God Bless the Child Response - The Shadow of the Olive Tree

Watching this film at home, I reflected often on my own experience being evicted, and struggling to maintain my school enrollment with a morsel of dignity. Although I was grown enough to fend for myself, my now-wife and I scrambled with busy school and work schedules to find a home willing to accept us despite all of the blacklists we have been placed on since our eviction. Not long after being expelled from our houses on short notice, I was laid off from my job, and my car stopped working. Amy and I felt helpless and debilitated by the one institution that we thought was there for us to redeem us when we fell. In our darkest hour, I would write:

Expectant mothers on the street cast from the synagogue,
Jobless fathers on their knees, repentance cumbersome
Their laws breed lifelong rats, these godless bureaucrats
I hope they know responsibility; where is the Honor in that!?

My wife would write in this time of trouble as well:

The windshield weeps in the shadow of the olive tree
And while we wander in search of refuge
The raindrops appear as His blood.

Though written separately, the pain apparent in these bleeding, angst-ridden notebooks was that of faith in crisis. Though we loved our families, and though we loved our friends, and though we came to accept their hypocrisies as a beautiful profundity in the realm of religion, we could not reconcile our belief in divine inspiration - or even mercy - with the draconian methods the Church and its programs took to deprive us of our lifelines despite the reason for our punishment being substantiated by mere rumor. Surely, God will convey our innocence to the right people, we prayed. God save us. But our prayers were unanswered. We were forced to evacuate the premises in three days, with no place to go.

At the time of our eviction, it was the middle of winter semester and the height of the return-missionary influx, and we couldn't find anything. We squatted our first night in Amy's cousin's empty apartment before his roommates had moved in. Although we were not sick or in extreme poverty, we were given no help or support by Amy's staunchly Mormon family. We had nothing but each other, and good friends. I don't believe it would be right of me to suggest that God abandoned us, but from this experience, I've come to understand an idea that resembles deism: laissez faire divinity. God Bless the Child would have us believe that siblings are there to care for each other. I would have to agree with this sentiment, emphasizing its eternal significance. As spiritual brothers and sisters, it is our duty to care for one another, even when God - or he who is meant to represent him - is not dependable.