You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 29th, 2008.
i clocked out at work, hungry and tired…contemplating how i was going to spend my evening.
cheetos and a movie with mom sounded good to me…
except that mom is 2,800 miles and 2 time zones away.
and since i couldn’t have mom with me to share the cheetos, i gave up that desire as well…settling for just a movie.
wasn’t the same.
no cheetos.
no mom.
not as much fun.
missing home,
missing family,
missing the closeness we all share…
the closeness in physical proximity as well as the emotional bond that distance can’t sever but can weaken.
even though i love it here,
it’s not the same as home,
not the same as having family so close.
it’s good alright, but not the same.
ironic isn’t it? look at what we’ve done to the man who refused to conform his ideals to popular taste, who refused to compromise his integrity. we have put him in a tiny box and asked you to copy him. so the choice is yours ladies, you can conform to what other people expect or you… ~katherine watson in mona lisa smile, referencing the painter vincent van gogh.
funny that i didn’t think of van gogh when i heard this, i thought of jesus. couldn’t this be said of him?
didn’t jesus refuse to conform to the ideals of his culture, to the popularity of his time?
didn’t jesus refuse to compromise his integrity?
didn’t jesus stand by what he said?
didn’t jesus appear to be bigger than the tiny box the religious leaders of his day tried placing him in?
but we do the same. we place jesus in some little box…
a box that conforms to our ideals of who we’ve constructed jesus to be,
a box that ties in nicely with our religious views, of what we’ve deemed christianity to be,
a box that allows us to understand who jesus is,
a box that allows us to control this image of jesus,
a box that we can fit in as well.
and we ask others to comform to him.
i guess the question is yours, as well as mine:
will i conform to the image others have set of jesus or…
will i conform to the image others have set of me or…
will i allow jesus to be who he really is…and allow myself the same.
at the close of the movie mona lisa smile (from which the above quote is taken), betty (warren) jones says of her professor and mentor, katherine watson,
not all who wander are aimless, especially not those who seek truth beyond tradition, beyond definition, beyond the image.
i’m sure others thought of jesus as wandering, failing to be the messiah they had envisioned.
but he wasn’t wandering aimlessly.
jesus was, instead, seeking truth beyond tradition…and beyond the religious tradition of his day.
jesus was seeking truth beyond definition…not allowing others to define who he was, what he was about, and what he came to offer.
jesus was seeking truth beyond the image…the image of what others expected him to be.
…being true, instead, to who he was.
as i unlocked the door to my apartment tonight, coming home from work, i thought of my friend christy. i had just noticed blooms on the tree outside my apartment, the one that fills the view from my window. i hadn’t noticed them before tonight, but tonight i couldn’t help but notice them. and as i looked at each bloom late appearing, i recalled the numerous times christy would remark at the first signs of spring…
the poppies evidencing themselves outside the parsons building,
the new buds appearing on the myrtles,
and the green leaves filling the trees lining walnut on the way to the rose bowl.
so as i stood with the key in the door, i paused.
i paused to reflect on the significance of those blooms…
on the significance of the season they usher in.
and this seems to come to mind in thinking about spring:
18 “Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. ~isaiah 43.18 and 19
god initiating a new thing…something much different than the past,
and in some way, somehow, surprising.
a little like the dogwoods i saw last week in my aunt and uncle’s backyard. as we drove through their neighborhood, i could not help but see the other dogwoods springing forth from the ground.
god is doing a new thing. god is doing a new thing in all of creation…
and in my life.
i am eagerly awaiting the spring…and the newness that it will bring.
