I'm alone in my room in my vacation home in North Carolina, and finally decided that if I were going to call something part one I should have the decency to make sure there is a part 2!
In my first post regarding the movie "The Island" I talked about the idea of cloning, harvesting, self awareness and thriving. My mind jumped back to my early days as a Christian, when I tried so hard to fit in that I basically cloned myself! I asked the question "does the church want clones?" not to put down my old church or any ones idea of right or wrong, but simply because in my life's experience being different than was equated with being sinful. To this day I regret sitting in judgment of people who had the courage to ask, seek, live differently and still consider themselves followers of Christ. Who am I to say they were wrong? In Natala's posts on Marie she shares a heartfelt prayer asking Him for mercy for the things she had said and done in His name. Oh how I need to echo the same prayer! What arrogance, what pride I demonstrated as a new believer. What should have humbled me caused a new found superiority. What should have caused me to forgive others as I was forgiven gave me license to hold grudges for those who I deemed unworthy of my forgiveness. After all, if they weren't repentant did they deserve my forgiveness? Obviously when my husband was murdered I stood in shocked disbelief that anything so tragic could happen to me. After all, hadn't I obeyed all the rules? Wasn't I tithing, doing Bible Study, praying for the "lost"? I went to the right Church, hung with the right people. C.S. Lewis talks about his faith as "a house of cards", which collapsed upon the death of his beloved wife Joy. I too felt my faith crumble.
OK, I digressed! There is a small part in the movie that to me spoke volumes. Explaining why the clones are allowed to reach a state of self-awareness when their owners are told they stay in a vegetative state the head dude says, and forgive my paraphrasing, "We tried many times to keep them in a vegetative state, but every time the organs failed to thrive, so we knew we needed to allow them to gain some sense of self-awareness in order to thrive". Badly paraphrased! But the idea that without awareness there can be no thriving, no growth, struck a cord with me. While doing all the "right" things, my spirit was atrophying. There was no thriving while I was content enough to follow suit. We are created to search, to grow, to learn about ourselves and then honor those selves as creations of the Creator. For so long I denied my true self, my true spirit, fearful that there was something terribly wrong with me. I despised what I should have celebrated. Told my whole life that I was wrong, a mistake, not worthy, I embraced a mind set and a way of practicing a religion that left no room for questioning, and thought if I just did it right I would find validation that would undo the truth of my unworthiness. I never realized that I was not a mistake until much later in my relationship with God. I apologized for my being with every breath I took. "I'm sorry for being in the way" I would say in a store aisle. "I'm sorry for going so slow" I would think while driving. "I'm sorry I can't help out more", I would say to the church, so convinced that I had to earn my right to just be. I couldn't even order dinner out because I had never taken the step of thinking about what I like. Until I granted myself permission to discover myself I didn't thrive either. Just like those in the movie, I lived in a vegetative state withering away.
My husband played a huge role in my healing of all these wounds. He'd get angry at me, the healthy kind of anger, when he'd see me treat myself poorly. He encouraged my self awareness. He'd ask me all the time about my likes, dislikes, wants, desires. He gave me permission to discover myself. After his death I made the promise to him, myself, my daughters to never again deny myself. I choose to thrive. The clones in the movie move from being aware of self to questioning, dis contentedness. It's at this point that the head dude decides the product is faulty. I question. I don't get many answers, but I no longer feel that asking means I'm less of a Christian. I am alone in my life a lot of times, but I no longer go with flow at the sacrifice of my true self.
Now, I don't know if any of this makes any sense. It's all over the place and touches on many different topics. But the movie must have had something to it to prompt such ramblings from me!
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