cream stand and let that sweet concoction treat your tongue to a taste sensation. Return to an old ballpark and watch as folks “PLAY BALL!” on a muggy night.  Return to the same grey shingled cottage you visited as a child, and squish the sand in between your toes, and take a deep breath. Return to whomever, wherever, whatever feeds your summer soul.

Or…go to the movies! I’ll be in the fourth-row center, and there is always room for one more.

Happy summer!

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

        

     

  

Fifty Summers Ago and One Big Shark!

"You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”  --Chief Brody, from the 1975 film “Jaws”

Welcome to this, the first day of summer, June 20^th.  The day in the northern hemisphere when the earth’s tilt towards the sun is greatest, and when the arc of our sun moving across the sky is at its highest and longest. Counting today we have 95 days of summer left, three months, and three days. You could also argue the unofficial start of summer was actually Memorial Day and its unofficial end will be Labor Day, but let’s not quibble about the calendar.

Summer is absolutely here. It has arrived. Thank you God! Thank you Mother Earth! Thank you globe for finally changing your attitude and angle for these cherished few months.

But I’d like to propose that we also mark this day as one that forever changed the way that movies are made and seen and enjoyed by us.  One day when a film debuted that was so scary, so suspenseful and so intense, that some folks still won’t swim in the ocean because of this celluloid tale.

Happy “Jaws” day!

Fifty years ago, on June 20^th, 1975, the movie “Jaws” was released in more than 400 theaters in the United States.  And summer, at least summer at the movies, was never the same again. “Jaws” was the first true summer blockbuster, a film that took a bite out of the myth that no one goes to the movies in the warm summer months.  “Jaws” proved that given the right film, summer was a great time to release widely popular and widely profitable movies.

The summer “Jaws” came out I was 14 years old and just beginning my love affair with cinema. For $1.75 ($10.50 in today’s dollars) I could go to my local “Cinema 1 to Infinity” (14 screens actually) and for two blessed hours leave behind my awkward and sometimes very lonely adolescent life. It was my escape into reel life. Into movies that took me away, dropped me into some amazing or exotic or compelling fictional setting. In the case of “Jaws” I traveled to the  island of Amity. There a twenty-five-foot, three-ton great white shark terrorized the people of that place, and yes, the people in the movie theater too.

That summer I went to see “Jaws” five times and so was born one of my favorite summer pastimes. To go to as many movies as I can in the hot and humid days of June, July, and August.  To step out of the heat into the cool of a darkened theater, a tub of popcorn, slathered in butter, resting on my lap, and a large diet Coke in hand, in a cup covered with chilly drops of condensation. Then comes the scenes of coming attractions, even more movies for me to see! Finally, the main show. A superhero movie. A horror flick.  A rom com. An odd art house film. It doesn’t matter. I am omnivorous in my cinema outings.

To me, summer means movies. And I pray and hope that you have some summer love too, like me and my films.

Maybe it’s a summer sport or a summer hobby or a summer place or a summer ritual or a summer activity that warms your heart and celebrates these few months of abandon and cherished idleness and joy.  Most of us as adults can’t embrace an endless summer like we did as kids, but we can have our own special kind of fun these precious days.

So, return to a favorite ice cream stand and let that sweet concoction treat your tongue to a taste sensation. Return to an old ballpark and watch as folks “PLAY BALL!” on a muggy night.  Return to the same grey shingled cottage you visited as a child, and squish the sand in between your toes, and take a deep breath. Return to whomever, wherever, whatever feeds your summer soul.

Or…go to the movies! I’ll be in the fourth-row center, and there is always room for one more.

Happy summer!

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

        

     

  

Don't Give Up the Flag. Don't Give Up the Fight.

All of us ... should remember that no amount of flag-waving, pledging allegiance, or fervent singing of the national anthem is evidence that we are patriotic in the real sense of the word. ...[this]…is not the real measure of a man's patriotism.  --Eleanor Roosevelt

I’m an American flag kind of guy. I know that might sound corny, but that’s who I am and reflects a core belief of mine. The flag still means something and stands for timeless ideals and profound values.  

The flag I fly hangs from a flagpole attached to the front of my garage. On a breezy day, it flaps in the wind, sometimes opening up to its fullness, with its thirteen alternating red and white stripes for the original colonies, and a square in the upper left corner, deep blue background, with fifty white stars, one for each state.     

I fly it on and around Memorial Day, July 4^th, and Veterans Day. I fly it on election days too. My flag stands not just for support of our country but dissent too. That’s why I flew my flag upside down last November, post-election, to show my distress at the outcome and fear for the future of the country I love.

And yes, I always stand up with hand over heart at baseball games, cap off, as “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays and I sing the words, sometimes embarrassing my seat mate. I own the forty-eight star flag my father received as a gift from the men on a Navy ship that transported him home from service in the Korean War. Dad was rushing to return back to Boston to attend the funeral of his father who’d died very suddenly of a heart attack. Dad didn’t make it on time. That flag is very precious to me.

