O, Messy Glory

by Alan T. Halbrooks

I just got through seeing Les Mis for the first time in London.  I was blown away by the mush of brokenness and hope, despair and wonder that all came together so seamlessly in the final scene.  But it wasn't just the final scene.  It was there all along - and it's so easy to miss if you're not looking.

Life is that way.  Every day of our existence is saturated with love and darkness, bitterness and peace - often at the same time.  It's what Deborah Wiles (a children's author) calls "messy glory" -  and I have never found a better phrase.  "Open your arms to life!" one of her characters exclaims, "Let it strut into your heart in all its messy glory!"  Life's ups and downs, broken dreams and unexpected wonders, all work together to make something truly extraordinary.  Perhaps we should break free of seeing the world as a bitter, heartless place.  Sometimes it is, and really, it's easy to look at life that way - especially when all seems lost.  The courage, the thrill, is in overcoming that - in admitting that the world we live in is broken and lost - that human love doesn't always last and people live for themselves - and rejoicing in the small (and large) beauties that surround us anyway.  

"I'm afraid," says Miriam in the classic Ben Hur film.  "No cause," Esther responds, "The world is more than we know."  So it is.  

I tried to write a story once about a bird.  It was a perfectly pitiful story, really, because nothing ever happened.  He just walked around aimlessly and sung ditties to himself (or something of the sort), and is still doing so to this day, as far as I can tell.  I had to give up on the poor bird.  A few months later, I realized why his story never did much for anyone - there was no conflict.  He never came across something that challenged him, he never lost anything that was special to him, he never wrestled with the real questions of life.  And so I got to thinking about my favorite stories.  You'll probably say I'm silly for taking so long to realize this, but I did eventually.  It occurred to me that every good story is riddled with conflict.  Things don't work out the way the characters want them to, and often things don't end the way they hoped.  But as readers, we see the design, the progress, the hope that lingers at the end of a good story, a story that touches us, a story that's real. 

And what about our own stories?  If we believe in a personal, loving deity that's behind our lives, why shouldn't we take heart in those times when everything seems lost?  After finishing the Lord of the Rings, we look back at all of Frodo's adventures and say, 'Wow, what a grand story.'  But Frodo was half-starved for half the time, was betrayed by a close friend, and lost his finger to the creature he poured his heart into saving.  He had plenty of reasons to think his story was an empty one.  But we all know it wasn't.  

That's fiction, though, you'll say.  But I say our lives are stories too, written by the author of Life itself.  With such an author, how can life be dull, even in the most mundane of moments?  I submit to you that it's not, and it never has been.  We just seem to lose sight of that when we stop trying.  It's the "messy glory" of Les Mis that makes it so tangible, so touching, so real.  No wonder it's the longest running musical of its day.  

No wonder life is still worth living even when it all falls apart.

Research First, Lads!

by Michael Taunton

I have discovered that it is sometimes (note: not always) helpful to state the obvious because very often you might find that what one person understands clearly, another person missed entirely.  With this in mind, I will run the risk of being given various sarcastic titles referring to my intelligence level and will do just that - state the obvious.

Recently, I was having the sort of discussion with a couple of acquaintances that I have always wanted to have; one of those legendary types of discussions that only appears in books like The Brothers Karamazov that centers around all of life’s great questions at once.  Is there such a thing as good and evil?  Does God exist?  Why do we have a conscience?  These sorts of questions – the “Great” questions.

As time wore on in our discussion though, I began to get the feeling that my two companions were interested in these philosophical questions for very different reasons.  The first was stuck in a serious quandary; he had so many questions that he felt he couldn’t possibly find answers to all of them.  He was simply trying to find the philosophy that had the most explanatory power.  What could explain what we observe?  The second, though, was looking for the philosophy that best justified the worldview that she had already chosen for herself.  No serious questions were being asked because the conclusion had already been drawn.

And these are the only two reasons for anyone to ever answer life’s so-called “Great Questions.”  On the one hand, some people are looking for the philosophy that best explains the world we observe around us.  We can see the world and we can understand some of how it works, but the question philosophy is seeking to answer is why things are this way.  This isn’t to say that a worldview that is able to explain everything is true by default.  Rather, it is simply providing one possible explanation of why things are the way they are.  This is what my first conversation partner was looking for: answers.

But now on the other hand, there are others who are less concerned with finding the true explanation of why things are as they are.  Instead, they hope to find philosophies consistent with what they have already decided they want to believe.  They are selective in their reading of evidence, often will not carry a line of reasoning all the way to its logical end, and generally are unshakeable in any type of discussion; indeed, they might even become quite flustered and hot-tempered if you try to disagree with them.  They know the answers before they have even asked the question.  The questions are simply a formality on the way to their ultimate (predetermined) destination.

I should hope that I do not need to explain the problem with this, but just in case, perhaps I can relate it to something close to every student’s heart – writing a paper.  Having written many papers, I can say that I have been made intimately familiar with what professors think is good scholarship and what they think is poor scholarship, and it always starts with the research.  If you let your conclusions dictate your evidence rather than your evidence dictate your conclusions, I can almost promise a poor grade on the paper.  And in this case, I think that I can accurately call our second person’s research methods – poor scholarship.

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