Some day they'll open up your world
Shake it down on a drawing board
Do their best to change you
They still can't erase you... "Hand Me Down" Matchbox 20
God must have incredible eyes. To be able to see past all the numbers and probabilities like that. To be able to see how we will fall so far and so hard, and yet still have the nearly insane capacity to get up again and again.
I saw "Billy Jack" when I was about ten years old. I saw "The Hiding Place" before that. I think my mom took me to it when I was five or maybe seven. Today, something like that might be considered abuse. Truth telling feels like that sometimes. I am not sure which came first--the impression those two stories had on my identity or the identity that greeted them when they arrived.
The picture above has been on this site for a long time. On the one hand, I feel a little bad about this because I used to work hard to match the picture with the blog entry. But today it feels kind of right. That strange looking bucket of bolts is the "Serenity." It is the ship from the film of the same name, inspired by the brief TV series, "Firefly." The ship carries a modest crew. Seven (or eight if you count Inara) live on board the Serenity. They live in-between. They neither serve the empire nor are they overtly raging against it. Being an outlier is not easy but it does have it's benefits. Hence the name of the ship.
The ships captain is Mal Reynolds, a very human ex-soldier who has seen and suffered enough of the trappings of waging someone else's war. He does his best to keep his ship and friends clear of the prying eyes of the empire and the trouble of such entanglements.
Romans 13 (by no means my favorite chapter of the Bible) states, "owe nothing to anyone except to love one another. for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law." Wisdom, indeed, in a world where debt binds tightly, and so undermines serenity.
In the film, there comes a time when Mal has to make a hard decision. It is Hollywood in that regard. But the story doesn't end with the battle, but with its conclusion when Serenity takes to flight again. And the handful of in-betweeners are allowed to be, and to go their way into the multiverses without the chains and prying eyes of someone else's defining.
Here's a blessing: A live version of "Hand Me Down."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HZ3dS-GnuA
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.........Conversing with the Church and the world about the good creation that we share and God's capacity to keep it that way...
Why The Portico
We have a stained glass window at the church. It is a picture of St. Francis. He is dressed in monastic attire but there are few other signs of his role as a representative of the Church--no ornate architecture, no screaming symbolism, not even words. I like the metaphor and I am drawn to the peaceful but authentic presence that Francis might have been. So in that tradition, I imagine a patio or a portico extending out from our community into the larger world. I imagine myself sitting there and having a conversation with whoever or whatever might happen by.
About Me
- Mark Evans
- The material here is offered to the larger world around us. It includes commentary about theology, society, culture, politics and the arts. Though I do not claim to be an expert in any of these areas, I do feel welcome and compelled to participate in the conversations that they inspire.
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