Author: Maria

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Review: Tinā (Mother)

It’s probably not a great idea to review a film while the tears are still wet on my face, but here I am, weeping and writing, and urging you to watch the deeply moving film, Tinā (Mother). 

The protagonist, Mareta Percival, a music teacher dedicated to her Samoan community in New Zealand, suffers the tragic loss of her daughter in the devastating earthquake that hit Christchurch in 2011. She spirals into a depression, leaving both teaching and her Catholic faith, unable to cope with her grief. 

At the urging of her nephew, and facing the very real possibility of losing the aid that is barely sustaining her, Mareta takes a position in an elite private school and establishes a choir. 

Mareta not only faces bigotry from the staff, but resentment from her friends for abandoning the community school. She defends the children in the prep school, observing they have their own challenges. Meanwhile, Mareta navigates the loss of her faith, alluded to in a passing scene with the empty spot where a crucifix once graced a wall, now notably removed, but still present in the sunburned and stained impression upon the empty wall. The politics of school administration, bigotry and class conflict, and relationships impacted by her grief weave a tapestry of conflict and despair. 

Despite her mourning, Mareta finds purpose in helping one of her new students who reawakens her love of music.

Reminiscent of Sister Act 2, much of the action is driven by the choir’s challenges when they enter a prestigious choral competition. Mareta trains her students by sharing her Samoan culture, teaching them traditional songs and dances.

There is much to unpack in this film, sometimes funny, always tender. Tinā conveys the power of music as both a source of community and healing. Despite the undertones of loss, this is a story filled with hope.

 Tinā (Mother)

 8 October 2024

 Directed by Miki Magasiva

 The Brown Factory /New Zealand Film Commission

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Quiet Pages: Recovering from the Meh

The Power of Rest

I just finished another journal filled with snippets of scripture, quotes from saints, and the occasional inspirational words from writers and other artists. I started this journaling five years ago when I thought I would never be able to string two words together on the page, let alone a sentence. Writer’s block hit hard and I felt every ounce of creativity seep out from my pores. You can do the math about one of the probable reasons, but the truth is that I periodically go dark on the page. It flies against the common maxim that writers must have a constant flow of productivity. Sure, there are many writers who are prolific. And probably just as many who very clearly aren’t. I fall into that latter group, mostly because I’ve come to recognize my own cycle of productivity. For me, the best thing to do for my creativity is to put down the pen every once in a while.

These periods of writer’s block flow more like acedia, and I’ve recently noted the correlation between periods of spiritual listlessness and writer’s block. Is one responsible for the other? I don’t know the directional flow of this scenario, but for me, the two go hand-in-hand. I think it is because I journal my prayers. I laugh at using the literary label that my prayers are epistles, but there you go. Like little Venerable Nennolina, I write love letters to Jesus.

It has taken me a lifetime to reconcile with the idea that putting down the pen isn’t laziness but an opportunity for renewal. In many ways, it is an act of faith because I know that eventually I will make my way back to the page. Spiritually, it has been a battle against stacking on more and more devotions and setting a demanding schedule for prayer when I don’t feel like praying. And there’s the problem, if on the page I was just putting words down to hit a self-ascribed word count, prayer, on the other side of that coin, becomes rote. Scrupulous. A check-list to accomplish rather than relationship with the Lord. One Our Father prayed reverently trumps zipping through the Liturgy of the Hours while simultaneously compiling a grocery list and responding to the ding of my phone.

Seeking sacred silence becomes the antidote. It’s easier said than done, but I have found renewal in the silence. A walk in the woods. An activity far away from the usual things I do. Turning off all the electronic distractions that are on 24/7. All of that resets me. The remarkable thing about the re-set is two-fold. Somehow, time opens up and I do have time for the devotions I love, and this time in prayer becomes authentic relationship with God. And the pages fill up with endless ideas and content.

