Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the Disney film “Encanto.”
I’m not much of a crier. My husband teases me because I watch videos of soldiers coming home and surprising their families or dogs and their owners, reuniting after months or even years apart, all just to “hack my cry.”
So imagine my surprise as my eyes welled with tears and fell down my cheeks during my family’s weekly movie night while watching Abuela and Mirabel hug and reconcile in the movie “Encanto.”
“Encanto” tells the story of a miracle given to Alma Madrigal (Abuela) many years before, when her husband was killed trying to save her and their three triplets while fleeing their village after the soldiers who occupied it and drove them out. Abuela spent the rest of her life building a house and tightly curating her family’s life so they would never lose their home again. Like most families, the dynamics between the family members in the film are complicated.
The miracle gave all but one of the Madrigal family members particular gifts: super strength, healing powers, control of the weather, prophecy, and more. But when Mirabel was ready to receive her gift, she found nothing. As a result, her relationship with her grandmother was strained and she often felt out of place at home and in the family.
The tighter Abuela grasped to protect and maintain the family’s miracle and home, the more the literal and physical foundation and walls began to crack and crumble. The house finally fell in on itself. Abuela blamed Mirabel, who ran away.
Abuela eventually found Mirabel and they reconciled. Abuela realized the family she worked so hard to build and protect didn’t feel at home in their own house. Worse, they didn’t feel at home within themselves.
We watched Encanto a month to the day after my own grandmother died. She suffered from dementia for many years, and her final year was particularly cruel. As my tears fell during the movie, another movie played in my mind.
It was the story of the woman who beamed every time I walked into the room, even when she stopped remembering my name; the woman who turned one of her extra bedrooms into my bedroom when my parents divorced, packing my own home into boxes, splitting it in two; the woman who loved me as deeply and fiercely as the day I was born, even when we voted differently or when I became a pastor, despite her skepticism of religion, or when I did countless other things that didn’t fit with what she thought I ought to do or how I ought to go about being in this world.
Soon, those of us in the Christian faith will celebrate Epiphany, the commemoration of God revealing God’s self to the world in the Christ child. Epiphany also marks the day the Magi visited Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem.
In her children’s book, “Home By Another Way: A Christmas Story,” Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor uses midrash, a Jewish interpretive act for scriptural texts, to bring the story of the Magi to life.
For Brown, the star the Magi followed was so bright, as if it was lodged in each of their eyes, as if something they had been waiting for their entire lives was calling them. Each had tried books, magic, astrology and living on nothing but dried herbs and water. Despite all this, they still felt something was missing.
After giving Jesus their gifts, they thanked him as they prepared to leave. They thanked him for the family’s unexpected home, the love they felt there, and this story he gave them–a story that, in the retelling, may do a lot more for them than books, magic, or herbs and hot water.
Rarely do our stories unfold in the ways we hope and plan. For most of us, this reality is particularly acute during the Christmas season.
All the flickering candles and twinkling lights have a way of getting lodged in our eyes as the hopes and fears of all of our years collide. And yet, something we have been waiting for our entire lives is calling us home by another way.
In Moses’ blessing to the children of Israel before his death, he reminds them, “The eternal God is [their] dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27, RSV). The God who made earth God’s home has made a room just for you.
It’s not the home we planned or expected. But it is the one we need, with a front door flung wide open for all of us to walk through. And when we do, God will be beaming.
Tori Hastings is the Associate Pastor at Canterbury United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
