What follows is a blog post I wrote on the plane on the way home from Disney two weeks ago. I kept putting off posting it because I wasn't sure how to end it. I'm still not sure how to end it. But I wanted to get it out there...
###
During exam week, I had a great conversation with my friends Mary and Meg McVey. The topic was from their daughter's experience at Chewonki Semester School - the idea of what is natural, and what is not.
For any of us who enjoyed a geography class or two in college, the topic isn't that foreign; "natural" refers to only things that have been unadulterated by man - so a Christmas tree farm is really in now way natural, though it consists of what would obviously be recognized as "nature."
The greater idea behind making such distinctions is that the natural is what is real, and that which is sculpted by man is something less than that. On so many levels, my soul agrees with this. We are so removed in today's society from the natural that we have a hard time figuring out what is real and what is not, even in our own heads and hearts.
The past week, we've been at the Disney resorts and parks. It's hard to imagine a less natural place on earth! Every rock was put in place for a reason, and probably conceals some piece of infrastructure! One of the weirdest things to me is that our cabin was located in a swamp- literally, surrounded on three sides by water that rose with the rain, and drained throw the day. We never saw a snake. Not one. I don't know how Disney makes that happen, but it's completely unnatural (and believe me, I am NOT complaining about that one!).
At the Magic Kingdom, the artifice is the idealized Main Street that never was; the optical illusion that makes Cinderella's castle appear at least twice as tall as its 180 feet; the Frontierland of 1950s dreaming. At Epcot, the gleam and chrome and sleek lines of the future plazas; and the international showcase that highlights only the beautiful parts of beautiful nations. At Hollywood Studios, the entire park is organized around the idea of showing you just how the veneer is accomplished!
All of this should conspire to make it a fake experience. It seems like it should feel bad, the way you feel bad after eating McDonald's.
Instead, I've never felt so good.
The past two years gave our family more reality and more natural occurrences than anyone would care to experience. What could possibly be more natural than a cancer without a cure? Something that all of the technology and feats of medicine that man's mind can muster, but not master? It's the very definition of "natural." Facing mortality - it is the single most natural experience all of us will have as a shared experience!
Sometimes you can deal with it well; and it's not you dealing with alone, but in the love shared with others that some of us choose to call an experience of God. Other times you don't deal with it as well as you'd like. While there are moments of it that are funNY sometimes, I don't know that you'd call any of it "fun."
A few years ago, I don't think I would have appreciated the Disney experience nearly as much as I did now. Too fake! Not real enough! But what Disney provides, I have finally come to realize, is in no way intended to be real. It's the MAGIC kingdom for a reason! The laws of nature aren't supposed to apply at Disney. Natural isn't supposed to be part of the program. I saw a lot of people in a hell of a lot worse shape than me during our trip, and all of them had ear to ear smiles. Tell me that isn't real. Tell me that isn't natural.
It's important that we are connected to the real and the natural. Perhaps few things are more important. What I have come to realize is that the 'real' in this trip comes back to the most real thing there is: Love. This trip was made possible by love - those of you who organized this thing, those of you who contributed to it, I just don't even have the words to tell you what's in my heart tonight as I look at these three zombie kids on this airplane. Throughout this trip, we found love; in Mark hugging Minnie Mouse as hard as he could. In the tears we all shed this morning as we left our cabin, a place we came to love because we knew just how special this time was. In the love Katie and I would catch in a shared glance as something special happened for the kids. What could possibly be more real, more natural than that?
For any of us who enjoyed a geography class or two in college, the topic isn't that foreign; "natural" refers to only things that have been unadulterated by man - so a Christmas tree farm is really in now way natural, though it consists of what would obviously be recognized as "nature."
The greater idea behind making such distinctions is that the natural is what is real, and that which is sculpted by man is something less than that. On so many levels, my soul agrees with this. We are so removed in today's society from the natural that we have a hard time figuring out what is real and what is not, even in our own heads and hearts.
The past week, we've been at the Disney resorts and parks. It's hard to imagine a less natural place on earth! Every rock was put in place for a reason, and probably conceals some piece of infrastructure! One of the weirdest things to me is that our cabin was located in a swamp- literally, surrounded on three sides by water that rose with the rain, and drained throw the day. We never saw a snake. Not one. I don't know how Disney makes that happen, but it's completely unnatural (and believe me, I am NOT complaining about that one!).
At the Magic Kingdom, the artifice is the idealized Main Street that never was; the optical illusion that makes Cinderella's castle appear at least twice as tall as its 180 feet; the Frontierland of 1950s dreaming. At Epcot, the gleam and chrome and sleek lines of the future plazas; and the international showcase that highlights only the beautiful parts of beautiful nations. At Hollywood Studios, the entire park is organized around the idea of showing you just how the veneer is accomplished!
All of this should conspire to make it a fake experience. It seems like it should feel bad, the way you feel bad after eating McDonald's.
Instead, I've never felt so good.
The past two years gave our family more reality and more natural occurrences than anyone would care to experience. What could possibly be more natural than a cancer without a cure? Something that all of the technology and feats of medicine that man's mind can muster, but not master? It's the very definition of "natural." Facing mortality - it is the single most natural experience all of us will have as a shared experience!
Sometimes you can deal with it well; and it's not you dealing with alone, but in the love shared with others that some of us choose to call an experience of God. Other times you don't deal with it as well as you'd like. While there are moments of it that are funNY sometimes, I don't know that you'd call any of it "fun."
A few years ago, I don't think I would have appreciated the Disney experience nearly as much as I did now. Too fake! Not real enough! But what Disney provides, I have finally come to realize, is in no way intended to be real. It's the MAGIC kingdom for a reason! The laws of nature aren't supposed to apply at Disney. Natural isn't supposed to be part of the program. I saw a lot of people in a hell of a lot worse shape than me during our trip, and all of them had ear to ear smiles. Tell me that isn't real. Tell me that isn't natural.
It's important that we are connected to the real and the natural. Perhaps few things are more important. What I have come to realize is that the 'real' in this trip comes back to the most real thing there is: Love. This trip was made possible by love - those of you who organized this thing, those of you who contributed to it, I just don't even have the words to tell you what's in my heart tonight as I look at these three zombie kids on this airplane. Throughout this trip, we found love; in Mark hugging Minnie Mouse as hard as he could. In the tears we all shed this morning as we left our cabin, a place we came to love because we knew just how special this time was. In the love Katie and I would catch in a shared glance as something special happened for the kids. What could possibly be more real, more natural than that?
###
And I guess that's what I have for an ending. I wish I could tie it up a little neater, but I can't, and my writer's block on this is pretty much a Great Wall of China. So I'm just going to say thank you again to everyone who was part of this. Re-reading it again tonight made all of that emotion real again. Thank you a thousand times over!
No comments:
Post a Comment