Perfect Blossoms
Mystery solved. There are two small trees in our backyard that have remained bare while every other tree is springing to life...until this morning. I've looked at them, wondering what kind they were. This morning I looked out across the backyard and noticed that seemingly overnight white blossoms have awakened. The two small trees are dogwoods. Today they are adding their peaceful white blossoms to our yard of redbuds, pines, and sweet gums.
While looking out the window just now at the blooms on these trees I was reminded of what has become one of my favorite movies: The Last Samurai.
The first time I saw this movie I was stirred and disturbed, moved and saddened all at the same time. The storyline goes something like this:
The movie begins with the main character, Nathan Algren, as a drunk former soldier suffering an emotional collapse after fighting alongside General Custer and witnessing the brutality that was carried out against innocent Native American women and children. He is convinced that the only thing he is good for is killing. That feeling is reinforced when he is recruited by the Japanese government to come and train their soldiers to wipe out the few remaining Samurai. The emperor wants Japan to modernize and become more like the west. The Samurai want to protect the Japanese way of life. Captain Algren's job is to teach the Japanese military how to bring about the demise of the Samurai.
In the first battle, Algren is captured and taken to the Samurai village. The leader wants him kept alive because he wants to have "conversations" with him. Algren spends several months captive, not by the Samurai, but by the winter. The leader assures Algren that when spring breaks, they will return him to the city.
During the next several months of living among these people Algren discovers that they are a people of peace, love, discipline, and honor. While living among them Algren himself begins to experience peace, healing, and love emerging in his own heart. He overcomes his alcoholism. He learns the language. He is captured by the smiles of the children. As he walks among the trees noticing the smiles and laughter of the people all around him, he makes this statement:
"I've never been a church-going man and what I have seen on the field of battle has led me to question God's purpose. But there is indeed something spiritual in this place. And though it may forever be obscure to me, I cannot but be aware of it's power. I do know it is here that I have known my first untroubled sleep in many years."
By the end of the movie Algren has fully embraced the way of the Samurai. He and the leader have become friends. Algren saves the life of the leader during a sneak attack of the enemy and the next morning they stand together under a blossoming tree and the leader says, "A perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one and it would not be a wasted life."
Algren finally takes the field of battle - not against the Samurai - but with them. As he kneels by his dying friend, the last Samurai's final words are, "The blossoms are all perfect!"
This is a movie of rebirth. Algren begins the movie a shell of a man...dead inside. He ends the movie emotionally and spiritually whole - a man of honor and discipline willing to give up his life for the good of others.
The Samurai way of life is built around Buddhism. As I watched this movie I was deeply disturbed by the thought that what I was seeing in this movie - the transformation of a man's heart from death to life - is what is supposed to happen when we accept Christ and begin a new life among a community of Christ's followers. But all too often it doesn't. All too often our church experience is consumed by the most trivial of things.
In this movie (and yes I know it's only a movie) the spirituality of the Samurai transforms them into people with hearts and minds at peace and an unshakable desire to both live and die with honor.
We who know the true Prince of Peace should be experiencing the power of this rebirth more than anyone else, yet we so often settle for shallow religious rituals that leave us sadly unchanged. It's not because of a deficiency in the power of Christ to transform our hearts. I believe the problem rests more with our unwillingness to be transformed. Transformation is costly - but life giving. All too often I fear we are too reluctant to count the cost and therefore miss the "abundant life" that is found when we allow our hearts and minds to be awakened to new life.