The Note

My wife and I end up watching some great, but random movies every winter, because in the Spring, Summer and Fall, we rarely watch t.v. at all. But we stumbled upon a really cheesy but great movie, The Note, last night. This movie proves that as long as you have a great story, the movie can be incredibly low budget, and still hold the audience.

The story is that a plane crash happens in North Carolina, and along with seats and luggage, a note washes up on the shore, which a reporter finds while jogging on the beach. So the rest of the movie becomes a search for the person that the note is directed to. The reporter has to go through about 4-5 different people, and the message is what changes people, even though the note wasn't from their relative. All the note says is, "T, All is forgiven, Dad" So the reporter simply goes through every passenger with names starting with T. What makes the story so powerful, is what one simple message, "All is forgiven" does to each person confronted with the note, as the reporter says, "Its like they each were given a second chance,"

That made me think about the power and need for confession in our culture, because the soul has this deep desire to be forgiven, but more than that, people have a deep desire, "for a second chance", to start again, to make things right. There's a great scene in the book "The Two towers," by JRR Tolkien, at the end Gollum is so overwhelmed by the kindness that Frodo is showing him throughout their march to Mordor, and as he sleeps, Gollum looks at him, and he thinks back to his youth, "For a fleeting moment, if Sam or Frodo had seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of his youth," Even Gollum hungered for a second chance.

St. Louis De Montfort gives this advice to the person in need of a second chance, "What would you do if you were given a second chance?" "Now go and do it," Its incredibly simple, but that's the message of this new week and new month, go and be the person that you were created to be, even if your old like Gollum, its never to late.