The most beautiful thing about an actor is the way he looks into your soul, simply by turning his head and gazing into your eyes.  It is impossible to return the favor and we swoon as the movie continues.  We feel secure when the actor does this…. revealing the complete meaning of being alive.  Sometimes it is almost as if God is speaking, as if the messenger from heaven, wings unfurled and flight through the air to rush towards earth, is the breath of the one who creates.  Are we ever so lucky?  Do we ever get to see this extra-ordinary circumstance any more than once or twice in our life?  And, why do we pine so, just for these one or two circumstances?

I am willing to pay for a movie theatre experience, which can add up to one hundred dollars for our family when we do this outing….  I love that the size of the actor takes the whole wall.  I love that the music, the voices, the dialogue, fills the entire room.  I like the dimness, shared with all the audience.

Movie awards season has started again.  Cannes, France is the host of the Cannes Film Festival, and it is the premiere film fest in all the world.  It means something…  something good, to be there.  It is difficult for me to get any juiciness out of it…. I ravenously swallow all the information that I can find….  But, as always, as an outsider, I can only admire the red carpet poses and read the opinion of the local film critic.  I, too, have fallen in love with the great actors and the great leading men.  Who can forget Russell Crowe in Gladiator…  and of course, Brad Pitt in Fight Club or Seven….  Or more appropriately, in Troy or Mr. and Mrs. Smith?

These actors take over the screen, and screen by screen, they take over the world, making money fly.  I could watch several movies from Hollywood in one day…  And not be blind to everything by the end of it.  I could enjoy as if I gorget the horrible facts of reality.  But in the end, I always find the incredible efforts of these global names takes me away and I know I will live forever.

The wish for many gods to exist is not some barbaric pagan dream.  It is not about trying to ignore reality and hope for something that we can understand.  It is about seeing.  The look of a god.  The meaning of a god.  The wish come true of what God is.  It is about having and believing, because one God can only look like one thing….  Perhaps the greatest?  Perhaps the only?  Perhaps nothing like the way I am, the way I live, the way I think,  the way life is?  Why is there a God of everything when everything just cannot meet the standard that this One God is creator of?

What if the Greeks of ancient times, actually are right?  What is there are different dieties?  That let us say, each race, each  ethnicity, is led by a god?  That there is great importance to this each god?  That these gods are exactly perfect in who and what they are, in the role they have in creation, in nature, in life?

If we use the example of Hollywood, with all their screen gods and goddesses, it suddenly becomes possible and probably…  that a universe of many gods can exist.  I am not saying that one great God cannot create what it is that we have, I am saying that we do not have to rely and believe only in one God just because it makes sense that one God ca make reality make sense in every single case.  Many gods can come from the same point of view.  Many gods can still make one reality.  God and gods and existence is not about endeavoring beyond ability to create.  Things suddenly exploded, as in the Big Bang.  Things just interlace.  Things just rely and delegate and work together.  It does not necessarily gave to be a lonely universe…  a lonely planet.  Our desire for more, for relatedness, for company, for greater, for love, for familiar, for just plain old life, is the mirror of the being or beings that lead all of this creation.  They show the way time after time after time.  With each birth.  With each death.  And with each moment that we catch that glimpse of God.

So, I am looking at Cannes…. Looking to see what it is that that lonely planet of Hollywood and all the other planets of movies have created in their gathering for Cannes.  I am thinking that they try their best at Cannes.  That the movies are always greater there.  I wish I could join the crowd that has gatherer from around the world there.  They are gathered there to see each other and to see everyone.  They are there for a great party, once a year, because Cannes is the siren call for all greatness.

One day, in another life, I will get the chance to fly to Cannes.  I will remember here, where I am now, but I will be in the future.  I am looking forward to it.   A bientot, Cannes!