![]() George Bailey lives in the tension between his dream of leaving Bedford Falls for adventure and the life of stay-home-dutiful-sacrifice that has shaped his actual trajectory. I think this is the big overarching lesson of the film. We can not fully find ourselves except in a sincere gift of ourselves ( Gaudium et Spes 24) This year in particular I’ve been mulling over what I like so much about the movie and I’d like to share a few thoughts with the hopes that readers might chime in with their own Bedford-Fallsian musings. Of course, angels are persons, but not human persons, and the premise of Clarence’s story misses all of that.) As life goes on though, I’ve been able to get over the wonky metaphysics and focus more intently on the captivating and didactic story of George and Mary Bailey. (Clarence, a major figure in the story, is a 200 years deceased human-being trying to get his angel wings. ![]() In my 20’s, as a grad student in theology, I used to get hung up on the misunderstanding about what an angel is. only to find himself still awake and crying at 3 a.m. Then, during a call at lunch, in the midst of a conversation about other things, a friend told me about his recent experience of looking up the movie on Amazon Prime at 1 a.m. Today, when I showed up to sub for another teacher, my assignment was to show it to two of her classes-both times I found myself equally glued. As we watched I was, as usual, drawn right into the film and even misty eyed a few times. ![]() I decided to show my philosophy class Frank Capra’s classic, It’s A Wonderful Life, as a way of inviting a good old-fashioned existential discussion with a Christmassy backdrop. ![]()
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