Choices

We saw Lee Daniel's The Butler and it arrived on the same day as a video clip from an old neighborhood friend, fellow parishioner, Pat.  What struck me in both, was the parent/child relationship - the dreams we have for our children do not always play out the way we expect and yet, we actually win when we embrace our adult children's right and responsibility to make their own life choices, the ones that work for them.

At the heart of this valuable, entertaining movie, with the backdrop of the civil rights movement, is a father/son relationship.  The father, all too trite but somehow still intriguing, does not approve of the son's choices - in this case to join the cause of the Freedom Riders and challenge those who supported segregation, even after the Supreme Court decisions against it.

In the neighbor clip, I'm so touched as this very solid and unwavering Catholic dad from Minnesota proceeds to the temple for his son's wedding ceremony.  Pat is the one in the long white robe with blue scarf and headpiece - see below.  He is goodness, the one who is winning here and so is his son, the groom, who rides in on the horse at the end of the clip.  Tell me, isn't this what love is all about?