The End In Mind

Leave a Comment / By /

Sometimes we imagine ourselves the star of our own personal blockbuster biopic, currently in production (it’s sometimes in development hell, but generally moving forward) and it’s all vital and crucial, Academy Award-material, two thumbs way up.

God is teaching us all this stuff, we think, even if don’t presently know what it is. And if we can figure it out, then it will all not only make sense, but also be worth it.

We want it to “mean” something, and then all of it will be alright, all the dangers and challenges and sadness, and we’ll be “OK with it.”

Not only that, but maybe … we’re not sure, because we don’t presently know what it is … maybe it’s gonna be big! And we mean BIG.

Then it will mean something.

And maybe we’ll get famous.

As if it isn’t meaningful enough for God to just want to be with us, and want us to be with Him, and want us to want what He wants. Imagine! God wants to hang with … us. He wants you. He wants me.

But do we still get to be the star in that movie deal you mentioned?

We want to know, because then, you know, it’ll be … even better!!

And I’m the star so I get to direct, because who else could, knows as much about us as we do?

At least I can be petulant in my trailer if the Writer / Director won’t pay attention to us, right?

Which is a lot weird, because the thing we just turned down was Him paying attention to us.

*

So I realize there’s no film.

So I say, “Then there is no purpose?”

If there’s no big production, what’s the point?

*

And that’s when I realize there’s also no defined end to the drama undeniably being played out in my life. It’s not a blockbuster biopic starring me, but something is going on. And here we mean when it’s not fun, because we were just looking for the meaning. And part of how there would be meaning is if I’m in charge, but if not I still want to know there’s an end, and I get the girl, find the money, and save my friends, family, town, world.

*

So bottom line, here’s my fear:

There’s apparently nothing that explains and justifies the pain,

and

There’s no foreseeable end to that pain, my fame waiting or not.

But if the first part is about being with God, why do I care when it ends?

 

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Un Success Full

Thomas Merton was asked once to contribute to a book on success — specifically a statement of how he’d achieved it in his own life. I replied indignantly that I was not able to consider myself a success in any terms that had meaning to me. If it happened that I had once written a

Read More »

Didn’t Graduate

Hadda a girl once, this was during college. Darkest, longest hair, biggest brownest eyes … Not that kind of story, whatever kind you thought. Being stupid (I said this was during college, yes?) I’d no idea … none. Not what it was nor what it cd be and thus not that one though it set

Read More »

On the Rock

I often vow not to hope, and always break that vow. And the next thing I’m supposed to say is that finally my hopes are realized, my desires achieved and all my wildest dreams come true. But this is not what’s happening just now. Just now I break that vow and I don’t get what

Read More »

Talks With A Duck

Obscured in the kerfuffle over Mr. Robertson’s coarser comments on the Fairer Sex is a simple fact that any five-year-old can tell us: Adults say the darnedest things. This has since been confirmed by the comments of many other adults, critiquing the original notes on the female form offered by the “Duck Dynasty” patriarch — responses

Read More »

Related

Kingdom In

When we hear of our twinclinations — the two tendencies within us all, one toward good and one toward ill — most time is spent on the first. Anyway I’ve spent most of my time on that — on being most concerned over time with what’s good and am I being that, and often justifying what doesn’t

Read More »

Closer

Norm’s is the kind of restaurant where across the street there is a long car wash, a 12-unit apartment building, a donut shop open most of the hours Norm’s is open, a strip mall with a “Luxury Day Spa” between the cigarette store and the cut-rate auto insurance broker: “Free SR-22 Filings!” the sign says. It’s

Read More »

Drinking the Seth Godin … Milk

Motivator Manipulator Maven Which is he? I’m going with maven. Maven may be one of those words we’ve lost sight of, like integrity. Integrity means “wholeness” but we’ve reduced it to “honesty.” So too maven — which means “connoisseur” — has been ironicized, demeaned really, into something like “one who condescends” referring to someone looking

Read More »

16 Precepts

You have asked me how to pursue learning. I pass this along in response — Move from the easier to the difficult Be cautious of speech Be slower still in frequenting places of talk Embrace purity of conscience Pray without ceasing Love your home and to be there often Show geniality to all  Pay no heed to others’

Read More »