Spoiler Warning: This is also a movie review. Watch the Official Trailer below.
MIDWINTER BREAK starts with a 60+ man and woman, who were Irish, but live in Glasgow, Scotland. Over several minutes in the opening scenes, they crabbed with each other without any explanation. The setting changes when she buys plane tickets to Amsterdam for a midwinter break to escape the boredom. She drags him to museums, which he doesn’t enjoy, and to churches, which he enjoys even less. It is clear that all he enjoys is drinking. It is hard to call an Irishman an alcoholic since that is their stereotype. They go out to dinner, go to a bar, and even have sex. The tension is still there.
The reason is now finally revealed. She recalls that when she was pregnant in the 1970’s insurrection in Ireland, she was shot. The bullet went into her groin and then exited. She survived and so did her baby. As a practicing Catholic, she interpreted that to be a religious miracle as well as a medical miracle. He is not religious, and that is what they’ve quarreled about for 40 years.
The week is a flop. They leave the hotel and go to the airport for the trip home. The plane is delayed for several hours while she continues to stew and finally explode. She tells him that he has ridiculed her all these years and made fun of her beliefs. She won’t take the abuse anymore and plans to leave when they get back. The snow finally stops, the sunrise is clear, and they make-up.
Of course, the theological issue is how do you determine that an incident is a miracle? The Catholic Church has a specific set of qualifications to achieve that status. For others, it is a question of belief. Which brings up the basic question of how do we achieve our personal beliefs?
Obviously, part of it is through our life experience. But more important, it’s our rationale, way-of-thinking, or mindset. Some people ridicule those with strong religious beliefs because they are focused on things in the past that cannot be documented.
Was Jesus a real person? Why was he mentioned so rarely in official histories? Probably because he was a minor prophet among the Jews, that even they wouldn’t accept. There were lots of people in 30 AD claiming to be the Jewish Messiah. On the other hand, millions of people have become followers, and Christianity has survived for 2,000 years. The Roman Empire collapsed after less than 500 years even though they ruled the world for decades.
How can we characterize religious beliefs? The Ancient Religions go back thousands of years across the world. Christianity is relevantly recent. Some people claim their Religion is the only valid one. How can they prove that? Is it all simply mysticism and superstition? Hardly, although that was a factor in the ignorance of the Middle Ages. Educated people are both religious and non-religious. Basically, our beliefs are part of who we are, and the institutions are something else. Christians like to call ourselves “a community of believers,” i.e. people who share common beliefs and act upon them as servants to the wider community.
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