LESSONS FROM THE BISHOP’S WIFE
Every year I watch the holiday classic, The Bishop’s Wife, from 1947. It stars Cary Grant and David Niven in one of their top five movie performances, in my opinion. It was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, but ended up winning only for Best Sound Recording. It was up against the post-war drama The Best Years of Our Lives, and in context I can see why it was overlooked. The Bishop’s Wife is certainly more understated and is, after all, a sort of romantic comedy.
Nonetheless, it has become an annual, mandatory holiday viewing for my family. I posted once upon a time some lessons learned from It’s a Wonderful Life, and thought it fitting to include some things I think about when I watch this movies as well. So here are some things to look for (minor spoiler alert).
1.Learn to stroll through life like Dudley, smiling and helping wherever you find yourself at the moment.
I love how this movie begins. The Angel Dudley (and what a common, ordinary, non-Biblical name that is!) is strolling through the crowded streets of town at Christmas time. He helps a blind man across the street. He saves a baby carriage from rolling into trafic. He looks over the shoulders of children gazing in wonder at the all the toys and delights of Christmas, and he smiles with them, sharing in their wonder and joy. He knows he is an outsider, but he can’t help empathizing with the children. It establishes a charm and tone for the rest of the entire film. Grant captures the smug insider knowledge of the heavenly as he interacts with the earthly and the mundane. His affect during the whole story is that he knows something all the other characters do not know about how things work (watch how he treats locks, especially) and that he is in on a bigger story.
As people of faith, we would do well to emulate Dudley. We know how things really work, or how they are supposed to. We are in on a bigger Story. We should be so smug and knowing as we love those around us. Love and help. A simple creed for a tremendous faith.
2. Pay attention to what the woman is paying attention to.
This is what stirs the conflict between Dudley and Henry, the Bishop. Dudley has nothing else to do except lavish his attention on Julia. For most of the movie the issue of an angel falling in love with a human being is skirted playfully. Thankfully, it is given only one moment of drama in the plot, and it is handled with the sensitivity of the times, that is, how scandalous and outrageous it would be for an affair of any kind.
But Dudley merely pays attention to what Julia is looking at and thinking about. When he sees her looking at the hat (that hat tho!) he helps her get it. When he learns that she misses Michel’s, he takes her there for lunch.
I once heard a radio talk show host give this advice to couples. Two words for each person. For the Women: Lighten up. For the Men: Pay attention. He rambled on in a lengthy discourse about his admonition, but the advice is perfect. Dudley knew the way to win Julia’s heart was to pay attention.
3. Desperate prayers often bring surprising and unexpected answers.
When Henry bows his head and fervently supplicates God for guidance, he does it with a mind to getting what he has chosen as the most important goal. Indeed, it looks as if his goal comes from heaven itself: a new, expansive cathedral on a high hill in the town. Visible proof to all of God’s presence, a beacon in a time when people most need hope.
Yet, this is not God’s plan at all. Dudley has no intention of helping the Bishop get a new cathedral built. Dudley could, as the Bishop intones, create one out of thin air. But Dudley wisely says, “You don’t want me to do that? How would you explain it?” And so Dudley sets about orchestrating the real goal of the heavenly with the human–improving relationships. At the end of the movie, when Dudley has to leave and leave no trace of his presence, this has been accomplished. Everyone is in right relationship. That is what brings the greatest satisfaction from watching this movie.
4. Help the smallest child win the snowball fight.
The charming scene when Debbie, played by Karolyn Grimes (Zuzu from It’s a Wonderful Life) can’t play in the snow with the boys who are forming armies for a snowball fight, Dudley shows her how to throw a snowball. With his help, the snowball flies an impossible distance and hits the ringleader right in the eye. One of the other guys even says, “She threw a curve!” You can imagine how much this delights Debbie, and the boys can’t wait then to get her on their side in the snowy battle.
As a teacher of middle schoolers, I can tell you that you don’t need magic snowballs to increase a child’s self-esteem. Just a positive word, or calling them by name when you see them, or even just talking to them like they are a real person and having an authentic conversation with them will go a long way. I get so much mileage investing in a brief talk with the neglected, marginalized, and outcast weirdos of middle school. Everybody already talks to the popular kids. You will make an eternal mark on the Kingdom by a sincere greeting or a small exchange with a child that doesn’t make anyone’s popularity list.
5. If you don’t wear the nice scarf you receive as a gift, someone else will.
Dudley is leaving the house when Matilda, one of the caretakers on the Bishop’s staff, offers him a hat. Dudley politely refuses the hat, but when Matilda offer him Henry’s scarf, a gift to the Bishop from her last year that Henry has never worn, Dudley smiles and takes it.
There is a second lesson here about never refusing a gift from someone, even when their giving it is more important to them than your receiving it. Otherwise, the things that we let lie around in closets or on shelves that we never use and just have, will find a new home. No gift given in sincerity is ever wasted. It just might not be appreciated by the one we intended.
