A Very Simple Plan” the two were planning a terrorist act for a few months. And they said that was just to be extra careful because they had done this for the thrill and excitement of it. And when we talk about a few months, it doesn’t seem long. The police don’t make any of the calls for help, even when her husband is talking about this plan, it is clear to everyone he is not in fact, a terrorist. He never even uses the words “bomb” or “terrorist.” And so it’s one of those movies where after the third time when you watch it, you are just looking for that moment, the one where it all turns around and everyone is going to laugh at the guy’s wife being such an idiot to think her husband was planning to blow up the city. And then it happens. And that’s why you are still thinking about the movie years after you saw it. This is one of those rare cases where the person you are laughing at is you. The Movie: “A Very Simple Plan” Year: 1998 Director: Marc Rothemund Stars: Danielle Panabaker, Sam Rockwell, Keith David, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Blake Nelson Rated R: Some sexual references, violence and some drug use It was about a few months ago that I stumbled upon the movie “A Very Simple Plan.” It is a movie that has been at the forefront of a lot of conversation in recent weeks, so there’s not a lot I can say that I have not already read or heard. Except maybe, here’s a link. So now, in this season of reflection, about our own individual journeys in our own lives and in the world around us, I would like to take a moment to talk about one of the stories I read about in this film. A young man gets into a car accident and gets into a terrible accident where his pregnant wife, his child and her child die. He is distraught and goes to counseling. He gets involved in all kinds of dangerous behaviors to cope with this pain that he’s had for so long. And he gets caught up in it. And there is a moment in the movie when the counselor confronts him, and in a moment of desperation he lashes out at the counselor, telling him he’s going to blow up a hospital because no one understands how much he suffers. And the counselor looks at him and says, “How are you so stupid?” And then the counselor calls him stupid because he doesn’t seem to have any perspective of how a disaster like that could happen. That is the most brilliant scene in the movie. It is a scene that is so human, so relatable that it speaks to every single one of us, and everyone who loves someone who has lost so much. The thing that I found is that at the time of that movie, when that scene happened, that particular scene, it has a way of bringing you up short when you think about it. And I believe it will do that to you when you are reading this story. I believe it will come back to you when you think of this film. So the scene is from 1998. The year was 2005, and there was a young man, twenty-four years old. He had a wife and a three-year-old son, and an eighteen month old son. His wife had been pregnant for six months when she gave birth to the baby. She went into labor during a visit to her mother’s house. It is a normal morning when his wife gets up and goes to work. She runs errands, picks up his son and they go to school. And he goes to work. They had bought a new home less than two months earlier. A beautiful new home. At least his wife thought it was beautiful, and that they would have a lot of time to enjoy it. They didn’t. As they were driving down the highway, he was driving at 70 mph. He ran a red light at 70 mph. A pedestrian on a bike on the sidewalk hit the side of the car and was dragged under the vehicle. He pulled the car over, and he waited for the police to arrive. And when the police came, he told them that he believed his wife and son were dead. As he waits for the police, he has a vision. He sees his wife and son standing in front of the house. They are happy. He calls the police and turns to his wife. “It’s a bad one.” He looks at his three-year-old son and says, “You didn’t forget, did you?” And he says it like he’s saying good-bye. “You didn’t forget, did you?” His son says, “I don’t know.” And the man says, “I love you. I love you so much.” And his son says, “I love you too.” And he is talking to his wife and telling her he loves her. And she isn’t responding, but he knows she hears him, because she has a habit of that. The man picks up the phone and calls his wife again. And this time when he says to her, “I love you,” he is able to hear her voice as she responds, “I love you too.” But then she says, “I love you too” in a way that leaves a question in his mind. “How do you think you’re going to die?” And the man doesn’t have an answer, except that when the bomb goes off the wife will be driving the car down a highway in the middle of the day. And this is how I ended up reading about this story. The author of the book, Cindy Sheehan, writes about this man’s case, and the idea that it is one that speaks to her. And when she talks about it, she goes back to that part when he says, “I love you too” and he doesn’t have an answer to that question. “How do you think you’re going to die?” Sheehan takes his story and she uses it as a way to bring up all the people we knew who were killed in Iraq. Those of us who are trying to stop war, she says this is how they die. If a soldier in Iraq says “I love you,” his own government is going to go in and blow his brains out. That’s what they tell him. “You will die by a bomb if you love this country.” So he never has a chance to say I love you. And she goes on to say that she believes this. She believes this because she believes these men and women would never have been in Iraq if there wasn’t something in the nature of war that says we have to kill this man for loving this country. That is what war is. It is the way you kill a man for loving this country. And I am going to tell you how it happened. It happened like this. We can’t do it anymore. We have to stop. The country we live in was founded on a violent, immoral idea. For years that idea has only grown. You kill the people who love their country and there is no limit to how far a president will go to save the country. And so now we have war. And now we have the families of the people who died fighting for their country to be left on a highway to die when their country can’t get them home. Sheehan believes that this is the nature of war. That if a soldier or an official or anyone from your country, a soldier or an official or anyone from your country told you that you were going to die for loving this country, what do you think would happen? You would say, “No,” right? So, to the left of that question, what do you say? We are going to sit back and let that happen. That is how they die. If you love this country you’re going to be left to die in a field. Now, in the Sheehan story that really makes you think about the people who would be left behind. And the truth is when you are living in a war zone, the ones who are left behind, they are often people like this man. And she says there is a lot of anger among those who leave war behind. He said, “We are the ones who will not be missed.” It is a shame the world has to be put at risk, and families have to see their husbands and wives suffer like this, but for the most part they live their lives, and most of them come home, and life goes on. We are grateful to them. But our country is so rich, so blessed, we can’t even imagine there is someone out there who’s been left behind, and is still looking for a way to recover. She says that the families are the ones who carry these stories. What else is there to do? The governments, the governments don’t give them answers, they leave them behind in the field. What else is there to do? And she says this has been the case, the stories and the pain have been with her since 2003, 2004. She believes that she got the book the movie was based on when she was pregnant. She felt somehow like the person who gave birth to this book was also a child from that war. And so it was this war that became a part of her, a part of her growing up. There is no way to understand this. She said, no matter