Free Write on a Sunny Morning
June 29th – Third Place Books
There is a fountain here. On my way into the bookstore I instinctively reach for it, wet my hand, touch my forehead, breastbone, shoulders right and left.
When did I become this crazy person? Seeing holiness everywhere I go?
I told my crew the other day that I have become an addict. I am addicted to the kingdom—to seeing the God active spots in everyone’s living, to searching out the holiness in spaces (I love holy spaces!), to creating kingdom where little of it dwells, to celebrating kingdom where it lives large and colorful.
This is the air I breathe. I could no sooner walk back into the space between the four walls of a cloistered church than I could breathe underwater.
Does that sound prideful? I don’t mean it to sound prideful because really addictions have very little to do with discipline, or achievement, or some finely honed skill. Really they are just some obsession which captures you. Some monster which consumes you….only mine is a benevolent monster.
At any rate, I suspect that there is no turning back. I keep moving through the labyrinth, to the center, to God, back out with him hand in hand — me and my benevolent monster on a journey to Oz.
my favorite part of labyrinth : when she says, “you have no power over me”.
I don’t know the film pictured, but about your “addiction”, I wonder if what you see as an addiction is simply residency in the Presence…?
Peter and Pals,
I do think it has something to do with “residency in the Presence.” (Nice turn of phrase, BTW.) But it’s not as cut and dry as “I wasn’t in the Presence of God” and “now I am.” I don’t think Christian life goes like that really. I think the aspects of God that you see at any given point are different — not necessarily better, or more achieved, or more mature. Just different.
When the phrase ‘benevolent monster’ popped into my head I was instantly reminded of the movie Labyrinth in which the main character, Sarah, ends up teaming up with the benevolent monster in this picture. When Sarah found the monster, he was tied up and hanging upside down. The bad guys had these long sticks with tiny creatures on the end. The creatures had huge biting mouths and were slowly eating the monster to death. Sarah sets the monster free. (The monster helps by using telekensis to roll stones to Sarah which she then throws at the bad guys.) The monster then becomes Sarah’s withmate and guide on a perilous journey. At one point he helps her walk across water…
What is the symbolism in this image? Why did it come to me?
I think it has something to do with some good thing being held hostage. When you release that thing, it then becomes your traveling partner. The good thing helps you release it, and then helps you journey towards your end, your Oz. Which is also it’s end, it’s Oz, because all goodness flows the same direction.
What do you think is my benevolent monster?
:-)
Rachelle
>What do you think is my benevolent monster?
I am reading Chaim Potok’s The Gift of Asher Lev right now, and like his first Lev book, I am Asher Lev, it is a Chasidic take on God, life, art, relationship. In this book, the characters grapple with the presence of the Other Side and the work that god, the Master of the Universe, has assigned them in their lives.
To the Chasidim in this book, God created everything, the Other Side or the demonic as well, for whatever reason. So God is both benevolent and malevolent in a sense.
This is a long way of wondering if your benevolent monster is God, both benevolent, and a monster.
Ooops, that first book title should read: My Name is Asher Lev, and the sect is spelled Chassidic. Never rush, he said hurriedly…