Copyright: © 2002 Paul F. Bosch.
This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

On several recent listings, the 1942 film Casablanca appears among the top three movies of all time. (The other two, for what it is worth to you: 1941's Citizen Kane, and 1973's The Godfather.) Here's a trivia question from that film for you movie buffs: What are the words that Humphrey Bogart uses in toasting his reunion with his long-lost love, Ingrid Bergman?

Answer (You knew this one): "Here's lookin' at you, kid."

That's surely one of the most often-quoted of all of the lines of dialogue from any Hollywood movie. But in a recent video viewing of the movie I was struck by Bogart's inflection of the line. He does not say, as I would have expected, "Here's lookin' at you, kid" --accenting the preposition-- but rather "Here's lookin' at you, kid" --accenting the pronoun. Whether the inflection represents the actor's own inspired reading of the line, or the director's suggestion to the actor, I do not know. But I do know it caught me up short, and set me to reflecting on how worship leaders inflect the lines they're given in ritual dialogue. Which should it be: prepositions? Or pronouns?

(One recalls in this regard the training apparently impressed upon airline flight attendants in an earlier age --we called them "stewardesses" in those days-- who invariably stressed the prepositions in their otherwise often-unintelligible announcements: "...our descent to the airfield ... mumble, mumble ... in their full upright position ... mumble, mumble ... to the terminal ... mumble, mumble ... in the overhead compartment ... mumble, mumble ... at the jetway ... mumble, mumble ...off the seatbelt sign ... mumble, mumble ...")

So, which should it be: "The Lord be with you"? Or "The Lord be with you"?

I'm with Humphrey Bogart on this one: I say the pronoun is more important here than the preposition. And maybe it's more important everywhere than the preposition. And for whatever it is worth to you, this represents a conversion on my part: I used to belong to the Flight Attendant school (prepositions), but now I'll follow Humphrey Bogart (pronouns).

I like that stressed pronoun for two reasons.

First, it's unexpected enough --like Bogart's reading of the line in the movie-- that it has the potential of bringing you to attention. It's not the inflection you'd expect, if you were simply reading with your eyes those lines of dialogue in the Service Book. When you hear that pronoun stressed, instead of the anticipated preposition, you're brought out of whatever private revery you may be entertaining in the moment, and into the corporate dialogue of the Eucharist itself.

Second, and more important, it signals to me, and I think also to the hearer, a more personal interchange: "Oh, it's me he means."

Well, faithful reader, is this just another crack-pot notion of a man who spends too much time at the movies? I like to think Bogart has something here to teach us.