I saw a photo on a friends blog yesterday. It was on his interesting (recommended) blog. Jest a cell-phone snapshot. Folks walking at night in the bright-lights of NYC. The photo was entitled 'CHAOS'. This inspired thinking on this concept...chaos.
Its a good name - context is everything for sure. As an aside, in terms of inspiration, it make me think. Actual chaos is hard to represent - it seems to only reside in the abstract condition of the human heart. Everything else has an order because everything is created or made - even the intention to create is order - intention presupposes order. But these people in the photo create a tention against order...In their hearts..."maybe I can suddenly walk in the street instead"..."or put out one of those lights with a rock"..."what if she was my girlfriend instead?"...."I could use a beer"..ok, that thought was mine ;-)
Once, some time back, I remember sitting on a pier and studying Luke. Luke was a black lab and our station mascott. He was gifted at swimming and catching tennis balls in his mouth as fast as you could throw them. He was also adept at sleeping and eating. That was Luke.
Our unit was semi-famous for collecting, when we could, jumpers off the Golden Gate bridge - one a week average. Some experts came down once to visit us with their own statistics. The Suicide Prevention agency for the city. They said that interviews with all (all) failed suicide victims report that in that last split-second...a reason to live suddenly came to them. Most were relieved that it had. Their problem? They required a reason to live.
What would Luke say if he knew that? How perplexed he would be. He might look around to try and help these creatures who were so out of order. He would see some with desparate looks on their face....climbing a corporate ladder....home-schooling their kids 10 hours a day....drinking too much....adopting 15 handicapped children....organizing a PETA rally....blogging their brains out....some busy....some catatonic. Luke was a bright old lab. I bet he would eventually understand. He would look up to the top of that bridge and see an honest but tired person standing there groping for a reason not to jump. Then look under the bridge and see another honest person asleep there...clutching his empty bottle.
2 comments:
I wonder if it's not that we require a reason to live, but that we all inately know that we have a BIG PURPOSE, but we have to find it. I think most of us are hanging onto a bunch of purposes from which we get some level of fulfillment. Suppose that someone with only a small number of purposes finds that they are all dead ends, they've missed the BIG PURPOSE, and it's too late (he thinks) to start over.
I think from the moment we are conscious, we are hit with horror and alienation. We feel scared to death and totally alone. We spend the rest of our lives trying to cope with it...hide it...use it to try to survive and it comes out in our personalities, friendships, profession (even and especially religious professions), marriages, etc.
Maybe the people who jump off the bridge are tired of hiding it...can't do it anymore, and think death is the only thing that will end the tension? Maybe those who stop short, at the last minute, are given some sort of inspiration that seems to come from nowhere? Not sure.
After Jesus introduced Himself to me, those feelings of terror and alienation didn't magically disappear. In fact, after 12 years walking with Him, they are diminished, but like demons, still threaten. Learning to trust is a lifelong lesson for me and trusting is an excersize with failures and successes, rather than victory. The only victory I can claim since 1996 is that He's is there and isn't going anywhere. That's enough to take my mind off of myself for a while.
Chaos is percieved and sometimes desired, but never reality, IMO. And the biggest chaos isn't at the subatomic level or in Goedal's equations, but in the heart. I am waiting for a preacher to repent of this and start a new revival :-)
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