David and Leann Augsburger are two semi-retired people who co-lead a home base church (Peace Mennonite Church, Claremont, California) and volunteer to welcome, care and connect people in the San Gabriel valley.

Here are five things worth paying attention to this month. These are designed to expose you to a perspective you may not normally come across in your daily lives.

1. Mudbound. Director Dee Ree’s shocking story of American racism. The story progresses slowly and then one forgets all that went before in the blaze of horror that explodes at the end. This account of two families on a common Mississippi farm, one a minister’s family from whom the land was stolen now tenant farmers to the other, a family of white folks with cultural entitlement. Then, literally, hell breaks loose, in a way that defines what hell truly is—hate as a communal event of collective madness.  It is hard to talk about this film. One just looks at fellow viewers and grieves.

2. The Post. If you remember or care to be reminded of the Pentegon Papers, Steven Spielberg’s retelling of Katharine Graham, proprietor , and Ben Bradlee, editor, of The Washington Post, and their response to Daniel Ellsberg, the trove of data and the Nixon Administration. (We are going to visit The Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda tomorrow). If you lived this drama as it happened, or relived it in the film, “All the President’s Men,” it is, dare we say, necessary that you do it one more time. To point out how relevant the past is to the present (spoiler alert) is not appropriate until you have seen this provocative film.

3. The Atlantic, January/February issue has an article that Christian believers might take as a serious basis for conversation with those who agree or disagree with your view. “God’s Plan for Mike Pence.” Whether you lean right or left on the political spectrum, this article serves as a “thought experiment’ of what total allegiance, radical “servant leadership,” and unquestioning support of policies that contradict his faith commitments means for this man who sees his life as fulfilling a Divine plan. “Things might look bad now, but there is a grand purpose at work here, ‘Let not your heart be troubled.'” Read it to explore the meaning of radical commitment for one a man and a mission.

4. Film Festivals. Is there a film festival in driving distance? We are still sorting out the 14 films we were able to see at the Palm Springs International Film Festival—films from Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Paraguay, Bosnia, Iceland, Hungary, France, Congo and Belgium this year. Seeing through other eyes, feeling what others feel, suffering alongside sufferers and seeing how others cry out for justice, moves something deeper than words. “The opposite of justice is not injustice, it is silence,” Senator Cory Booker said this morning. Films break the fog of voluntary deafness and  complicity with undeniable power. If you can,  join a festival, order a film, get together with friends who understand visual arts and open yourselves.

5. Repentance. “The World Needs Repentance,” by Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, is a group experience of shared confession and “turning,” the real meaning of the word in Hebrew. This is no superficial “Whoops, sorry, we goofed,” experience. It requires sitting with a circle of persons of your choice and examining your soul. The article appeared in TIKKUN, the summer of 2017, vol 32, No 2. Pages 69-72. This is searching stuff. The Rabbi is shining a light in a very dark corner of my—perhaps your—soul, if we decide to allow it in through the crack we call “Repentance.”