How does that happen? I think the short answer is recovery. When I rest, my body heals and refreshes itself, but so does my mind, and so does my spirit. Remember that we are called to rest on the Sabbath. Too often, my Sundays become the last-ditch effort to get everything done that didn’t get done before starting the next week. What if giving myself physical rest gives me energy to get through the week without having things pile on over the weekend? What if giving my mind rest opens the avenue for creativity? What if seeking silence in a sacred space opens my heart to hear the Lord?

My Favorite Recovery Strategy

For me, journaling, or rather, not journaling, is the first sign that I am in need of refreshment. It’s time to walk or sleep or sit in nature. It’s time to seek the silence in a dimly lit chapel and stop talking and making demands and instead listen quietly to what the Lord places on my heart. It is in this rest that I gather strength for the next thing.

So what can you do when, as a writer, you want to maintain the discipline of writing even when you aren’t producing it? I turn to the quote journal where I curate writing instead of producing it. I record inspiration, wisdom, recommendations, consolations, all from saints or scripture or other spiritual writings. It feeds my soul and keeps the ink flowing until one day, my creative voice re-emerges.

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A Lifetime Ago

Listen to my story in my own voice.

A Baby Passport

Sixty years ago today, my mother and I left Cuba with the hope of reuniting with my father. Well. My mother would be reuniting with my father. I would be meeting him for the first time. It would be some months before that hope and yearning would be realized.

My parents were married young, in the early days of the communist Castro regime. Nationalization of businesses, both foreign and domestic, resulted in both my grandfathers losing their ability to provide for their families. An uncle was imprisoned for attempting to escape the country. Religious persecution was rampant. Hunger was rampant; the ration booklets given to each family, on paper, was insufficient. In reality, it was not worth the paper and ink expended to produce it because there was no food, no supplies. Sixty years ago the situation was dire. Today the Cuban people, crushed by a communism, are hungrier than ever. Nothing has changed in a lifetime. On the contrary, it has devolved further into despairing want.

My parents made the decision to leave, and as evidenced in my passport, it was a multi-year mission of disappointment and hope. They were married in the late spring of 1962, and shortly thereafter, my father was granted both entry to the US, and exit from Cuba. He came ahead of my mother to get a job and find a home, and in the interim, the Cuban Missile Crisis shut down the possibility for my mother, pregnant with me, to follow him to the US.

My passport is a record of every attempt to find any country in the world that would take us. There were opportunities, but the communist regime, in its totalitarian goal of separating families and fomenting despair, denied every visa. Finally, after years of pleading, prayers, and very likely, bribes, my maternal grandfather secured an exit visa for us. My passport is covered in entry visas from Spain, my grandparents’ homeland, but no exit was ever given for us to be received by family, Instead, we were left to the mercy of a former business associate of my grandfather, who received us in Mexico.

I have a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, one that was never encouraged in my home, where Our Lady of Charity, patroness of Cuba, was prominant. But it was in the shadow of Our Lady of Guadalupe that my mother and I were kept safe in Mexico City while awaiting our reunion in the US. I came to this understanding as an adult, and hope to one day return to that little harbor of safety where we waited in limbo to give my thanks.

I can only imagine the spectrum of fears and anxiety my family felt. It is a story of intrigue, hope, despair, hope again, surrender, and trust.

Today I reflect on the sacrifices made for me. Sacrifices that came at great costs across generations, shifting, changing while creating and re-creating a family story that that spans two continents and three countries. It is a story of exile that is both uniquely personal and tragically a common thread that all too often is the human condition. And yet, I am grateful for it all.

I have often felt that I straddled two countries and two cultures, belonging fully to neither, but where time heals some wounds and scars over others, there is something to be said about constancy and presence. The United States has been my home for 60 years. It is a mere technicality that my citizenship was granted to me as a young adult rather than at birth. What’s a few years across six decades? And yet…I remain neither here nor there, and perhaps that is the last wound, the last vestige of what it means to be in exile.

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