"Something there is that doesn't love a wall. Yes, Robert Frost knew where it was at. |
For
Easter, we got Child #2 the movie Saving Mr. Banks. She is a
big Disney fan. This is the child who would wear a ball gown
gardening if she could find a fairy godmother to launder it later. (Note: I am not a fairy godmother.) So, this movie + her = yes.
We
watched it this week for the first time. If you haven't seen it, I
have two things to say to you. 1—Why the heck not? What is wrong
with you? And 2—Go. Get your Amazon or Netflix account signed in
and watch it. Now.
Story
synopsis: P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins, refuses to
sell movie rights to Walt Disney on account of his tendency to turn
stories into overly optimistic, animated saccharine. That's her
stated reasoning, at least. Really, however, her refusal stems from
the childhood trauma of losing an affectionate father to alcoholism
and tuberculosis. It colors how she views everything,
even—especially—optimism and imagination. Learning to free her
father allows her, in the end, to free her story as well. Roll
credits.
Young
P.L. Travers could not control her father's actions. No matter how
hard she tried to be good enough, he made his own drastically bad
choices whose consequences reverberated for decades. In reply, she
carefully controlled all aspects of her life from then on. Nothing
would get in. No one would alter her equilibrium. She would
always be practically perfect in every way, but nothing else ever
quite was.
She
maintained control of Mary Poppins not because she didn't want
it to become a Disney movie but because she didn't know how to let
go. Of anything.
I've
done that. A result of my possibly-stubborn-perfectionist personality
but also my background, I suppose. There are a lot of control issues
attendant on a kid who lost both parents at 17—one to death and one
to alcohol. You kind of start to draw the walls close. You want to
know, with certainty, what is and is not going to remain inside your
suffocating safe world.
I'm
going to take a wild guess and suppose there are more than two of us
who have ever done this sort of thing.
It's
also what I'm increasingly realizing we do in our evangelical world.
We
evangelicals are the kid who's seen too much too soon of what the
world can do, and we have the control issues to prove it. We're a
whole subculture of P.L. Traverses running around, and should I
remind you of something? No one likes her much in the beginning.
We
draw the walls close. We decide who's in our world and who's out. And
sometimes, we have solid biblical reasoning behind some of those
lines. But way too often? The lines are drawn by fear, not faith.
We
spend way too much time deciding who's up to our practically perfect
standards and far too little time freeing Mr. Banks. And ourselves.
Guilty
as charged.
We're
afraid. So darn afraid. So stupidly, erroneously, un-Godlike, afraid.
Something might get in to make us uncomfortable and uncertain. Like
P.L. Travers, we've seen the dangerous results of free will, and
control suits us better. It's safer. It's sunnier. It's . . .
unbiblical. Oops.
Hey,
anyone remember where that free will thing we're trying to improve
upon came from?
God
turned his people free to learn, in their faltering, mistake-ridden,
yes, sin-infested way how to love Him well. He offered to do whatever
was necessary to help them love Him well. Then He did it. And it was
the sacrifice, not the safety, that finally drew our hearts to His.
I
told our lead pastor yesterday I was having a crisis of
evangelicalism. It's not a crisis of faith, but maybe a crisis of the faithful? One thing I learned at the writing conference I
attended recently was that I am called to remain where I am—firmly
in the evangelical world. But no longer as an order-obeying enlistee.
As a revolutionary. Funny, that's what the “What type of person are
you” quiz I took the other day said I was anyway. (Although that
might just be because I said I'd like to vacation in Paris.) Might as
well embrace it.
And what say we juts stop using these things? |
My risk, in line with being part of that fantastic group RiskRejection (do go read their inspiring posts! After you finish mine), is to willingly live with uncertainty. To embrace the not knowing. To peek through some of those walls and love, really love, people outside them--not to bring them inside my walls but to expand my small world. And to accept that the world I belong to might not like that.
I
heard someone the other day say that, “As long as another person is
in agreement with me on the non-negotiables, we can be in Christian
fellowship.” OK, I can understand that. It's just that I suspect my
list of non-negotiables is much shorter than yours. And I'm not as
sure as you are that your rules are drawn from Scripture as they are
from a fear that once you open those floodgates, there's no way to
control what may come through.
That
is so gloriously true. There isn't. Amen. There isn't.
5 comments:
I'm not going to lie. When I saw the preview, I thought, "Really? An entire movie?" BUT you have certainly got me all jazzed up.
ps You can write. As in I really enjoy reading your words, Jill. Always insightful.
I admit there are times I skim over posts -- one of my terrible habits. But, like Amy said. I love your words and they draw me in. No skimming.
I think I would like having coffee with you....:) I like what you said about the Christian life here...
I think I would like to have coffee (OK, tea for me) with you both, and I may just have to make a road trip one day. Thank you--hearing this means more to me than you know. I don't think there's an apology for skimming--a writer has to earn the right to be read. It honors and humbles me that two such as you ladies think I've earned that. I don't take it lightly.
Jill - "A crisis of the faithful"...Oh, how I have been there! Great flow to your writing and like Amy said, so insightful! Thanks for sharing your journey with us!
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