Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
A sharing of life’s glories

A sharing of life’s glories

Last updated on: March 15, 2026 at 4:45 pm by Fred Clark

0 Comments

A sharing of life’s glories 2026-03-15T16:45:26-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

• The Academy Awards are on tonight and Benicio del Toro is nominated for best supporting actor for playing my favorite character in One Battle After Another.

He’s terrific in that part. Nailed it. That doesn’t necessarily mean he should get the Oscar — other nominees did tremendous work in larger supporting roles, including Sean Penn in that same movie. But del Toro’s Sensei Sergio is the character I’m still thinking about long after watching that film, and the category he’s nominated in explains why.

Leonardo DiCaprio is nominated for best actor in a leading role for One Battle. That’s appropriate — he’s very good in this, and the movie is his story, his character’s story. And the sensei plays a supporting role in the story of Leo’s character. But he’s not so much a supporting character in One Battle After Another as he is the protagonist of an entirely different movie that we only catch a glimpse of where it happens to overlap with Leo’s story.

And that’s a very different movie. One Battle After Another is about failed revolutionaries limping along just trying to survive, to run and hide and escape. The sensei helps them, but he does so while also apparently being very, very busy running an elaborate and seemingly effective Underground Railroad and who knows what else. He helps Leo out of pity, and solidarity, and because that’s what he does, with a kind of joyful competence that starkly contrasts with the flailing desperation of the flashier would-be revolutionaries in the movie’s main story. Leo comes to him for shelter and assistance and we see, in the background of the scene and the background of his story, dozens of others receiving that same help and assistance.

** SPOILER FOLLOWS ****

When Leo winds up in del Toro’s car for yet another of the movie’s many fraught-but-also-funny car chases, the sensei cracks open a beer. It seems reckless and irresponsible and for a moment you think, oh no, how could he do this? How could he put his whole briefly-glimpsed network at risk — and put all the people he’s helping to evade the story’s fascist police at risk — just to get his buzz on? Then — having helped Leo escape — he gets caught, and it all seems to be over, with the supporting character sacrificing himself to save the hero.

But then Benicio/sensei smiles and does his glorious little dance and you realize that the cops have not just caught a dangerous revolutionary, exposing his entire underground network. They have, instead, arrested some nameless clown for a DUI. He has given the cops a story and — like the audience for One Battle After Another — that is as much of his story as those cops will ever get to see.

There are so many supporting actors in real life in places like the Twin Cities whose stories we will never see, and off-camera they’ve been effectively busy.

• Another way of saying all of that is that DiCaprio;’s character in One Battle After Another is based on Thomas Pynchon’s twisted version of ’70s radicals and “revolutionaries,” while del Toro’s character is based on the kinds of people Ananya Roy writes about here: “Fugitive Sanctuaries.”

• So far this year there have been measles outbreaks and large-scale exposures associated with the anti-abortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., and with the creationist Ark Encounter tourist attraction in Kentucky. Is that a pattern? It looks like it might be a pattern.

• One difference between the first Trump administration and the second is that back in 2018 I would read a headline that said “Middle-class Americans are selling their plasma to make ends meet” and shake my head sadly at such grim news.

But today, in 2026, I read about people getting $65 for their plasma and about how “there are now more places to sell plasma than there are Costco stores” and I open a separate tab to see if there’s one near me.

• Vanessa Williamson and Jeremy Bearer-Friend do the math to convert his proposals to 2026 dollars and find that Thomas Paine called for a tax on billionaires back in the 1790s:

The design of Paine’s tax is straightforward. He wanted to tax the annual financial return on wealth — what he referred to as its “yearly value.” He proposed a series of highly progressive tax brackets with rates rising from 1.25% to 100%. As his rates increased, only the money received beyond the previous bracket would be taxed at the higher rate. In 2020 dollars, the first roughly $100,000 in annual returns would be tax-free. At the other end of the spectrum, the 100% rate only applied to annual revenue over about $49 million. At a 5% rate of return, a revenue amount of $49 million comes from an estate of about $1 billion, so Paine’s top rate applies, roughly, to billionaires.

• Bo Gritz is dead. Erik Loomis puts this right-wing loon and his legacy in context.

I had a job in the early 2000s writing training materials for a private security company. One of the execs there was a retired special forces guy. He never talked about what he did or even where he did it. Ever. But he did tell me this: “There are two kinds of ex-special forces guys. Either they never, ever talk about it, or else they never stop talking about it. Those guys will tell you all kinds of amazing stories. And none of those stories is true.”

Bo Gritz told all kinds of amazing stories and, eventually, he came to believe them himself.

• The title of this post comes from “Bread and Roses,” the 114-year-old song that Lucy Dacus prayed at Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural in New York City back in January. I just went back and watched that again and it still gets me, so here it is:

Uncategorized

Previous Post

March 15, 2026

Sunday Reading

Next Post

March 16, 2026 Reach, Throw, Row, Go (revisited)

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"I remember A: but not B:. It was just A: for floppies and C: for ..."

MG Remoaner

A Psalm for Election Day

""Why would God need a watch?""He doesn't, that's why we know a watchmaker made the ..."

damanoid

The possibility of possibility

"30 minutes just to get to the coffee/tea part."

P J Evans

The possibility of possibility

"Are they Juan Ortiz posters? (I have a book of Next Generation ones and the ..."

Scurra

The possibility of possibility

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Do to others as you would have them do to ____.

Select your answer to see how you score.

You Others Themselves Everyone