{"id":2140,"date":"2013-02-27T01:58:28","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T19:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intelligent-torvalds.74-208-171-134.plesk.page\/?p=2140"},"modified":"2025-12-30T11:43:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T17:43:39","slug":"you-must-be-gentle-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/?p=2140","title":{"rendered":"You Must Be Gentle, Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw \u201cThe Seventh Seal<\/a>\u201d on Blu-ray: the Knight, the Squire, Mia, Jof and their baby, Lisa and the Smith, Raval the Seminarian turned thief.\u00a0 But my favorite character was the nameless girl.<\/p>\n

She was the last of her village to survive, or not to flee, the plague.\u00a0 The Squire saved her when Raval would have raped and possibly murdered her.\u00a0 He decided against raping her himself.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve grown tired of that kind of love,\u201d the Crusade-weary Squire said.\u00a0 \u201cIt gets a little dry in the end.\u201d\u00a0 But he wanted her as his housekeeper.\u00a0 \u201cI saved your life,\u201d he said when she hesitated.\u00a0 \u201cYou owe me a great deal.\u201d \u00a0The nameless girl considered a moment more, then turned and followed after him.\u00a0 He had persuaded her to go a mile, and the second time I watched the movie I realized she would probably go two.<\/a><\/p>\n

She would have given cold water<\/a> to Raval, dying of the plague, if the Squire hadn\u2019t physically restrained her.\u00a0 As Death entered the Knight\u2019s castle to claim their lives, the nameless girl looked to the brightening light streaming through a portal.\u00a0 She greeted death silently and reverently, believing \u201cDeath will open a door<\/a>, not close it, provide some passage to a brighter world,\u201d according to film historian Peter Cowie<\/a> in his commentary<\/a>.\u00a0 He also pointed out that it was the nameless girl along with the Knight\u2019s faithful wife who were absent from Jof\u2019s vision of the dance of Death.<\/p>\n

The nameless girl is the woman Peter described as subject to her own husband so that even if some are disobedient to the word<\/i> [or, not persuaded by the word<\/i>], they will be won over<\/a> without a word by the way you live<\/i>\u20261<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 That Bergman put her in this film surrounded by so much unbelief and fear endears him to me even more.\u00a0 He knew she exists.\u00a0 He knew she must be there.\u00a0 Yet he didn\u2019t presume to know her well enough to put words in her mouth. \u00a0Except for her hopeful longing, \u201cIt is finished<\/i>,\u201d2<\/sup><\/a> we know her only by her deeds.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany years later,\u201d Peter Cowie ended his commentary, \u201cBergman was asked at a press conference about his true feelings on death.\u00a0 And he answered, \u2018I was afraid of this enormous emptiness\u2026My personal view is that when we die, we die, and we go from a state of something to a state of absolute nothingness.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t believe for a second that there is anything above or beyond or anything like that.\u00a0 And this makes me enormously secure.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the special features on the DVD of Bergman\u2019s \u201cWild Strawberries,\u201d however, was another interview, \u201cIngmar Bergman on Life and Work.\u201d\u00a0 He was much older.\u00a0 His wife Ingrid (Ingrid von Rosen<\/a>, not the famous actress) had died.\u00a0 Perhaps he remembered the same incident<\/a> with the anesthesia differently, or perhaps it was a different incident.\u00a0 He described it in Swedish through an interpreter as \u201can overdose of anesthesia.\u201d\u00a0 This time he was out for eight hours rather than six.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe interesting thing was that for me those eight hours were no hours at all, not a minute, not a second.\u00a0 I was completely gone.\u00a0 I was completely switched off.\u00a0 So that was eight hours that were completely gone from my life.\u00a0 And that felt extraordinarily comforting when I thought that such is death.\u00a0 First, you\u2019re something, and then you\u2019re no longer anything.\u00a0 You\u2019re nonexistent.\u00a0 You just aren\u2019t any more.\u00a0 You\u2019re like a candle that\u2019s blown out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat gave me an enormous feeling of security.\u00a0 What complicated the feeling of security and total extinction is Ingrid\u2019s death.\u00a0 I have incredible difficulty in thinking, in imagining, that I won\u2019t meet her again.\u00a0 That\u2019s an unbearable thought.\u00a0 Therefore, two modes of thought have come into violent conflict with one another.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried to write about it, but I can\u2019t do it yet, and it may be a while.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, I often experience Ingrid\u2019s presence\u2026Not as a ghost.\u00a0 But I know that in some way she\u2019s quite close to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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1<\/sup><\/a> 1 Peter 3:1 (NET) Table<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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2<\/sup><\/a> John 19:30 (NKJV)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw \u201cThe Seventh Seal\u201d on Blu-ray: the Knight, the Squire, Mia, Jof and their baby, Lisa and the Smith, Raval the Seminarian turned thief.\u00a0 But my favorite character was the nameless girl. She was the last of her village … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1064,6],"tags":[1568,69,1592],"class_list":["post-2140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gentle","category-section-two","tag-1-peter-31","tag-john-1930","tag-movies-the-seventh-seal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2140"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28611,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2140\/revisions\/28611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/religiousmind.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}