For those trying to make sense of life: What does a bad day on the streets, Ingmar Bergman, and John Calvin have in common?

What do a bad day and a good day on the streets, an Ingmar Bergman film and John Calvin all have in common?


1When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 13And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity (Love).


To match the film title, I chose the King James Version.


My life is not divided into work and play. I don't spend all day in the office or even working, but life appears seamless in this work with street kids in Ukraine, all things happening in relation to one another.

Not long ago, three things happened that got me thinking…. A fourth pulled them together.
One of the lowest moments of my time in Odessa, Ukraine, came on a warm August day, with the rain; strange it should not come in winter with the cold and gray…. We all felt the heaviness of it, me and my small team of volunteers from Poland, Italy and Ukraine, hardly speaking about it on the return in the bus. We had just seen a group of kids living on mattresses under trees, injecting themselves several times a day with Baltushka, a wicked narcotic that damages the central nervous system.

Hopelessness, like a wet dog, seems attached to this band of teens who do not care if they live or die.

For several days after I was depressed about it, resigned to the absurdity of our visits and the truth that some kids on the street are "terminally ill," because they will not give up the drugs or the way of life.

Later that week, I was watching a film. It is an old film, one I had not seen before, Ingmar Bergman’s “Through a Glass Darkly” The title of it comes, of course, from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, "Now I see through a glass darkly, then face to face, now I know in part, then I shall be fully known."

And at end comes this scene….. Karin , the mentally unstable daughter has been taken to the hospital suffering from a breakdown which the psychologists say will only get worse. Karin’s brother, the son, is speaking to their father.

Son: Reality burst open and tumbled out, do you understand?
Father: Yes
Son: It’s like a dream, anything can happen, anything
Father: I know
Son: I can’t live in this world
Father: Yes you can, but you must have something to hold on to.
Son: What would that be? A God? Give me some proof of God. You can’t,
Father: Yes I can, but you have to listen carefully
Son: Yes I need to listen
Father: I can give you only a hint of my own hope. It’s knowing that love exists in the world.
Son: A special kind of love I suppose.
Father: All kinds, the highest and lowest, the most absurd and the most sublime, all kinds of love.
Son: The longing for love?
Father: The longing and denial, trust and distrust.
Son: So love is the proof?
Father: I don’t know if love is the proof of god’s existence or if love is God himself.
Son: For you love and God are the same?
Father: That thought helps me in my emptiness and dirty despair.
Son: Tell me more Papa
Father: Suddenly the emptiness turns into abundance and despair into life, it’s like a reprieve … from a death sentence.
Son: If it is as you say, then Karin (his sister) is surrounded by God since we love her,
Father: Yes.

It wasn’t the part about God is love that struck me. Everyone has heard that. And I don't wish to enter the debate over whether God is just love. It was the idea that all kinds of love, the highest, the lowest, the most absurd and sublime, the longing for love, the denial of love, trust and distrust… all these things are evidence of God. And somehow in the acceptance of that, the realization of that, emptiness turns into abundance, despair into life.

The following week I opened my email to read a bulletin from Columbia seminary inviting me to join the online dialogue on John Calvin. Just click the link.

What could be more exciting than a chat room on John Calvin?

You probably don't know it’s the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth. One of the founding fathers of the protestant reformation, he taught John Scott who started Presbyterianism in Scotland… the Scotts brought it over here, along with a certain stiff drink , … and golf.

So you know how it is when you receive an email with a link. Do I click the link or not? My cursor hovered for a moment. I clicked. And I read several blogs along with the commentary that was offered each week by Calvin scholars.

I began to wonder what would Calvin say about the church in Ukraine.

Were Calvin to be a tourist in Ukraine, he would be wagging his bearded head, glaring at the images of god in the Orthodox church. Calvin abhorred images that represented God. Icons on the dash boards of taxis, hanging from the mirrors; Icons like bumper stickers; Icons the size of decals, the size of book covers, or painted on vast canvases or the walls and ceilings of domed churches.

Or the furniture: Calvin was more austere, the strictly Calvinistic sanctuary has nothing on the walls, the biggest thing there (metaphorically speaking) is the Bible. I imagine it furnished by Ikea. Even the communion set is minimal; Calvin’s looks like it came from Dollar General.

The Orthodox Church is a place to escape the world and meditate or feel like you are in the presence of God given all the gold around you, the icons and paintings on the walls and the priest who appears from behind a golden door to chant and recite then disappear again. The aim of orthodoxy is to make you more like God, to transform you to be more like the transcendent God. But the Orthodox church seems to have little relevance to the practicalities of the real world. I see people lined up for a blessing, that is, to get their food blessed at 5am on Easter Sunday… I see them buying candles and scarves for their heads and trinkets, but I don’t see much in the way of engagement with the world. Don’t show up in pants if you’re a woman (well Calvin might have said that too.

Calvin may not have been the kind of guy you are going to find having a beer with the boys at TG Friday's, but Calvin was socially involved. He brought cleaner toilets to Geneva, and balconies and better dentists … he opened the doors of Geneva to a parade of refugees from France. (read: Calvin the Constructive Revolutionary).

Calvin was a lawyer. He seemed consumed with what makes us right before God. And Calvin may have landed heavily on the side of God's election of those who are "the saved" against the party in favor or "works righteousness," but Calvin saw God at work in all of life. Calvin affirmed "all things work together...." Writing his way through the Institutes, wrestling with the debate between what we do and what God does, Calvin affirmed the Sovereignty of God. Calvin wanted his faith to matter in the market place as well as the sanctuary, on the streets and in the homes of God's people as well as in any Sunday school room. Broken and flawed as we are, it is our lives, not icons that reflect the image of God.

Now, I am going to conclude with a fourth thing that happened... this again on the streets. Because it seems to me to pull together that low moment on the streets, Bergman's film and the blog on Calvin.

I am thinking of the day on the streets when we found two girls age eleven and twelve living with this band of heavy drug users I mentioned above. These girls had not been experimenting with drugs, which is why I was so eager to get them away. I called my psychologist and put her on my cell phone with them. That conversation, some food and clothes were enough to motivate them to ride in the van to our dormitory--and there they stayed.

They don't know it. They are just little kids. It would not have been that week, or even the next. The next month, perhaps.... certainly in the next year... They would started with the needle. And then they would have been HIV positive. That status over here, for kids on the street, leads to an early death.

What they don't know, is that in a moment's decision to leave the streets, they chose life.
When I think about this moment, I am glad there exists all kinds of love: the highest to the lowest, the most sublime and absurd, for the longing for love and denial of it. Whenever I see these girls, I think about their reprieve from a death sentence, I think how quickly this memory helps me in my own emptiness and despair, how it is this emptiness turns into abundance and despair into life.

grace and peace,
Robert Gamble