Tree of Life

Genesis 2:8 "...The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

Genesis 3:22 "The Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.  Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever--" therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken."

I have now watched Terrence Malick's Tree of Life four times and still don't think I have fully digested it.  Even though I consider it the most important movie I have seen, I don't broadly recommend it to other people as I don't think most people will manage to sit through the whole thing, much less be challenged or awakened by it.  Reading the verses above after having seen this movie recently makes them very thought provoking.

This is the monologue from the very beginning of the movie:

The nuns taught us there were two ways through life—the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow… Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries… Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things… The nuns taught us that no one who loves the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.