The Habit Whisperer

If we listen carefully, we can hear the voice of not only the sage habit whisperer of the text, but also the Wise Whisperer who knows us better that we know ourselves and who calls us to transcend the defective habits that render us ineffective in God's service.

One of this summer's most popular movies was Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer. Based on Nicholas Evans' wildly popular, but critically panned novel by the same name, the movie is a blueprint for healing. The patients in this case are Annie, an editor of a fashion magazine and the mother of an early-adolescent girl, Grace (the second patient), who lost her leg in a horrific horse accident. The horse involved in the accident, Pilgrim, provides the overarching metaphor for the movie as the patient on whom the "horse whisperer" works his skill.

Pilgrim, so seriously injured in the accident that his trainer and other family members counseled "putting him down," is driven from New York City to Montana horse country for a consultation with the horse whisperer. Pilgrim's retraining must begin from square one. Rather than break the horse in a traditional sense, the horse whisperer is willing to let a horse be a horse. When Annie calls Tom Booker and identifies herself as a "person with...