A column by Bishop Paul Marshall[Published in the Opinion section of Episcopal Life Online and in the July/August issue of Diocesan Life]
From the old joke department, I told a colleague that I had a new
heart medicine (I do), and that I was having some trouble following its
directions. The first was easy: Do not drink alcohol while taking this
medication. The second was harder: Keep away from children.
I was hoping for a quick chuckle, which I got. My colleague was more
playful -- and thoughtful -- than I. He added, "It's an odd sort of
medicine that thinks keeping away from children is good for your heart."
Touché.
Children bring us so many gifts. Everybody has their favorite. Mine
is that children bring out my imagination and sense of play. When I
visit with children during a Sunday service, it's the time in the week I
feel most free, most safe. It's good for my heart.
It was a great step in evolution when the Romantic movement
discovered childhood. I found myself wishing I had a platoon of children
to send in when the bloggers starting arguing after the final episode
of "Lost" aired on television.
The series was about plane crash survivors who work out their
personal issues and relationship problems on a Pacific island. The
jungle island has polar bears, lost colonies, archaeological remains,
and nuclear weapons. There are flash-forwards, backwards and sideways.
And there is time travel.
In other words, it is all dreamlike and slightly mind-bending fun.
Everything is imaginable, and in six seasons just about everything
happens. People are born and people die. They have issues with their
parents. They love and hate. They change.
The writers had a lark, but something else was happening in the
audience. Some viewers, known as "Losties," were attaching Deep Meaning
to the show just as Trekkies did to "Star Trek."
I think that is basically good news. Think about the themes of
"Lost." Characters work out their own issues at the same time that they
participate in a community not of their choosing. They can decide to
help save the world. Life defeats death. That an audience would be
committed to these themes is strong evidence that a yearning for meaning
and connectedness still thrives amidst the quirks in our culture.
The twist was obvious before the end of the first season: these
characters are dead and are being given a last chance to develop as
human beings. It's not a new plot, but here it is wonderfully done. Sort
of "groundhog day of the dead." That this twist was "revealed" in the
last episode can have shocked only literary innocents.
So whether you use the word "purgatory" or not, the idea played with
in "Lost" is the yearning each of us has to get it right. Through many a
struggle the characters basically do get it right, are reconciled, and
go on to a pleasant afterlife. The story is fuzzy and imprecise. It also
fits the "basic story" that C. S. Lewis says is at the bottom of most
the great stories worldwide. Life has a goal, and attaining it is
sometimes very hard work. Life defeats death.
On the child's make-believe level, where all equations do not need to
balance, "Lost" is a wonderful playground for the mind, and I am happy
to let it go at that. But what are we to make of the Lostie
"theologians" who need the series to have a consistent and finely
defined philosophy where everything makes precise sense? Some
indignantly hate the ending, others gleefully shout that they told us
so, others triumphantly see their own religion's catechism writ large in
the script. Some patently cannot handle the ambiguities presented. And
they argue. For them, the fun is gone amidst the arguing.
When we overinvest data in symbols or rituals, which do their work by
evocation and ambiguity, we kill them. All too often the human desire
for security and control takes over, and living symbols become inanimate
objects. Imagination dies. This is why most explanations of the alleged
meaning of church ritual and hardware are not only wrong but also
damaging.
On the other hand, for instance, the genius of having four gospels is
that we can never get the story down pat, so we have to hold their
different reports and points of view in a tension that makes our sense
of balance better. We understand them as we live them. There is a great
gift here. Arguing about the details destroys the sweep of the
narrative, and keeps people from entering into the drama personally. The
debate about "Lost" teaches us something about the temptations that
come to all religions: the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2
Cor 3:6).
Children are fascinated by stories and love to play them. They get
meanings they could never define with precision by doing them. They
would know to leave "Lost" alone and just enjoy it.