Divorce is described in Noah Baumbach’s masterful “Marriage Story” as like a death without a body. Something has been lost. There is grieving, anger, denial. In his personal and moving story, Baumbach captures the insidious nature of divorce, how two well-meaning people who still care about each other will do things they would never think they would do. Surely, you’re not the kind of person who would use secrets as a weapon in a divorce case? You wouldn’t turn a child against a parent to gain an advantage? It’s other people who do stuff like that. With remarkable grace and compassion for his characters, Baumbach portrays divorce as a great equalizer, turning us into versions of ourselves we didn’t expect to become.

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1933. An ambitious young journalist, Gareth Jones, travels to Moscow to uncover the truth behind Stalin's Soviet propaganda that pushes their "utopia" to the Western world. When he gets a tip that could expose an international conspiracy, Jones' life and the lives of his informants are at stake. Based on a true story that would later inspire George Orwell's seminal book Animal Farm.

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How and Why to Read the News.

In a polarized America, what does it mean to be a peacemaker but not necessarily a pacifist? With so many people living in bubbles, how can we pop them without drowning those inside?

Marvin Olasky is editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine, dean of the World Journalism Institute, and the author of 26 books including Fighting for Liberty and Virtue and The Tragedy of American Compassion. He has been married since 1976 to writer Susan Olasky, and they have four sons and five grandchildren.

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Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life tells the story of an Austrian farmer’s defiance in the face of a regime that contradicted his deepest beliefs. “A Hidden Life,” a film that puts us deep inside of a situation and examines it in human terms, rather than treating it a set of easy prompts for feeling morally superior to some of the vilest people in history. What’s important here is not just what happened, but what the hero and his loved ones were feeling while it happened, and the questions they were thinking and arguing about as time marched on.

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“No More of This”

On May 25 of this year, a 46-year old Black man, George Floyd was killed when a White police officer knelt on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds a mere 17 miles from my home. The rest, as they say, is history. Except that it’s not history, but ongoing, a reckoning of the sin of racism that has plagued America since before our nation’s founding. I have no expertise in this, am not a sociologist or historian, just a passionate desire shared with my wife to be faithful as a White Christian at this moment and in this place. So, I did what I know to do, tried to listen well and then wrote an essay, a personal reflection on race, justice and what we might do in our little corner of reality to witness to Christ as Lord. The Grooms have invited me to read my essay to you, and then host a conversation in the hope what I have written might encourage you to faithfulness as well. I look forward to listening to you and conversing, so that together we might explore what the Lord Christ might be asking of us in terms of our political stewardship as people of faith.

Denis Haack https://ransomfellowship.org/

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Friday Oct 9, 7-8:30 pm CDT

A God-fearing ex-con (Samuel L. Jackson) saves a despondent college professor (Tommy Lee Jones) from throwing himself in front of a speeding subway train, and struggles to comprehend the suicidal man's unwavering despair during a series of intense philosophical debates. Adapted from the play by Cormac McCarthy (All the Pretty Horses, The Road).

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The title is an understatement, and so is the film. Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" tells the story of a Polish Jew, a classical musician, who survived the Holocaust through stoicism and good luck. This is not a thriller, and avoids any temptation to crank up suspense or sentiment; it is the pianist's witness to what he saw and what happened to him.

The film is based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, who was playing Chopin on a Warsaw radio station when the first German bombs fell. Szpilman's family was prosperous and seemingly secure, and his immediate reaction was, "I'm not going anywhere."

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