I only saw Forrest Gump once. I liked it well enough but wouldn't call it especially formative, save for Jenny's prayer which lodged itself in my memory with her winsome Southern innocence:
"Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly far. Far far away from here."
When I am weary and desperate, sometimes Jenny's prayer reflexively becomes my own, and I feel ashamed. At first I thought it was just because using a movie quote as a prayer seemed lame. But it turns out to be much bigger than that; it is actually the antithesis to the prayer that my more Reformed theology asks that I pray. Before I tell you what that is though, I want to show you a little bit of scripture and what I recently learned about it.
It's at the end of Luke 14, and Jesus lays down quite the non sequitur: "Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out."
Questions swim in my head after reading this. Can salt really lose its saltiness? Doesn't salt kill grass? Why would you ever put it in soil? And manure? Huh?
A few weeks ago, I heard a theologian named Anthony Bradley speak on this passage, and it was really helpful. He asked if we had previously heard that being the salt of the earth meant we were to act as a preservative in the world. Nods all around, and the absurdity of that finally hit me. Preserving the world when we are called to participate in the redemption of it? Really?
Bradley went on to explain that this salt probably wasn't sodium chloride--regular table salt. It was one of many other salts--magnesium fluoride, for example--and it didn't kill grass. In fact, it was used as a fertilizer. As for manure, the salt was thrown on it in order to break it down quicker, so that it could be used to--again--fertilize.
"You are the salt of the earth."
You are to bring life to barren places.
Even when it gets really, really messy.
So my new prayer in response:
May my eyes be opened to see barren soil and piles of shit, and may I be willing to dive straight into those piles and with God's help, make growth possible. And so that I do not fly away (because I will surely want to), may my wings be clipped.
-- Margaret
We are...
- The Community:
- Noah Eames: A London-based student of life, coffee, art, and theology. Noah is talented in many areas including procrastination, hypocrisy, indecision, and song writing. Margaret Krumm: A Pittsburgh-based health researcher who recycles obsessively. Chris Pipkin: A former Prague-based EFL teacher, Chris is now an English Literature grad student in Pittsburgh. He is fascinated by Eastern Europe and legends about giant birds, of which he is simultaneously terrified. He intends to learn to write well, teach well, relate well, and have enough money to live. Mark Kazmier: A voice of one crying in the wilderness, currently, in America Amy Mann: current teacher in prague, soon to be library science grad student in austin, full time lover of things made of cheese
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1 comment:
Chris wrote:
Right on. It's interesting that the Psalmist basically prays Jenny's prayer when he says, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove, I would fly away and find rest." But theologically, what you're saying is a lot closer to what we ought to do, even if we can identify with the Psalmist's feelings very well at times. He doesn't have wings like a dove, and therefore, he can't fly away. And it's a good thing, because rest is found in God alone, and God is there, in the problem, in the still-imperfect world, suffering, silent, triumphant.
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