There was a time when those with handicaps were kept out of regular schools. In the early 1970s Italian law required that the blind be sent away to special schools where they would learn a simple trade, like caning chairs or working a telephone switchboard. When Mirco Mencacci was blinded by an accident at age 10, he was sent away from home to such a school, but his imagination was meant for more than a simple trade. Red Like the Sky tells Mirco's story.

When Mirco got to the school he was a rebel. He didn't want to learn Braille. He didn't want to conform to the strict rules. Besides the friends he made in school, he also became friends with the sighted daughter of the school's housekeeper. Mirco and the girl would sneak out of school and go into town.

When he was given an assignment to describe things, rather than write, he found a tape recorder and began recording sounds, and also making synthetic sounds. The teacher was intrigued by his skill, but the school's director objected that he didn't do the assignment in the school's way and that he had stolen a tape recorder. When the teacher gives him a recorder in exchange for a promise to learn Braille, Mirco and his friends begin surreptitiously recording an elaborate story complete with sound effects. Again, he ends up running afoul of the school's powers that be.

The struggle between rules and freedom lies at the heart of Mirco's story. That conflict recurs in many forms over and over throughout all of our lives. It lies at the heart of the American Revolution, for instance. Who in the Eighteenth Century would have thought that people could disobey the king? To follow such ideas could lead to anarchy.

Institutions always seem to demand some sort of rules. The government certainly does. So does the church (sometime explicitly, but often in ways unspoken). Those who do not follow the rules are punished or persecuted. Order is important, and it is defined by the rules. I sympathize with the school's director who has to maintain that order when Mirco challenges it. If the whole school were to act like that, it would be a mess. The director's job was to send these boys into the world with a job, menial as it may be, that would give them a living in spite of their handicap. One of his lines is, "Freedom is a luxury we blind people can't afford."

But life without freedom is never a full life. Mirco seems to instinctively understand this. That is why he resists the rules that have the unintended consequence of killing the soul and dreams of these boys. His teacher, Don Giulio, also understands this. It is he who encourages Mirco and eventually is willing to stand up to the director (with a strong assist from some school alumni and trade unions).

The rules vs. freedom conflict is also central to the Gospel itself. The apostle Paul spends most of the letters to the Romans and the Galatians pointing out that in Christ we have moved beyond the law into a world of God's grace. Often in Jesus' ministry he went against the laws that all accepted as divine, such as observing Sabbath or rules defining blasphemy. But even with all this, often the church is one of the biggest offenders about setting rules and demanding they be followed. Paul saw that the Jewish Law often stood in the way of knowing the freedom that comes in Christ, yet soon the church started fashioning its own set of laws. There were good reasons for most of the rules, but almost always such laws become a hindrance to the work of the divine and human spirits.

Red Like the Sky is a celebration of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of those rules that tend to stifle imagination and creativity. Mirco Mencacci went on to become an esteemed sound editor in the Italian film industry. And just think, the rules would have had him making chairs.