Child #3 was
having a hard time helping me paint sets. It may have been her 103
degree fever, or the 95 degree July day. The champion ribbon at the
County Fair was on the line. No true champion lets a little thing
like feverish delirium keep her from her task. But I think it was
more than that.
I set said
child to an easy task—paint Bilbo Baggins' mailbox. And by mailbox,
I meant plastic orange expandable file folder I thought would do in a
pinch. “Bilbo Baggins. Bag End, Bagshot Row, Hobbiton, The Shire.”
It seemed simple.
“No one has
an address like that. He would never really get mail.”
“Well, he
does. Just grab a Sharpie and get it done.”
“Why is the
door round? No one can actually open a round door. It couldn't even
have hinges.”
“It's round
because the book says it's round. And green. Grab a paintbrush and
get it done.”
I didn't
mention that she had a valid point there. How on earth were we going
to hinge a round door? Thirteen dwarves and a wizard had to stumble
through that thing without breaking its tenuous low-budget styrofoam.
Drat Tolkien—a rectangle would definitely have presented fewer
problems for community theater.
By the time we
finished constructing Bag End, child #3 had questioned most
fantastical aspects of Middle-earth with her practical,
how-will-this-ever-work sensibility. I shudder to imagine how her
Middle-earth would have gone down had she written the tale. “The
Hobbit: Not Even Going There So I Don't Have to Come Back Again.”
Child #3
prefers realistic fiction and realistic life, and there is nothing
wrong in that. But sometimes, one has to stretch one's mind far
enough to encompass an orange mailbox and a green, round door.
Sometimes, unless we're willing to recognize other worlds, we don't
really grasp living in our own.
If you haven't guessed, we were
painting sets for The Hobbit, a story in which someone leaves his
comfortable world and becomes an unlikely hero in someone else's. And
child #3 couldn't enter the story because she couldn't get past the
aspects of it that didn't fit her standard world. But not being able
to enter another's world makes heroic deeds impossible. Heroes are
not made in the Shire. It's a place created for comfort and sameness.
It never comprehends the outside world. So no one who hasn't left
ever becomes a hero.
There are a lot
of places we'd rather not go there or back again. We'd rather not
know there are places where pre-teen girls are sold in back rooms.
We'd prefer not to recognize there are entire nations where young
women are executed for wanting an education, showing an ankle, or
becoming a Christian. We wish to pretend the heroin addict we just
passed does not have a mother terrified every time the phone rings or
a sister who looks remarkably “normal” like us. These are other
worlds. We'd much rather live in our own and believe orange mailboxes
don't happen, doors are never round, and dragons aren't real.
But they are.
The Shire is
wonderful, but nothing worthy of a great story ever happens there.
Your comfortable surroundings are beautiful, but nothing of worth
will happen there. That requires grasping a story that is far bigger
and grander and unbelievable than the one you inhabit. It involves
stretching yourself to see another person's world and not just see it
but understand it.
I didn't start
this out to be a Christmas post. But it really is, I guess. Because
that is exactly what Jesus did when he came to this outlandish,
unbelievable place to become one of us. He could have stayed
comfortable. But the epic story of the redemption and rebirth of you,
me, and all creation did not happen in comfort. It happened in a
grimy, smelly stable with grimy, smelling, sinful people he had to
reach way farther to comprehend than we will ever have to reach for
anything.
Nothing worthy
of a great story ever happens in your own little world.
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| Hobbits, You, and the Spiritual World of Middle-earth--http://amzn.to/16y2p6b |
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