The flag’s meaning comes from what virtues it symbolizes. Service to country. Sacrifice for a cause greater than oneself. “Our flag was still there!” the national anthem proclaims. When our forebears fought against kings and tyrants, they refused to give in to tyranny.

The flag means very different things to different people.  Some even burn the flag in protest. That right to do so is actually protected free speech under the law . As Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority in the 1989 case Texas v. Johnson, “We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents.”

We enjoy freedom so expansive that controversial, and unpopular speech is protected. The flag symbolizes that America is a nation of laws, based in the U.S. Constitution. We are not supposed to be a nation ruled by a Capitol storming mob or by any President who might suppose that he is the law unto himself. Laws must finally trump unchecked wannabee kings.

I pray and hope in 2025 that this cornerstone of democracy can still survive.

The flag belongs to every single American, no one left out. It belongs to those protesting the actions of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles. It belongs to the police at those protests and National Guard women and men too. The flag belongs to the tens of thousands of Americans who will protest on June 14^th, in “No Kings” rallies across the United States. Even when the full rights symbolized in the flag were and still are denied to many people in the United States, still, it was and is their flag too.

Democracy declares the flag can’t be denied to anyone who calls our nation home.

There will be those who try to limit the flag’s “ownership” to their political party, narrow exclusive ideology, or only to those they judge as “true Americans.”  But such rhetoric is always false, the bellicose blustering of some power-hungry despot and his followers. Some wear a flag lapel pin and then use it as some kind of public posing, not so much to actually be patriotic but instead to practice what I’d call performative patriotism.  Anybody can chant “USA! USA!” and wrap themselves (sometimes literally) in the flag but real patriotism?

It is seen in what we do and how we live as Americans. Do we contribute to the common good? Pay our fair share of taxes? Volunteer in the community and for the military? Do we care for neighbors who struggle to care for themselves? To me those actions show real patriotism.

I will continue to fly the flag in all times, no matter who is in the Oval Office or in control of Congress. Politicians come and go, rise, and fall, but the flag, since 1777, has stayed and for that I am very thankful.

So, on this June 14^th, Flag Day, maybe each of us can consider, if but for a moment, what the flag means to us and what we can do to make our country a more just, merciful, and truly free land.

With no kings and no tyrants.  

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

      

  

   

What Is a Human Life Worth? To Some, Not Much.

“Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity?”  ― the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

What is the worth of one human being? One solitary soul? Or one high school kid from Milford, Massachusetts?

Chemically speaking, if the elements of my body like sodium, calcium or carbon were somehow able to be harvested, according to a June 2024 estimate by Anne Marie Helminstine, Pd. D. I’m worth about $4.50.

Is that really what you or I are ultimately worth, less than the cost of a Starbucks Vente?

Another measure of my human worth could be determined by lost wages in the event of my negligent death. If I had died at 29, my careers’ start, a jury might calculate money lost to my loved ones as a little over $2 million.

That is much more but can one life really be calculated as being about dollars and cents?

Last Saturday black masked, camouflaged and gun toting agents of  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) descended upon a vehicle full of teenagers on their way to volleyball practice.  They were members of a team at Milford High School, a town not far from where I write and live. Milford is known for its vibrant immigrant population and eighteen-year-old junior Marcelo Gomes Da Silva was driving his dad’s car that day.

How much is Marcelo’s one life worth?

Not very much, at least according to the brutal actions of ICE, who arrested the young man and brought him to a detention facility (let’s just call it a prison, ok?) where he is still being held. Then in a bizarre twist, Patricia Hyde, field director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Boston, said they were actually looking to arrest Marcelo’s dad, João Paulo Gomes Pereira.

Both son and father are undocumented, according to ICE and family friends.

But does that really provide any moral justification for their treatment as apparently “less than” human beings, “worth” much less than you or me, because, you see, they don’t have citizenship papers. No papers, no human worth, not really. No papers and Uncle Sam can snatch you off the streets, from your home or place of work, and now even from your school or church.

Son and father are not known criminals, or wanted by law enforcement, so they would seem to pose no threat to you or I or the community.  But in these dark days of the new administration’s crusade to rid the United States of anyone who is not a true blue American, anything goes. 

Did you hear about the 4-year-old U.S. citizen, suffering from cancer, who was forced to end his treatments here in the U.S. so he could be deported to Honduras with his undocumented mother? I guess he’s not worth that much either.

My faith tells me that our ultimate worth as human beings comes from being created by a loving God, who makes each of us in the divine image.  We are all children of God before any other title or label or condition.  I’m not claiming that the challenge of illegal immigration should just be ignored, no.

I am suggesting that there must, MUST, be a better way, a more dignified, merciful, systematic, transparent, and just way for our country to treat people like Marcelo.  He is a good young man, according to classmates and teachers alike, a dedicated student athlete, active in his church, trying to realize the promise of his young life. But now that is gone.             

What is a human being worth? A solitary soul like Marcelo?

Marcelo is absolutely worthy and worth it as a child of God, as are all guests from other nations who live among us. May God help them. May God help us to recognize their worth as human beings, our neighbors, and fellow children of God.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.