Stop the Madness

Over the course of the last week or so I’ve been composing the Mother of All Blogs. See, I recently received this email about a certain movie which was about to be released which supposedly threatened all that we (whomever that refers to) hold dear as Americans or Christians (the people who compose and circulate these things seem unable to differentiate). It’s my duty, this guy says (it just has to be a guy,) to boycott whichever pieces of art (or stamp or whatever) he, in his indescribable wisdom, decides are deleterious to me, this country, the people I love, my dog and Kitty-Kitty. Thing is, I don’t even know this guy. He certainly doesn’t know me. So how in the world can he expect me to surrender my capacity for thought and intelligent decision-making? How is it that he qualifies as the One who can decide these things while all the rest of us are left to follow along like lemmings obligated to get all pissed off and mean about something about which we know only what he’s deigned to tell us. “Really?” I ask. “This thing is a ‘movie against our Christian nation?’” Where do I even begin to address what’s wrong with that statement? With that kind of thinking? The tone of these things is bothersome to me too. Are things like, “a washed-up actor who watches his mouth these days” helpful? (I won't mention the title of the film here, but call me--maybe we could catch a matinee.)

Anyway, I wrote this whole big long diatribe about how tired I am of this stuff and how these people are part of the problem. It was a lot like the paragraph above, but longer and angrier and more sarcastic and a bit more satisfying, but then it occurred to me that raging against these monsters isn‘t my job. Maybe someday someone will tell these people that they’re part of the problem. I doubt it. They wouldn’t listen anyway. Plus if I let this guy have that much of my energy--of my life--he's won more than he deserves. (I also caught myself telling a friend just the other day, "Don't forget that the 'I'm right/you're wrong' thing is a bigger problem than who's actually right or wrong.")

I can’t imagine the beauty and truth that I’d have missed in my life if I’d let my artistic intake been policed by The Machine. I’d be living in a world without The Shawshank Redemption. And Indigo Girls. And American Beauty and The Fisher King and Moulin Rouge and Glory and A Prayer for Owen Meany and Rombauer’s El Dorado Zinfandel and God knows what else. But I don’t live in that world. I live an aware life in a world filled with beauty worth being aware of. Gratitude seems a better response.

“You came without an axe to grind, did not toe the party line. No wonder sight came to the blind--you had no stones to throw.” Rich Mullins