A powerful (true) story about a report (Lopez) who spontaneously meets a homeless man (Ayers) who happens to be a gifted musician that when to Juilliard School of Art.Lopez, an LA Times journalist gets caught up on a mission to help Ayers. When his expectations are never met, Lopez wants to give up. But his ex-wife helps him realize that maybe all the Ayers needs from him is friendship, not opportunities to get out of his situation.
The joy of it is that Lopez gets positively affects and so does his heart - learning more about himself than he does about Ayers.
TAKE AWAY (for me):
1. Too often our self worth is put on other people's progress
- if they progress, we did good, and therefore are successful
- this hit me as a pastor, b/c very often I want so badly for people to move forward spiritually, see the importance of community, mature in leadership capability, etc. - and when it doesn't or happen fast enough it sometimes makes me feel like a failure
- sometimes I need to be me and fulfill my role and not allow the results to define me
2. Too often we serve a need in the hopes of seeing a return
- most often the people in need, really need relationship, not progress
- I've often lost interest when no progress is made, and that made the other person feel like a project instead of a person
3. Passion for beauty and life
Nathanial Ayers was troubled in some ways (mentally), but his passion for music was overwhelmingly beautiful; at one point Lopez says: I've never loved anything as much he loves music; when I was with him listening in on the orchestra's rehearsal I could feel his passion, it was so real. (only problem is that he said this to his ex-wife!!)
- I want to live with much greater passion for life, people, God, creativity, and grace
4. the problem of homelessness is all around us, but especially in LA where they have more homeless people on the streets than 6 major US cities combined (although I can imagine weather has something to do with that)
- 90,000 (60,000 literally on the streets)
- I don't know Montreal stats (can't recall, I think it's about 25,000)
- a link here and here for a start on the Montreal issue
- met a great couple who works with street people in Montreal and really embodies the 'friend' approach (met them during our SOAR mission week)
Any thoughts? Let me know if you watched the movie and what you thought.
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