Stardusty

Pam and I went to see the movie Stardust a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t think I was going to like it, but I actually sorta kinda did. I didn't love it, as in “I've gotta see it seventeen more times,” but I did like it . . . it has enough nicely-realized bits and precisely-calibrated irony to make its familiar story go down easily. In it, the witch Lamia, who is decrepit, ugly and—most of all, old—is holed up in a prototypical fairy-tale-evil-witch castle with her equally aged and even more ugly sisters. Along comes young, pretty Yvaine who is—stay with me now—a star that has fallen to earth. And coincidence of coincidences, one thing that can make Lamia beautiful again is to cut out the heart of a fallen star and eat it. So, she gobbles down the remains of the last star that fell to earth, thus becoming beautiful and young again, and sets off to capture the unsuspecting Yvaine. Notice what this says: Lamia has to become young again to go out and interact with the outside world; if she didn’t, she’d presumably scare the horses or something.

But wait . . . there’s more! There’s subtext! Michelle Pfeiffer, still beautiful at 49 years old, plays Lamia, and Claire Danes, all of 28, plays Yvaine. Pfeiffer is in one of her “comeback” roles, Danes is in the first blush of her youth, before she has to start playing grandmothers or slightly-crazy-aunt roles, so it’s a parable of Hollywood, which sells youth as if from a bottle, or, in this case, as if from a beating heart. Pfeiffer, for one, can’t catch a break—she can’t play leading ladies because she so old, and when she does get to be beautiful and young, she’s really not, she’s really still old and—by inference, bad—underneath.

Oy vey, what a messed up message . . . all part and parcel of our youth-worshipping culture, I’m afraid. Youth is desirable, youth is good; age is unpleasant, age is bad. This message—fueled, of course, by Madison Avenue—filters down into every segment of society including, of course, the church. We have bought into it as much as anybody else, as evidenced by our obsession with “young families with children.” But it goes deeper than that, I think . . . as church members age, some—though definitely not all—gradually drop away from active membership. They quit showing up for work days, quit working with the children, etc., etc. Traditionally, we think of this as an “I’ve done my bit, it’s time for somebody else to take over” kind of thing, but I wonder—if we weren’t living in such an ageist culture, if churches didn’t salivate like Pavlovian dogs at the thought of new young people, would older members feel more valued and useful and worthwhile?

We are, of course, just as valuable to Christ at seventy as at seven, equally worthwhile in the Kingdom of God. Just as God’s grace is given freely to all ages, churches should serve them all as well. We all know youth-oriented mega-churches that alienate the seniors on one hand, and aging congregations that turn off the young on the other. Because Christ valued everyone, at every age, churches should do the same—they shouldn’t serve the youth at the expense of seniors any more than cater to the elders and ignore the needs of the young.