Redemption: Getting The Band Back Together
Ah, Jake and Elwood, so nice to see you again! I happened upon The Blues Brothers Movie last night. A 
few years have passed since my last viewing of the iconic film. Jake and Elwood are ex-cons. Jake is picked up by his brother Elwood outside of Joliete prison. They visit the Catholic orphanage where they were raised. They learn from sister Mary Stigmata that the place is to be closed unless $5,000 in back property taxes can be paid. Jake has an epiphany during a sermon by Rev Cleophus James at the Triple Rock Baptist Church. Jake and Elwood believe that they are tasked by God to come up with the money to save the orphanage. They can re-form the band which broke up while Jake was in prison and raise the money to pay the taxes.
The campy John Landis film is a 1980’s Odyssey. The Blues Brothers quest for redemption, the return home brings them into conflict with a variety of hair raising circumstances, their own ignorance/bad decisions, bureaucraticly blind authorities, and a jilted lover seeking payback with a M16 assault rifle. Jake and Elwood are all of us, in this together, the product of our collective partial successes and abject failures.
We must get the band back together friends! We are on a mission from God, the stakes could not be higher. Despite our differences, and the friction of circumstances this has to be done. Nothing less than the fate of the next generation is in the balance. The Blues Brothers orphanage is on the cusp of closure because the deadline is approaching for the account to be settled. What seems to be a formidable task can only be engaged by people of good will, traveling light with sharp focus, and with genuine solicitude for one another.
Here is a video clip of the Blues Brothers signature musical number performed at The Palace Hotel Ballroom north of Chicago.
