They learned from the
colonists and masterfully use our own strategies against us. They hide in the forests and thicket; they
lure us to the clearing and then ambush us.
We are shocked, scream against the injustice, but they were victors over
us. They are no longer battling with
muskets, bayonets and cannons, but with costumes, venues, the mystique of the British
aristocracy and screenplays. We are
enticed episode after episode, follow season after season and then Carnival
films, the leading UK
television drama producers, drops a bomb on us unexpectedly.
My daughter and I watched
the last episode of this season of Downton Abbey, reconciling the dangling
subplots, suspense mingling with hope leading right up to the last few joyous
moments of the otherwise crisis-plagued aristocratic family of Lord Grantham. Finally all seems to be ending well. Even the
hints of potential conflict properly whet our appetite for yet another peek
into an elegance of a by-gone era.
Rather than giving us a feel-good ending and nudging us toward the next
season, reputed Masterpiece Theater turned, with one-tragedy-too-many, a
quality series into a soap opera. We watched
the last scene screaming “No! No! You can’t do that!” But they did.
I gave up soap operas a very long time ago and now I have given up
Downton Abbey. Their catastrophic,
irreversible ending was not creative, but what you would expect from a
“dime-store-novel.” It did not leave me
wanting more. I was more than
disappointed, I was appalled!
This makes me wonder, “Am I
so needy of happy-ever-after endings?”
Certainly in my leisure moments I don’t want to deal with harsh
realities, pain and abuse that of course we do deal with in real life. If such crises appear in my “fantasy life”, I
want it reconciled or corrected before the end of the movie or book. I’m with my favorite author, Lynn Austin, who
said, “I loved to read, but I was tired of reading books that didn’t offer hope
at the end of them. So I started writing
books with hope in them.” Even Jane
Austen’s novels held conflict, tragedy and unseemly behavior, but she managed
to bring about realistic and believable endings to her novels. And she was British!
“Do I think life doesn’t
have drama and tragedy?” Absolutely not! I am currently living some drama of my
own. I have friends who have been
diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, another who will for the rest of her life be
at stage-four cancer. I know real people
forced into financial austerity because they have been swindled or caught in
the perfect storm of economic downturns.
Downton Abbey’s financial woes were not so incredible. I know a
matriarch who this week is burying another of her children who have preceded
her in death. Definitely tragedy is a
part of life. Actually, true life may be
more dramatic than fiction. But there is
an element of hope in real life that I lost sight of in Downton Abbey.
The series allowed us to
vicariously view change and the struggle with it in this long-established
family. They faced change on many fronts;
we laughed at their struggles, cringed at their insensitivities and identified
with the difficulty they faced. We could
say with them, “We like our old ways better.”
Gradually episode to episode we saw new rules and protocol becoming
increasingly comfortable and even the staunchest characters survived the
process. We don’t have to reach far to recognize similar change processes in
our own lives and the resulting revelry and wonderful discovery of “How did we
ever get along with doing it all the old way!”
That would have been a sufficient message from Masterpiece Theater
instead of the clandestine bayonet through our hearts.
When I turned off the TV, I
determined I was not going to give the show or the ending anymore thought. I had other issues more worthy of my
concern. I repeated that determination
every time I woke up during the night.
By the time the alarm went off I had a headache from all the alternative
plots I had concocted in my half-sleeping state.
I can’t pass up any learning
moment. I pull lessons from the most
obscure experiences. So I have one from
my disappointment in the Downton Abbey ending.
Unlike movie scriptwriters, directors and producers, God is not out for
mere drama in my life, but out for my good.
Whatever adventure, reversals, disappointments, ecstasies, they are all
for his best in me and for me. His
“action calls” are purposeful for my life, my abundant life. Do I often balk at
the process? Indeed! But even when all
seems doom and gloom, one-tragedy-too-many, and choices are difficult because
uncertainties rule the day, I can write the following agricultural metaphor
into my life’s screenplay. It was
proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah to a nation who’s obstinacy and bad choices
rival Downton Abbey’s and mine. This
passage reassures me that God’s processes in my life are not frivolous nor are
they intended to diminish, destroy or crush me.
pay
attention and hear what I say.
does he plow continually?
Does he keep
on breaking up and
harrowing the soil?
When he has leveled the surface,
does he not sow caraway and
His God instructs
him
Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
nor is a
cartwheel rolled over cumin;
caraway is beaten out with a rod,
and cumin
with a stick.
Grain is ground to make bread;
so one does
not go on threshing it forever.
Though he drives the wheels of his
threshing cart over it,
his horses
do not grind it.
All this
also comes from the LORD Almighty,
wonderful in
counsel and magnificent in wisdom.
Isaiah
28:27-29
