Body & soul

Have you ever wondered what your heart would be allowed to do, or able to do, if your body weren’t in the way? Seriously. Those moments when you feel that urge, that leading, that emotional leaning that you know means that there is something you are supposed to do. It’s one of those times when you are stalled in indecision, and you’re so stalled that you get caught up in the stall, in the indecision, and can’t focus on anything else. Of course, by the time you make a decision, and you do what you need to do, it’s too late. Maybe the course you chose is that which you were supposed to have chosen at the beginning, but you missed the moment and the moment is what made the decision powerful in the first place.

I just finished watching one of my all time favorite movies, L.A. Story with Steve Martin. If you’ve seen it, then your opinion is firmly set; either you loved it or you loathed it. Anne thinks it’s funny; I get tearful. Get over it; I’m a romantic, and have closet artistic tendencies. Anyway, I love this movie and I am not sure why. Yes, it’s silly, but it also has this sensational pull of hope. A hope that someone, something (in the movie, it’s an electronic freeway sign) will intervene in our lives and unshackle our hearts and allow us to do what we know we are supposed to do, but don’t do because we’re scared or bored, or feeling hopeless or just stuck in a place that has insulated us from our hearts and our humanity.

So, what would happen if we peeled away the flesh from ourselves, if we cried love and let slip the Godlier parts of our souls? The world would be different. Think about it; will elections change us? Can we trust our leaders to change us, or is it up to us to change ourselves? I say neither. All of these ideas are flawed, because they allow a decaying and systemic infection into our lives and that infection is our self. Not our selves, but our self. If we live for ourselves, we live a life of failure because we all need and want and dream to live about something bigger than ourselves, this is why we love to lose ourselves in movies, or music, or sports. Our own lives reek of our own selves and fill our noses with the stench of selfishness and self-abuse. We talk of Darfur, of AIDS in Africa, the violence in the Middle East, or the shortcomings of other countries’ human rights, and then we pray for change, fill our heads with hundreds of channels on TV and judge our neighbors ruthlessly and without mercy.

If we, as followers of Jesus, would fall on our faces and beg for God’s intervention in our lives, then we could indeed experience heart living. If we would move when God speaks and speak when God moves then we might, just might, allow our hearts to have a brief glimpse of the Son, and in that glimpse to warm to the idea that what we find in the movies, in the music, and in the sports is the idea that grace, that love, that heroic effort does exist, but not in the unreality of professional entertainers or athletes, but within the passion of one who loves God with all his heart, all his mind and all his soul. And then loves others as well.