Once again the producers of “Saving Grace,” have been eavesdropping on our conversation over here at Beyond Blue.
They’ve taken Larry Parker and made him into Grace (Holly Hunter), and reader Babs is the angel Earl (Leon Rippy).
Just kidding, Larry and Babs. But seriously, folks, read some of the banter on the message board of Larry Parker’s post “Wrestling With G_d,” and then go download last night’s episode (I just figured out how to do that with iTunes! So cool!) and you’ll see what I mean.
Yesterday’s “Saving Grace” could be summarized by these four words: “What would it take?” (To believe.)
As a good Catholic you got to love the opening scene where Grace is sewing together a costume of some saint (sorry I forget) for her nephew and they are talking about how this saint died for his faith, blah blah blah … Grace squirts him with ketchup (as blood), and then she hops in the shower (after, of course, flashing her older neighbor, a favorite pastime of hers).

The doorbell rings and it’s the nephew of the neighbor she just flashed (she flashed them both, actually, this time). He’s an atheist. And an astrology buff.
The neighbor’s nephew is explaining to Grace’s nephew all the different constellations, how the Greeks mapped out the stars more than two millennia ago, but the little guy keeps on interrupting and saying things like, “Yeah, but it all started with God.” … Or “Yeah, but only God REALLY knows.”
Grace, the agnostic, just smiles and nods (she’s his Godmother after all!), enjoying the simple, blind faith of her little nephew.
In a later scene, Earl sits down next to the atheist at a bar and starts quizzing him about astrology. They fire away at each other, back and forth … why God exists, why he doesn’t exist, etc. Then Earl turns to the guy and says, “What would it take for you to believe?”
I love that. Because it really does get down to that one question, doesn’t it? What would it take for us to believe? A mini-miracle? A big miracle? A village of people wearing the stigmata?
Larry, you had a lot of valid points in your post “Wrestling With G_d” and in your comments to Babs, but I really love what Babs said when she wrote this:

If I think only of the places where I “perceive” God’s absence, then I’ll miss the places He is, like the friend who seeing two little carved figures in a shop on Saturday, bought and gave them to me because they reminded her of me. If I ask where is God in my joblessness, and it is a valid question I think, but stay only there, then I miss the blessings of friendship demonstrated to me these past months—friendships I never knew I had. God is a God of relationship. It is a theme that runs throughout Scriptures.
A belief in God that does not involve struggle and questioning, hardly seems like a relationship worth having. Jacob’s struggle with the angel brought a blessing, but left him marked for life. His wrestling lasted a night. He didn’t even know at the time who he was wrestling with. Couldn’t that be a metaphor for the darkness in which we continue to wrestle and be engaged with the Creator?

It goes back to the theme of yesterday’s blog, “On Regaining Innocence,” which shows you, once again, the producers do own a lectionary and are writing their scripts to fit with Sunday’s readings in Advent.
Grace’s nephew is the only one with the gift of innocence, even though his mom (Grace’s sister) died in the Oklahoma City bombings. The wrestling with God got so tiresome for the neighbor’s nephew, that he sought answers in astrology. Because science is dependable and consistent.
Grace struts around in that in-between land, mostly doubt and cynicism. But a hair of hope buried in heart, which surfaces when she holds the hand of her Godson. That’s why Earl’s there . . . to try to rekindle the faith of her early years.
If she’s smart, she’ll listen to her best friend, Rhetta (Laura San Giacomo), who said this to Grace in the first episode when Grace asked her why she believed in miracles: “I’m smart enough to know that I don’t know everything about God and that God can help you. He can help you get your sh*t together.”