regarding adoption

To the editor of New Horizons:

  As adoptive parents ourselves, my wife and I read the articles in the January 2013 (and in previous issues) New Horizons with some interest. One aspect of the Sallades' story struck us as they articulated a common concern amongst Christians who contemplate domestic or foreign adoption. Most Orthodox Presbyterian families are not wealthy, and although the federal government grants some tax rebates to adoptive parents, the financial expense of adoption can seem prohibitive. However, there is another option which is very nearly cost-free: adoption through social service agencies.

  My wife and I discovered this route through some "accidental" providential encounters, and our 4 year-old daughter was adopted this way. We have since met many fellow believers who also are, or have been, foster parents, and have come to realize that foster and adoptive care is a tremendous ministry opportunity. In my opinion, it is overlooked in our circles primarily because of ignorance, not indifference to the plight of the abandoned and abused children who live all around us, and so I write in hopes of making more Orthodox Presbyterians alert to it.

  Fostering and adopting children who have been neglected can pose many challenges, but as the Sallades' story referenced, these challenges arise in every adoption. With them, my wife and I thank our God we can place our daughter and other children under the care of their gentle and faithful Lord and Shepherd. I strongly suggest our members who have begun thinking about this area of service start asking around; we have found that most of us are only one or two degrees of separation away from other reformed foster parents.

  I have been extremely encouraged by the attention New Horizons has been paying to adoption, and to how it is becoming a much more common way of builidng families in Christian circles. I hope more of our members will contact their local social service agencies and look to provide covenant homes for the orphans all around us.

grace & peace,

 Matthew Kingsbury

Why Your Church Should Work with Social Services

That article title from the byFaith (the Presbyterian Church in America's denominational magazine) e-mail caught my attention not merely because Mrs. Curmudgeon and I have personally worked with social services in two counties as foster parents, but more because most conservative presbyterians write articles titled "Why You Should Run Screaming from Social Services." This account from a PCA congregation in Maryland offers a refreshing change of pace and notes that congregations can cooperate with the state, to some measure, without being co-opted by the state.

An open memo to medical professionals

Stop introducing sentences with "For men of your age, we recommend..."

Hamlet

No, I'm not going to complain about weaknesses in the script this time.

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, receives its umpteen-millionth production at the Denver Center Theatre Company's Stage Theatre (through February 23). After I saw it two weeks ago, I thought I might be helped in sorting out my thoughts by viewing the 1990 film version of Tom Stoppard's existentialist deconstruction of the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

This may not have been my best idea.

At least that's what I thought at first. However, as he demonstrated in his masterful script for the wonderful Shakespeare in Love, Stoppard understands the Bard's creative mind about as well as any other thespian out there. For all its absurdity, Rosencrantz... can be read as an actor's attempt to make sense out of a rather challenging script. So much of Hamlet's plot is utterly mystifying. Why does Hamlet play mad? Its only obvious product is to drive Ophelia herself mad, and consequently to suicide, which product serves no purpose of Hamlet's and is rather apparently at odds with his professed love for her. Moreover, as Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) asks, how is it that Claudius takes the throne after his brother's death when the prince and heir apparent is quite obviously of age to assume the crown? And those are just the beginning of the play's problems, the multitude of which in turn raises the question posed by Theatre Companion: why, exactly, does this play sit at the center of the English-speaking theatrical tradition and the Western canon itself?

Live theatre has the ability to resolve any number of apparent problems with a script simply because the spoken and performed word has an interpretive power not inherent in the printed word. During this performance, I was struck by the powerful and vivid description of depression Hamlet gives in the first act, and also by just how funny he is. Plot and extremely grim ending aside, Hamlet himself comes across as a fully realized human being, so much so that all the other characters become rather flat by comparison. Of course the ill-fated Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are little more than cardboard cut-outs, but the same could be said for Polonius, Gertrude, and Claudius. Only Ophelia in her madness competes with the prince for our sympathy and empathy.

Once again, kudos to the excellent staging. Judging from the costumes, this production is set sometime in the mid-1920s, but that time period seems hardly relevant to the action. Lightly rusted scaffolding at the back of the thrust stage serves as Castle Elsinore's exteriors and interiors, and the torso of a collapsed statue of King Hamlet to stage right, along with a wall of portraits in which the faces are all obscured, visually represent the metaphorical rottenness in the state of Denmark.

Nearly every production of Hamlet is edited for length, so the difficult bits may have been removed from this one. (It's been so long since I last saw this play that I stood no chance of noticing what may have been left out.) Nonetheless, I thought the plot, as a whole, flowed rather seamlessly and logically. Even the bit with the players staging the death of Gonzago made sense, even if it is largely a waste of time. (Seriously: the circumstantial evidence for regicide is so overwhelming that even the thin reed of a ghost's testimony can bear the weight of a damning case against Claudius.) In other words, were it up to me to avenge the death of Hamlet Sr., I would likely have chosen a different strategy, but I suppose I can more or less understand why Hamlet Jr. chose his.

Having said that, Fortinbras' closing speech praising Hamlet still strikes me as entirely unwarranted, but maybe I'm missing something in the prince's character obvious to everyone else. I just can't get over the fact that a good 95% of the deaths in this play are entirely unnecessary, and most are attributable to Hamlet's miscalculations. Not to be judgey or anything.

One last note, sincerely not meant to be as snarky as it will sound: while Aubrey Deeker handed in a robust and manly performance, his actual hairline came nowhere near meeting the expectations raised by this production's promotional materials.

All Is Lost

I stopped believing in the Academy Awards in 1990, when Do the Right Thing wasn't even nominated and Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture. Even on my most bitterly cynical, race-obsessed day, I couldn't make up something that absurd.

But I digress. Point is, I can't be bothered to get bothered that Robert Redford wasn't nominated for Best Actor for his work in All Is Lost. But who else do we have who could single-handedly maintain audience interest for an entire film? Obviously, director J.C. Chandor and cinematographer Frank DeMarco deserve much of the credit for an intensely riveting adventure movie. Nonetheless, it's Redford in all his aging movie star rugged glory who evokes, as much as cinematic vocabulary can, the Hemingway spirit. If you've not yet seen it, watch for the moment when he opens the box containing the sextant and considers the card inside. I would watch Robert Redford in anything. (And since I actually saw An Indecent Proposal, I've already proven I'm serious about that contention.)

Which may be why I'm so excited by Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Superman films will always disappoint, but the first Captain America movie was fairly satisfying. The move to take the good Captain in a dark direction now that he's in the 21st century promises to work well, especially since Mr. Redford is in the cast. Check out the first trailer (second trailer is not so moving): it will get you very, very worked up.

That is, if you have a soul.