Donna Edwards doesn't like to take time off from her job as organist at Trinity Lutheran Congregation in Minneapolis. Once every five decades or so, she'll make an exception. That's why she wasn't at the keyboard last Sunday: She was the guest of honor as the church celebrated her 50th anniversary as its organist.

"Over the years, I've probably missed a few Sundays," she said. "But I never took much vacation because we never went anywhere."

Edwards, 83, who retired from her day job as a pediatrician in 1996, already was a veteran church organist when she played at Trinity for the first time on Nov. 1, 1959.

"I've been playing at churches since I was a teenager," said Edwards, who started taking lessons when she was 8. When she was in her 20s, she was at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in St. Louis Park, where she didn't take much time off, either. She played right up to the day she gave birth to her first child.

She has seen a lot of changes at Trinity during her stint, including the closing of the original building in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.

"We lost it to [the construction of] I-94," she said. "It was called the Lutheran Free Church in those days."

It's in its third location now, holding services in the Augsburg College chapel. But nothing rattles the unflappable Edwards, said the Rev. Jane Buckley-Farlee. "She's amazing," the pastor said. "She's adaptable, she's versatile and she's faithful."

Not to mention extremely low-key. Asked how she came to spend five decades at the same job, Edwards responded simply, "I'm not one who changes things very often."

A gay-rights group holding a forum on the Roman Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality took retired Archbishop Harry Flynn's name in vain. A spokesman for Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities told the Star Tribune that in the early 1990s, Flynn approached them about being a resource for the archdiocese.

It was in keeping with his image of someone who often focused on people who felt disenfranchised. But his role was overstated. While there was interaction between the group and the archdiocese, Flynn did not initiate the contact.

Movie scores on several fronts

"The Blind Side," which opened in theaters Friday, is being billed as a football movie rather than a Christian movie, which makes sense on two fronts: Football movies tend to make more money, especially this time of year, and the term "Christian movie" has come to be associated with preachy treatises, which this most certainly is not.

A real-life version of the parable of the Good Samaritan, it doesn't contain any fiery sermons or theological debates. It's just a portrait of a family doing what it considers its Christian duty.

On a chilly, misty night in late November, a white family finds a homeless black teenager looking for a warm building he can sneak into to sleep. The family gives him food, clothes, a warm bed and, eventually, their hearts. He responds in kind. (He also plays football, which is what the TV ads show.)

The subtexts are subtle but powerful. In one scene, the boy, one of the few blacks in the private school the family sends its kids to, goes into the library to study. Although there are empty chairs, none of the other students beckons him to join them, so he sits down at a table all by himself. Without saying a word, the family's teenage daughter picks up her math book, walks over to his table and sits down beside him.

That's a lesson that involves a whole lot more than math.

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392