A week ago, I was watching Maverick with my family for the who knows what number time. The ending scene comes on. Now, I have seen the ending of the movie prior to this each time we watched. Of course, I have seen the character playing Penny standing at the side of the Porsche after Maverick notices her daughter and turns to see that she came looking for him. Recall the previous scene where he went chasing where he had reconnected with the one that got away only to find she had left. He does a predictable, well shit. Alrighty then, back to the hanger, alone in the desert, decorated with the various memories and tombs of his beautiful private, self- constructed alter/prison to his past and the biggest failure of his life, as he sees it. It seems like a cliche of a love story, but this scene is nothing of a cliche. Allow me to explain. Might as well get comfortable, I’m not a man of few words, and my sentences are sometimes more like a stream of a thought than a sentence structure we learned in high school. I’m ok with that.

I have always been one to enjoy Tom Cruise movies. I’m nothing like a “fan”, but for some reason, there isn’t a movie that he has been involved in that I have not enjoyed at a much deeper level than I was aware. One of the first movies where I really connected with the character that Tom Cruise himself is and portrays on stage was the movie, Cocktail. It’s Brilliant. I was also freshly out of the army around the time I found this movie.

In Maverick, Tom Cruise, portraying the character Peter “Maverick” Mitchell had spent the last 30 years carrying the burden of the death of Goose with him in a manner which he had no business doing. Through is burden, he deceptively with good intention hindered the potential of Rooster, son of Goose at the request of Rooster’s mother, without explanation to Rooster why he was enduring such activity. Maverick refused to ever step into a position of leadership, despite being the sort of warrior every single one of us would want by our side in battle, and would most assuredly have followed into battle. Iceman was the sort of warrior none of us would want by our side, yet Iceman had risen to the rank of Admiral and was the Commander of Naval Forces in the Pacific.

One previous person who held the same rank was Admiral Chester Nimitz during WWII. Admiral Nimitz is also the namesake of the class of Aircraft Carrier that is the foundation of the entirety of the might of the United States across the planet. Ten nuclear powered aircraft carriers have come from the class.

If I further ponder the depth of complexity of narratives hidden within the movie, one of the primary narratives is a beautiful story of how a fallen, cold hearted, arrogant, ass of a man so bold as to have a callsign of “Iceman” can be redeemed. That redemption happens immediately in the movie Top Gun of course, but let us consider what that looks like for each and every one of us. I’m sure it was bumpy for “Iceman” coming out of the mess he had made through his sinful arrogance, and pursuit of self. I’m sure it required untold reconciliation of relationships that had hindered him prior to the movie. We are often unaware of the path of destruction we leave in our wake, because we are too busy looking ahead of us or around us, but we don’t often look behind us. Some people spend their entire lives looking at the wake. To the best of my understanding, Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise have remained friends since Top Gun. Even the texts between the two in that movie scream of a multitude of complex conversations about the complexity of life they both have to live. TC-“You should have told me.” VK-“Would you have come?” None of us accept the invitations to our redemption. Add Val Kilmer actually having throat cancer during the filming period of the movie, and man oh man did God send out a rescue party for Tom Cruise. He sent Batman for crying out loud. In jest a bit, but this is exactly how God works through others for our deliverance from our sins and our past to get us to the cross. Friends will reach out and say are you ok? We go to some sort of retreat with some degree of childish temper tantrum where all of our distractions that have kept us not realizing how bad we stink are peeled away. I have my own dose of terrible that delivered me to the cross, and it came through my wife’s suffering. She’s my very own Penny, beaten and bloodied by her past as well, but God kept chasing me for the 17 years required for me to stop running. Since my own deliverance, I have seen some doozies of others as well through a ministry that was responsible for God opening a door of my own path, and have endured some gnarly attacks from people in response God working through me. The victories are worth every scar I have from those battles, because the grace of God broke through to meet them where they were as their own prodigal child story.

Here’s the thing with the two characters It is also the story of how much we can limit ourselves by living in the tombs and monuments of the sins of our past, not because of the choices of anyone else, but because of our own decision to allow the ruinous self-pity take hold of our lives. Make no mistake though, the evil that pollutes our world will do everything in their divine intelligence level skillset to keep us right there in the middle of the tombs. They can look like beautiful private hangers of pristine cleanliness full of high value toys.

Unfortunately, it is really difficult to realize what we’re doing to ourselves and others. In the movies, God sends a woman to redeem a fallen man, or a man to redeem a fallen woman. In the case of Maverick, God sends Penny, the character that is portrayed by Jennifer Connelly. At 52, she looks great, almost like she’s able to take him back to the younger Tom Cruise, back to a time before life got so screwed up and complicated. Her real life biography is one that matches identically the sort of woman required to be sent to bring a man like Tom Cruise home safely. Stay conceptually with me..

