serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or a lower ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine or plan to. liver problems may occur in crohn's disease. control of crohn's means everything to me. ask your gastroenterologist about skyrizi. ♪ control is everything to me ♪ learn how abbvie could help you save. hello. on behalf of the archdiocese of san francisco, welcome to 'mosaic'. we know the word evangelization and evangelist. we associate these with religious preaching.

backup into the root parts of the word and it looks less narrow the angel part indicates a message. and there is a creek particle and it means good. helpful, welcome. and evangelist is a person bringing a welcome message. glad tidings, good news. is it only preaches to evangelize? not at all. our guest today is a literary scholar and teacher who will discuss how makers of art and literature, fiction, film, poetry, are also bringing good news and revealing to us truths that can help us live wisely and well, if we know how to read their books and watch their films. how do we watch and read even the product of our secular culture? to grow in wisdom and faith and grace. stay with us as we talk about the fiction, film and faith around us and the depths

of rich human in sight that can be found in the best of the arts.

welcome to 'mosaic'. may i call you margaret? >> absolutely. >> you are a professor of dogmatics at st. patrick's seminary at menlo park. you also taught at the university of dallas and you have an ma in systematic theology and a doctoral degree from the university . you are a learned scholar and experienced her teacher and writer. what you want to talk to us about today? evangelization and film and art. we know what evangelization is as a catholic outreach. but where do film and literary arts come in . >> i would like to suggest that serious screenplay writer and novelist, if they are in

the business of revelation and by that i mean that the serious screenplay writer and movie director apply their imagination and their talents to the task of bringing others to see. to me, to see more than beautiful costumes and breathtaking scenery. the serious , brings you to see a vision of life. i am mindful of what johnson conrad had said. he is a novelist and perhaps his best-known work is the novel heart of darkness and ended >> the movie, apocalypse now. joseph conrad summed it up this way. he said my task is to bring you to feel and above all to make you see. to see the meaning of life. he said my stories are concerned with nothing less than the whole point of living. the whole point of living. that is

serious. the serious screenplay writer, the serious novelist, they are intent upon intensifying our capacity to feel. but to feel what it is we truly hunger for. first four. what it is we long for, hope for. they are intent upon deepening our capacity to see what makes life worth living. to see what makes life fully human. and leads to authentic happiness. >> that is interesting. i mentioned the word evangelize and evangelization. we think about that as giving a religious message to someone. but what you are talking about whether conrad is a catholic or not or any artist, serious, deep, humane artist, trying to get us to see and feel. in other words, not to adopt a position about something . maybe not even to buy into

the metaphysics. >> to intensify their experience of being human. >> it seems paradoxical to me. being human is such an intense experience already we tend to defend ourselves. i think you develop a little crossed , a shell. what does the artist do? >> referring to conrad, my task is to make you feel. to make you see at an intensity and to a depth as never before. flannery o'connor, as well. the catholic fiction writer. >> american writer, active in the mid 20th-century, a famous catholic. >> i know that you know of her works quite well. and she will admit that her method , her literary method involves this shock tactic. she has to shock her readers. to come to a

spiritual awakening . to see the human condition. especially in its contemporary setting. as never before. we think we see. we think we feel but we are riddled with so many blind spots. we are hampered by so much spiritual blindness. >> let's talk about our contemporary situation which dates back to flannery o'connor. there is endless media available . there are movies, videos, books, every kind of mode. there is so much we may have to guard ourselves against it . what is the challenge to the makers of these products, who in this age of hours, what is missing? it seems to me the structure of christianity as the narrative of our world has sunk in importance? >> yes. i'm sorry, john, you want me to address the challenge? faced -- in the

first place you say the christian writer of fiction, the christian screenplay writer but also his or her readership, the audience. if i might have recourse to the wisdom of flannery o'connor and rely on her experience, she bemoaned the fact that she says today the world is going through something like a dark night of the soul. the world , it is increasingly secular condition, is losing its capacity to see, to see the presence of god. the stirrings of grace, as well as conversion experiences. >> hold that thought and we will take a brief break. we will be back shortly with our guest dr. margaret turek. to talk about fiction and film .

welcome back. we are talking with dr. margaret turek and evangelizing. that is not only preaching the christian method , message, but seeing the christian truth and finding unexpected ways in which to see it. you mentioned

flannery o'connor. her encapsulation of her vocation of the writer was -- >> she said it one point that the primary gift that she needed as a catholic writer was the gift of prophetic vision. notice it is vision. the capacity to see and to see prophetically by which she meant, not the capacity to read the future, but the capacity to see what is hidden. and for her, it is primarily the hidden presence of god. our god is the manual and with us, but in our increasingly secular age, god is less and less visible. and more easily forgettable. so god is becoming increasingly hidden. which she needs to do is find ways in the secular culture, to impregnate her stories with the presence of god. often the

presence of god is best seen or recognized, by the negative pointers that she embeds in her text. she forces you to face the seeming absence of god. the seeming void , this desert experience of our contemporary and secular culture. >> a desert experience meaning there is not really nourishment for the soul available. we are talking about film and fiction and so on. there is a lot of escapist literature, lots of literature and films and car crashes and various other things. serious art perhaps is having a struggle to find itself. you mentioned, you told me about , you do teach or hold seminars on watching film and sharpening your vision to see what is in that film. you do this for all ages. >> i have done it for high school students as well as

