SPIRITUAL focus on film July 19, 2004 ISSUE

The Day After Tomorrow—Beyond willpower

By Meg Dendler

I know I'd be willing to walk 15 miles through a blizzard to rescue my child. But where would I get the strength and courage to do it? On the drive home after watching the movie Day After Tomorrow, I gave that a lot of thought.

The story line follows paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) and his family through cataclysmic changes in the earth's weather systems, which lead to landscape-altering storms and the next ice age. Jack's son (Jake Gyllenhaal) is trapped in New York City, and Jack promises him that he will come to his aid if he some other people holed up with him in the New York Public Library can just make it through the catastrophic storm.

Though this may be a big special-effects movie about the end of the world as we know it, the heart of Day After Tomorrow is revealed in the characters' reactions to challenges. Their self-sacrifice and courage gave me a glimpse of something greater than human compassion and ability. Those are moments when the divine really shines through.

Driving home from the cinema, my husband and I passed a road marker that said "Alma 15" —meaning that we were 15 miles from our home. My husband joked that that was one of the distances given in the film that Jack had to travel through subzero temperatures and blinding snow to reach his son. As I stared out at the cornfields and dairy pastures between us and our cozy home, I really saw what a huge distance that would be.

Many times in my life I've had to face challenges through something higher than willpower. Climbing mountains, delivering my two babies, supporting others in their time of need, praying through my own life-threatening illness, caused me to look to a spiritual resource for sustaining support. This kind of support is mentioned in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: "It is proverbial that Florence Nightingale and other philanthropists engaged in humane labors have been able to undergo without sinking fatigues and exposures which ordinary people could not endure. The explanation lies in the support which they derived from the divine law, rising above the human. The spiritual demand, quelling the material, supplies energy and endurance surpassing all other aids, and forestalls the penalty which our beliefs would attach to our best deeds" (p. 385 ).

On that 15-mile drive home, I wondered how I might pray about traversing that same distance through a storm. The Bible is full of inspiring stories of people who faced great danger—floods, famines, enemy armies. These stories always give me hope that people today can turn to the same divine Spirit and find help.

Though in the movie Jack does not outwardly pray, he freely admits that prayer is their only help as they face tidal waves, extreme temperatures, and the certainty that nothing will ever be the same. Sometimes it takes admitting that we are beyond our own abilities and capabilities to make us seek help from God.

Another thought-provoking aspect of the movie was seeing the characters' reprioritizing of their lives. What really matters when you might not live through the day? A doctor is willing to risk death to remain with a sick child, a young man rushes ahead of a tidal wave and ventures out into the unknown new landscape to save his girlfriend, a long-time friend gives his life for his companions. Not your everyday sacrifices. But, whatever need we may have, it's in moments of selflessness that divine Love breaks through and gives us what we require, be it strength or courage. That Love helps us go the distance, whatever the weather.

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