6. When choirs sing, listen for angels.
For me, the most moving scene in this film is when Dudley accompanies Julia to the choir practice at the their former church. He encourages the boys that are there to begin singing. Soon, more and more boys file in singing the most beautiful song. And as Dudley conducts their voices and the choir grows gloriously full and loud, you can hear another choir singing, the most heavenly accompaniment. It makes me cry every time I watch it. To think, that the joyful noises we wring out of our sincere hearts can move beings in heaven, and that they sing with us–it takes the breath away. And it turns on the spigot, too. I’m telling you, I weep openly. We don’t often think that the Other World takes much interest in us, but they are always listening to us. Every praise and word of thanksgiving is broadcast in heaven. They listen. And they sing with us when we lift out voices.
7. Like the Roman coin, the small things in life we don’t value very much often have the most amazing stories behind them.
The Professor has an old Roman coin that he gives to Julia to contribute to the Bisop’s building fund campaign. He sees it as a trinket found in an old museum shop. When Dudley sees it, however, he tells the most amazing story about it, how it was one of a hundred that were a gift for Cleopatra, and when they were melted down in a jealous rage, this single coin escaped.
There are several other outcast and forgotten things in the film–the Professor’s neglected history of Rome, Debbie at the snowball fight, even Julia to Henry’s obsession with his cathedral. Our lives are filled with things and people that are neglected and valued little. One of my wife’s favorite shows is Antiques Roadshow. She is always amazed that seemingly worthless junk can have an unbelievable value in front of the right person and in a different context. Many times the same thing is true on the show Pawn Stars. You bring something in and suddenly it has a value you never imagined.
What have you neglected lately? What have you overlooked or disregarded as inferior? If it’s a person, take some time to look into their real value. Invest some interest and learn their story. You may have gems in your circle of influence that you never knew about.
8. When you want to know about love, ask the old men. We know.
I watch kids at school all day fall in and out of love and like. Middle school is a torturous place for the emotions. Everyone is worried about attaching themselves to someone in a meaningfully romantic way. It starts earlier than middle school, too, by the way. Most of my kids don’t hear me when I say to make some good friends right now, that they have plenty of lifetime and years ahead to find their true love. I’ve been and out of love myself over the years. I married my best friend and have been married thirty-five years as of this writing. I can tell you about it. I know some things. Ask me anything you want in the comments below.
9. At the end of the day, it’s not about building a bigger, better church. The cost of a church building could take care of the needs of hundreds, or thousands, of people.
I’m glad this movie makes this point, because I have been making it for several years, here on this blog and everywhere someone will lend me an ear for a moment. I think the greatest idol in modern Christianity is the institutional church. Nowhere in Scripture can you find a mandate for it. The great danger is that people think that by participating in the church–weekly attendance, committee membership, denomational affiliation, etc.–they are following Jesus. Doing church is not the same as following Jesus. I personally followed Jesus right out of the church. But you can read more about that on other posts here.
Just imagine, for a moment, all the resources tied up in all the churches in all the religions in all the world. Now imagine those resources redirected to alleviating the ills of the poor and needy.
I’m just going to let that rest right there.
10. Live every moment as if an angel is walking beside you. There probably is one.
We do not live in an isolated realm. God is not distant. He is near. He is here. It’s what Christmas is allegedly all about. The Good News has always been that there is a heaven far away that awaits us in some distant time.
The Great News is that the Kingdom of God is right here, right now. I believe in my heart of hearts, or as I tell my kids, from the heart of my bottom, that the real world and the spiritual world are right beside each other. Sometimes the wall between the two is thinner in some places than in others. I believe we have access to that spiritual realm, because I have seen and felt it break through into our own.
If that is true, then we can have an influence in that realm by our actions in this one.
Also, if that is true, it is not a great leap of faith from there to believe that we have beings from that world at work in ours.
Here’s a quick story, take it for what you will. In the early eighties I was driving my car at night when I suddenly had an epileptic seizure. My car veered into the guardrail, down an exit ramp, across three lanes of traffic, across a median, across three more lanes of traffic, through a storm fence, and came to rest under a parked 18-wheel rig. The impact took the top of my little Ford Pinto clean off. I was unconscious for all of this, but when I came to I was being pulled out of the wreckage by police and EMT’s. I was on my right side. I believe to this day that my personal guardian angel pushed me over to my side. If it hadn’t, I would have been decapitated. Why do I believe this? I had other seizures after that incident, and I have never fallen or moved to my right side. That one time I did.
I know of many other such stories from a lot of different kinds of people.
If you haven’t seen The Bishop’s Wife, watch it. Watch it at Christmas. Let it work on you and don’t be afraid to laugh and cry. Open your heart to it and see what it can teach you.