🍿🎬 SATURDAY MATINEE: SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME
Beloveds,
Grab the popcorn. 🍿
Pull up a chair.
Saturday Matinee is open. 🎬
🍿 WATCH THE MOVIE:
Same Kind of Different as Me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EE12ergLg
This week we’re watching Same Kind of Different as Me, starring Greg Kinnear, Renée Zellweger, Djimon Hounsou, and Jon Voight.
And whew.
This movie gave me some THANGS to think about. 👀
At first glance, you might think you know this story.
A wealthy white couple begins volunteering at a homeless shelter.
They meet Denver Moore, a Black man carrying anger, pain, distrust, and a lifetime of experiences they do not understand.
And here comes that familiar movie formula:
White people meet struggling Black person.
White people help struggling Black person.
Everybody learns something.
Roll credits.
Except—
hold up.
👀
Keep watching.
Because Denver is not merely somebody standing around waiting for Ron and Debbie Hall to rescue him.
Denver has a story.
Denver has wisdom.
Denver has agency.
Denver has reasons for the walls he built.
And before anybody starts demanding that he tear those walls down, maybe somebody ought to care enough to ask:
What happened behind them?
That question stayed with me.
Because sometimes we meet somebody after the hurt and judge the behavior without knowing the history.
We see anger.
We don’t see what taught somebody that anger might be safer than vulnerability.
We see distrust.
We don’t see all the times trusting somebody cost them something.
We see the wall.
We never ask who kept throwing bricks.
👀
And this movie doesn’t only ask us to look at Denver.
Look at Ron.
Look at Debbie.
Look at marriage.
Privilege.
Homelessness.
Race.
Grief.
Friendship.
Faith.
Forgiveness.
And look closely at what happens when helping somebody stops being a project and becomes a relationship.
That distinction matters to me.
I don’t want to be anybody’s project.
And I don’t want you to be mine.
I want chairs.
🪑🪑
Two people can sit beside one another without either person becoming the superior human being.
One person may have money.
Another may have wisdom.
One may have housing.
Another may understand survival in ways the first person never had to learn.
One may arrive believing they came to give.
Then discover—
they came to receive too.
That’s where this movie gets REALLY interesting to me.
Because real relationship has a funny way of messing up those neat little categories of:
HELPER.
and
HELPED.
Sometimes the person you thought you were rescuing reaches right back and grabs you.
Sometimes the person everybody else walked past sees something the rest of us missed.
And sometimes the question isn’t:
Who saved whom?
Maybe the better question is:
What happened when they finally saw each other?
👀❤️
Now THAT will preach.
But…
🤣🤣🤣
THIS IS SATURDAY MATINEE.
I’m not turning your popcorn into homework.
🍿
Watch the movie.
Meet Denver.
Meet Ron.
Meet Debbie.
Laugh where you laugh.
Get mad where you get mad.
Talk back to the television if necessary.
You know I do. 😂
But while you’re watching, notice something.
Who did you initially think needed saving?
Then keep watching long enough to see whether you still believe that by the end.
Because sometimes we walk into somebody else’s life thinking:
I gotchu.
And somewhere along the way we discover:
Wait a minute.
You got me too.
👀😭❤️
And THAT, Beloveds, is a conversation I know a little something about.
But we’ll leave that right there.
👀
For now—
the lights are going down.
The popcorn is ready.
The movie is cued.
And yes…
I saved you a chair. 🪑
Actually—
I gotchu and I gotcha.
🍿🎬❤️
Unapologetically His and Unapologetically yours,
loving me some you,
Cassandra
#YourLifeMattersToMe
#SaturdayMatinee
#SameKindOfDifferentAsMe
#IGotchuAndIGotcha
