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The Girl from Nowhere
Screening at the Rendev-Vous with French Cinema 2013, Film Society of Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theater; March 10, 2:30 pm ET.
Michel (Jean-Claude Brisseau) is a retired math teacher who lives alone in a spacious Paris apartment he inherited from his wife who died 29 years ago. This very contentious and opinionated man is hard at work on a book on the plethora of human illusions. One day while working at his computer, Michel hears a scuffle in the hall. He finds a blood covered young woman, Dora (Virginie Legeay), whose assailant has fled. He takes her into his apartment and offers to call a doctor and the police. She says all she needs is some sleep and soon has dozed off on his couch.
In the morning, Michel learns that she is homeless, drifting from place to place. She admits that she has sex with men, does something to irritate or alienate them, and then moves on to another brief and meaningless relationship. Michel, who's been waiting a long time to have someone pay attention to him and listen to his out-of-the-box theories, agrees to let her stay for a while.
In return, Dora helps him edit his book. He is taken aback when she appears to be a psychic with the ability to levitate a table, the power to deal with malevolent ghosts, and an uncanny use of phrases his wife used years ago. This discovery has a huge impact on Michel: it takes him out of his head and into his heart.
The Girl From Nowhere was produced, directed, written, and stars Jean-Claude Brisseau, and it is only the surprising finale that saves it from being just another vanity production. Dora comes to mean many things to the retired teacher who sees her as his muse, his editor, his personal angel, and the reincarnation of his wife. No matter how he sees her, Brisseau is a grateful man.
Where and When?
A lonely old man is revitalized by a homeless young woman who becomes his muse, his editor, and his angel.
Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness
Generosity is the inception of the path. The Buddha himself always started with new practitioners by teaching them dana, the practice of generosity. This method has remained as the classical tradition of Buddhist teaching. It is often true that we Westerners prefer the enticement of transformative meditative states; we understand the need for effort toward that end and are willing to put it forth. However, the actual springboard for those meditative states is the cultivation of generosity and morality. These qualities, which we consider more mundane, allow those other states to unfold most gracefully and easily.
Generosity has such power because it is characterized by the inner quality of letting go or relinquishing. Being able to let go, to give up, to renounce, to give generously — these capacities spring from the same source within us. When we practice generosity, we open to all of these liberating qualities simultaneously.
Generosity is the inception of the path
Giving of Yourself
Giving is a generative act. When you give of yourself, something new comes into being. Two people, who moments before were trapped in separate worlds of private cares, suddenly meet each other over a simple act of sharing; warmth, even joy, is created. The world expands, a bit of goodness is brought forth, and a small miracle occurs.
You must never underestimate this miracle. Too many good people think they have to become Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer, or even Santa Claus, and perform great acts if they are to be givers. They don't see the simple openings of the heart that can be practiced anywhere with almost anyone.
Try it for yourself. Do it simply if your like. Say hello to someone everybody ignores. Go to a neighbor's house and offer to cut the lawn. Stop and help someone with a flat tire.
Or stretch yourself a little bit. Buy a bouquet of flowers and take it to a nursing home. Take ten dollars out of your pocket and give it to someone on the street. Do it with a smile and a lilt in your step. No pity, no hushed tones of holy generosity. Just give it, smile, and walk away.
Little by little, you will start to understand the miracle. You will start to see into the unprotected human heart, to see the honest smiles of human happiness, and you will be able to see humanity in places you never noticed it before. Slowly, instinctively, you will start to feel what is common among us, not what separates and differentiates us.
Before long you will discover that we have the power to create joy and happiness by our simplest acts of caring and compassion. You will see that we have the power to unlock the goodness in other people's heart by sharing the goodness in ours.
Creating joy and happiness.
Terry Bookman, The Busy Soul
The path of Judaism is to sanctify the mundane, to raise it up to the level of holiness, to turn every action into a holy act. By being fair and honest in our business dealings, by blessing the food we eat, by sharing of our means with those who have none, we begin to live a life of holiness, a life sanctified to God.
To live a life sanctified to God
Jack Kornfield, The Faces of Buddhism in America
To cultivate generosity directly is another fundamental part of living a spiritual life. Like the training precepts and like our inner meditations, generosity can actually be practiced. With practice, its spirit forms our actions, and our hearts will grow stronger and lighter. It can lead us to new levels of letting go and great happiness.
To cultivate generosity directly
Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom
Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.
Listening creates a holy silence
Master Hsing Yun, Being Good
Material generosity . . . should be a gift of kindness that nurtures the moral nature of others as it shows them, very simply, that we care about them.
Emotional generosity. When we are generous with our time and our emotions, we help others overcome the hardships of life. Our laughter will help them endure, our kindness will keep them from fear, while our sensitivity will help them realize the oneness of all sentient beings.
Material generosity and emotional generosity
Sara Maitland, A Big-Enough God
There is nothing to be afraid of in a world so intricately made that even the woodlice under the stones speak to us of the social and parental life of the God who created them. There is evolution, and indeterminacy, and generosity, and chance. There is risk and beauty and joy. Gambling on the God who has so gambled on us does not seem so risky in the end.
There is nothing to be afraid of in a world so intricately
Thea Jarvis, Every Day Hospitality
Simple maxims remind me of the way hospitality works at the kitchen sink level:
* My table can always expand to make room for one more person.
* My heart can always expand to make room for one more person.
* The kitchen is the most hospitable room in my house.
* The person most in need of hospitality may be living under my own roof.
* To be effective, hospitality must be balanced with solitude.
* Kindness, compassion, and generosity are the marks of hospitality.
* To be hospitable is to be an instrument of peace.
To be hospitable is to be an instrument of peace.
Ayya Khema, Be an Island
Emptying the heart and mind of desires, of our self-image, of expectations, and of being somebody special, and instead filling them with generosity, will open the door to loving-kindness.
Emptying the heart and mind of desires