I hate staring ant big white pages like this. They’re so… Blank. It’s intimidating. I never know what to do with them. There is so much space to fill up. I always end up staring at them for much longer than I should, wishing that words might magically appear on them. But it never happens. Or perhaps it does. Maybe it’s a miracle every time I finally start staring and force myself to write something down – no matter how many times I erase it all and stop staring at the blank paper again. I could delve deep into the miracle of human creativity or language or reason or consciousness or psyche at this moment but I won’t, because that would take too much effort. I think that’s what it’s always been about. Things take too much effort. It’s not that I don’t have the energy or the ability to spare; it’s just that I don’t want to. We horde effort like misers and then waste our time doing less effortful, mindless things. Like staring at blank pages. We don’t actually think that staring at a blank page is a better way to pass the time than writing on it, but we certainly act like it. The human race is just so hypocritical like that. We never actually think that the way we are living is the best way to live, but we certainly act like it. We say we want change but we don’t act like it. Or at least I don’t. There’s one other mystery: I can only speak for myself. I see the world through my own eyes and must constantly stop myself from assuming that other people see it the exact same way. But at the same time it’s very hard to try to see the world in any other way than I do. I think. But I digress. I was talking about blank pages, and about the hypocritical state of human nature. I suppose it all comes down to what the Apostle Paul said (it often does): “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good” (Ro. 7:15-16). Why is it so hard to do the things we think we ought to? I suppose it’s because we have a great and powerful enemy that does his utmost to stop us. It’s a war, I suppose, as Paul later says “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Ro. 7:23). I call it human nature, and it is, but perhaps it’s also the direct work of the devil himself that keep us from changing that blank page. That is what this is all about: Change. Change isn’t just hard, change is war. It’s bloody. There is real loss. And we’re afraid. Because if there is one thing harder than making something out of a blank page, it’s making something good out of a page that’s already filled with ink, yet in need of complete revision. Especially if we’re not talking about a page anymore but a person. The Bible compares us to clay in a potter’s hands, but sometimes I feel more like Tom Riddle’s diary in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: A torn and desperately evil text that will do anything to keep from being hurt, including try to kill the one who wants to harm it – the one that lies bleeding ink after Harry destroys it. It’s really hard to be both Harry and Tom in this instance, but I think we try to a lot. All the same, maybe that is a very good example for it. Maybe we are both Harry and Tom (and possibly even Ginny). But what we really need is Fawkes. When I began this example I was intending for God to be represented in Harry and us in Tom, but maybe that’s not quite right. Maybe we ARE both Harry and Tom, and God is Fawkes. Because we can’t be completely passive when it comes to change. We must act. We can’t act on our own, we need God’s help. Maybe this wasn’t such a great example. I, for one, would rather just rely on God to do all of the work. But perhaps He does indeed call us to act upon what He’s already done. Maybe I don’t like this example because it scares me. Because no matter how much I say I want to be like Harry, I really REALLY don’t. It’s not just Harry, of course. Not matter how much I say I want to be like Christ in reality I really don’t. I mean I do: I want God to make me more like the nice and easy and respectable parts. I want the glory part and the sin-less part. But I don’t ever want the sacrifice part and the humble part and the long-suffering part. And I certainly don’t want to have to WORK to get either. Not really. Deep down I don’t really want to change. No matter how much I beat myself up, I still think or at least act like I’m fine how I am. Other people seem to act like I’m fine how I am. And I certainly wouldn’t want them to stop. I suppose this goes back to the Audience of One thing – that it doesn’t matter when I think or that others think but what God thinks. And He doesn’t think that I’m ok how I am. But He won’t change me until I give in and let Him have His way. It’s really quite an amazing gesture, but at the same time sometimes I wish God would come in and change me without my leave more often – then at least I wouldn’t have to struggle to obtain change, just to deal with it. But that’s not how God works. God is a story teller, not just a