The more I process the scene while writing this, the more I see this as the perfect portrayal of how the Catholic Church chases us all. Yes, it is the Catholic Church chasing us. She certainly can chase us into protestant churches in the long journey Home, but the true Home of the fullness of Christ described in Ephesians 3:19 is only found in the Church, as it has always been referred. This movie portrays with a pretty good degree of conceptual accuracy the position that Mary, mother of Christ holds in the complexity of a redemption story.

Anyone who thinks that a man is capable of redeeming themselves without the work of a woman need only look at what happens when a bachelor is delivered from their disgusting single life apartment living without a woman to love them, and the woman being courted sees the apartment for the first time. She immediately starts to want to clean up the mess of his home. The same is true in the spiritual realm. That’s a never ending source of comedy material in redemption of idiot man movies.

Interestingly, it was revealed to me last Tuesday, that it was Mary whom the first Apostle, starting with Peter, had to go to Mary to reconcile with Christ while Christ lay dead in the tomb. They had to go crawling back to His Mother to regroup for it was Mary who sent out the various rescue parties to gather the scattered Apostles. It was Mary who first watched HER ONL Y SON!!! endure what He did, who then had to endure the betrayal of all the apostles except John when they all scattered. It isn’t that Mary is the reason for our salvation, it is that the complexity of our daily walk in this earth is nothing like simple for us to find our salvation in Christ. The physical crucifixion, the Wedding at Cana, the endless miracles that Jesus perfumed were the physical manifestation of what had already occurred in the spiritual realm. Only here, consider that Jesus was down in Hades doing whatever it is that he had to do there, while Mary was the one who STARTED the process of putting the Apostles back together, through her tears, hugs, love, and most importantly her grace extended to them for their betrayal of her son, so that when they saw Christ after his resurrection, they could stand in front of him knowing they had also fallen short for her, but that had been dealt with. She has always been considered the adopted mother of the Apostles and mother of the Church through her son, but also through her adopted motherhood in the decades following the Passion of Christ.

Back to Maverick. Do we think the character of Maverick isn’t Tom Cruise standing there doing the same thing? We all can look at the narrative of his life and his burdens should be blazingly obvious. Just remember you’re looking at a mirror. Be careful thinking you’re less of a sinful stinky human being that he is. It’s hard to understand the burdens of those in positions of influence like he is. He is a never-ending target of the enemy seeking to use him and all that is him to prevent him from finding the fullness of Christ. The enemy really likes to use fans for the same purposes.

Anyone want to tell the doubting Thomas Cruise that he should stop accepting movie invites to be another impossible mission. Penny would probably argue there’s nothing impossible about “Maverick” He only need to invite Penny into his pristine private hanger and see what she can do to clean up the Bachelor pad. He only need walk in the front door of the Church. The lights were left on. The Church will take care of the details, for each of us too.

But why do I go down these seemingly strange side story tangents? It was an epiphany that started today in mass that lead to revelation of the title of the post. I thought I was going to write a post to start helping others to understand how this all happens for me, but God had other plans. Did I mention it isn’t so easy sometimes to stop accidentally intending to make something about us? He apparently wanted me to start with the redemption story that came through the song and scene at the end of the movie. I also wrote the story of the magnitude of God’s love for each and every one of us. That’s for posting later, but the editing that occurred in the split of the two articles ended with unpredictably with the final cut and paste resulting in ” I am nothing like worthy.” being front and center.

In God’s faithfulness and relentless pursuit of each and every one of us that, on this playthrough of Maverick, that God broke through one of the obstacles I had been recently wrestling with, through the music of Lady Gaga. I have found her music to be clearly guided by God and the heavens since the day I learned she was raised Catholic. I was stunned. That doesn’t line up with my world view of her. Strange. I was nothing like Catholic when I learned this. I was certainly on the journey home. It was while she was singing on a stage with 4-5 presidents seated before her at I cannot even recall what event, or why I was watching for that matter. She had said we all need a little more Jesus, and my entire frame of reference of her shifted dimensions. What? Well shit yes. And a Catholic uttered these words. I didn’t know they said these things. More on that another time. I didn’t understand when that happened, why that happened for me. I learned why that day at the end of the movie when Hold My Hand started playing. I nearly fell apart in tears in a way I did not see coming.

Hold My Hand, by Lady Gaga is a song that portrays what it looks like to stop running from our heavenly father as prodigal children. Take my hand, He tells us. The song closes with, I heard from the Heavens.

I too hear from the Heavens. Often. It is indescribable. I am not worthy of such a blessing.