their teachers. i have done it at the college level, at the graduate level at the seminary, st. patrick seminary. and i have also gone out to parishes throughout the bay area and i have given evening presentations, full days of retreat. a weekend. where i train the eye. to see god and find god and recognize his patterns of relating to us. albeit in the dark . and to recognize the stirrings of grace, the promptings of grace. that is always trying to lure us and bring us back to himself. to see him with us under any condition and since the current condition is most pervasively in the dark, we have to develop a nightvision. the capacity, this prophetic vision to see god in the dark and recognize stirrings of grace. opportunities for conversion and in the shadows, in the twilight. the faith

illumined division. >> i think it is difficult to develop a humane sensibility these days. the human race is more or less a villain of the piece. either we are accidents or we are sort of a virus on the planet. where is the affirmation of my human nature and my soul? where cannot be found? we will talk about films from here on doubt and it seems to be a vivid specialty of yours. you mentioned, groundhog day. is that an examination of a despairing world? >> yes. as i see and interpret, groundhog day. >> down from t■he 80s, ill murray. lives the same day over and over . >> it stars bill murray as phil connors and andy mcdowell as his eventual love interest. it is a story , a portrait that is about the whole point of living. it is a wonderful illustration of conrad's point

in film. this story is about the whole point of living, what makes life worth living. as the movie opens, phil collins, the protagonist, believes he knows what makes his life worth living. and as i view the movie and there is a variety of ways to view it, i see phil connors initially, illustrating freudian psychology. the freudian theory of the ultimate motivating factor for human behavior. why do we do what we do? what are we truly seeking? freud is known for the pleasure principle, but ultimately what motivates us is the pleasure. we seek pleasure. and today more than ever. pleasure. sexual pleasure. phil connors initially, goes about his life seeking sexual pleasure. and he does so quite winningly, we could say. but

it is not enough. you watches character, because according to the story, he has to live this day again and again. he is forced to live out and intensified and concentrated form this theory of life and he comes to rely soon enough, experientially, not by reading a book. that the pleasure principle is not enough. phil will choose to kill himself . he will choose to stop living rather than be forced, within this one theory , it is not enough. the pleasure principle is not worthy of phil's humanity, that is what he shows us . >> he is better than that. let's pause that thought and we will take a break and come back for a final segment of this program and talk about the movie, gravity. we are talking with margaret turek.

welcome back to 'mosaic'.

dr. margaret turek, has a keen inside into films and a sense for what the serious artist is revealing god saying, whether they intend to or not. we talked about this film from a few years ago. and oscar-winner , i'm not sure. 'gravity', a space movie. tell us what you see. >> the movie at the surface level, it is a survival story. about a woman who survives a life-threatening accident in outer space. but the story is really about much more. about the whole point of living. the title, 'gravity', in my mind, this is my interpretation. it eludes to gravitas, the weight, the depth, fullness, fullness of life. we need gravitas,

meaningfulness, sufficient to prompt us and motivate us to say yes to our next breath and say yes to a life that often is shrouded in darkness. that often confronts us with very tragic, very heartbreaking events. this movie, it begins with a dark screen. the screen is black and the stark letters in white emerge and it says basically, life in space is impossible. space is a metaphor , outer space is a metaphor for inner space. what the character is living , on earth. the condition of her life on earth is impossible. to affirm it or endure it. in any meaningful way. what the film makers do is they show you what life in space is about. it is cold, it is dark. it is silent. there is no communication. there is no air to carry sound. it is a state

of isolation, silence, noncommunication. darkness and coldness. that is the state of dr. ryan stones life on earth , in space, she is now living this out in a way that is magnified for us schematically. and what the story brings us , her story, as she endeavors to survive in outer space, the themes that become prominent are themes such as the importance of being tethered. the importance of being in communion with others. we learned that on earth she lost her daughter. her four-year-old daughter died a very tragic accidental death and from that moment on , dr. ryan stone lived a life disconnected and disengaged, disoriented. every day she said she would wake up and go to work and it was purposeless and aimless. it was dark and

cold. in outerspace she finds herself following this accident, a drift . >> her life is at risk. >> she is time and again and she is trying to communicate with houston, saying houston, i am in the blind. i am running out of air and i am a drift. that describes her life on earth. >> that is a wonderful moment to stop. she is now in dante's position in the midst of life, i found myself in the dark wood. i have lost my way. you recommend that everybody watch it. >> absolutely. look for the cues. this filmmaker is quite deliberate in bringing you to see that she is going through a journey in the dark. towards conversion from spiritual blindness to spiritual in sight and everything depends on the discovery of the importance of being tethered. not only to

her comrade matt, she discovers she remains tethered to her daughter in the afterlife and all of this is because she is ultimately and always tethered to god. she will speak about the importance of prayer and how no one taught her how to pray. no one ever trained her in his original and fundamental way of being tethered to our god. who provides our tethers with each other this communion of love and life that makes this life worth living and that indoors into the afterlife. >> we have about 60 seconds left and i know you told me that when you have developed your vision in various ways and have the eye to see, you should return over and over again to the scriptures. >> ultimately, scripture. >> read them better and better. >> the best authors of novels and poetry and screenplays are those who have learned something from sacred scriptures . salvation history,

the human drama as portrayed as never before and they will embed their works of art with hints, clues, that lead you to see and experience the poignancy of these moments because you recognize their illusions to these biblical meanings . >> developing your vision for art can blow the dust off the old scriptures and you go back to them with renewed interest and possibility. thank you dr. margaret turek . for spending time with us. we urge you to see the movie 'gravity' and to read everything and see everything that you encounter in the arts with a discerning eye. and i for revelation that will serve you well. thank you for being with us on 'mosaic' .

from cbs news bay area, this is the morning edition . we are just a few hours away from the nfc championship game. the niners and the lions are set to duke it out with a trip to the super bowl on the line.