magician. He doesn’t just fix us on the spot (Although He does forgive us on the spot). He writes us a big long story about struggle and sacrifice and pain and happiness and joy and triumph and failure and tears and lifted hands and hugs and smiles and long nights and tired eyes and sore muscles and hurting heads and laughter and singing and dancing and playing and life and death and love and loss and learning and striving and CHANGE. It’s an absolutely beautiful story, all said and done. And how could it be otherwise? God, the Creator of beauty, wrote it. And everything in our hearts screams that we want to live a story like that! And then God tells us that we indeed will. He’s written a special one just for us. And then we set off and we look around and think, “What is this? There must be some mistake. I don’t want to live a story like this anymore! Skip to the end!” It’s kind of like a song from Shrek the Musical: (I Know it’s Today) “Ever After better get here, I want love in seconds flat. No one needs these middle bits…Cut the villains, cut the vamping, cut this fairy tale! Cut the peril and the pitfalls, cut the puppet in the whale! Cut the monsters! Cut the curses! Keep the intro, cut the verses! And the waiting, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting!” . Sometimes I think that’s the worst part – The waiting. Because we can’t see this big story, and all we want to do is get it over with so we can look back and see it! We want God to show us the next step, but we REALLY want Him to show us the whole picture. We don’t want to look at a blank piece of paper OR a bad one filled with ink, we want to see the finished piece, and we want it NOW. Westley from the Princes Bride was right: “Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” Life is PAINful. As I said, it’s WAR. And we don’t like war. Especially this war, in which we enact both the loosing and the winning army. And we never know exactly which one we’re routing for. We know which we SHOULD route for, but what if we really just don’t want to? Maybe we don’t even want to want to. I think that’s one of my problems: I wish I wanted to change. I do, in a sense, but I don’t act on it. I don’t want it enough for the want to affect me in any real way. And I don’t really know how to change this. Prayer and scripture reading is always an answer people give. But what if I’m so trapped in the devil’s scheme that it is these very things that I fail to do the most? I truly believe that God can save us from everything, including ourselves, but once again it’s so hard to see. I keep faith, but it doesn’t change me. I keep on staring at the blank page and hoping that words will magically appear.
“I didn’t want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore.” This is probably one of the truest statements I have ever read. Or at least it is true for me. I don’t want to get better on my own, not because I don’t want to get better, but because I don’t want to have to do anything for it, and even more than that because I want someone else to come in and save me. We all desperately long for a savior, and I think sometimes we forget that we already have one. We all yearn for adventure, and we forget that we’re on one. Because it sure doesn’t feel like an adventure from the story books, and we don’t physically see our savior come in and save the day each and every morning. I am the very first to stand up and defend the importance of fantasy and fiction to our lives – I love fairy tales and the great stories of old more than I can say. But I think I’ve been a bit too focused on them that I’ve missed all traces of them in my life. Stories are supposed to give us a reference point so that when we see traces of their themes in our life we will take notice of them. But I’ve been looking for the obvious marks – obvious like they are in stories. Real life is such a subtle fairy tale. I wish it was more blatant. I wish it really felt like an adventure. I wish it really was orcs we were battling, not laziness. I wish it was wizards who taught us, not experience. I wish it was Time Lords that went along with through life side-by-side: then perhaps we would see the novelty and never grow bored. That’s what we really need. We need the out-of-the-ordinary feel of ordinary life. Perhaps if we had that we would be more open to change. But we like the ordinary, no matter how much we rebel from it. Sometimes I think that if I ever had the chance to do something extraordinary I would never take it. I’d be too afraid and downright lazy to do so.
Hey look, the page is no longer blank. That's interesting, I wonder when that happened. Sometimes life is like this - it gets filled up and changed when we're not looking. But then we find out that we've been responsible all along. Or perhaps God has been doing some of the writing through us - we can always hope for that. Life doesn't have to be a blank page.
Kel
No comments:
Post a Comment