quotes from "Millennium"

[Doug Muder]

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I don't know if any of the rest of you watch the TV series "Millennium".
Last week they rebroadcast one of my favorite episodes. In it the main
character Frank goes to Alaska to track down a young man who walked into
the wilderness under some kind of spiritual compulsion. The young man sees
some kind of vision that is supposed to shape the coming age, but we are
not told what that vision is. Parts of the episode are narrated by readings
from the young man's journal. I found two of these quotes very interesting.

"I don't quite understand what draws me on. But that's OK, because God
doesn't move us by telling us the facts. He moves us by pains and
contradictions. He's given me a _lack_ of understanding--not answers but
questions, an invitation to marvel."

Frank finds the young man in the wilderness, badly injured, and carries him
to safety. The young man later vanishes from the hospital, leaving behind
his journal. The episode concludes with this quote: "Imagine for one second
that you could drop in on a past life. What would you like to find yourself
doing? What would charm you, make you proud? Ask yourself that, and the
question of what to do in this life becomes so simple it's terrifying. Just
do that thing that would charm you, that would make you say 'That's the
real me.' Do that, and you're alive."

The series is frequently dark and violent, but this episode leaves me with
the image that there could be saints out there, doing things that make no
sense to us, but which future humans will understand. I find that idea
inspiring and comforting.

Doug Muder