The Immortal

My lovely roomate and I went to see The Lion King at the BTI Center last night (it used to be called Memorial Auditorium, but apparently BTI has given them more money). Needless to say it was wonderful... the costumes in particular were amazing. I'm a little kid when it comes to bright colors, I still stare with my mouth gaping. At any rate... I havent seen the lion king in quite some time, so i had forgotton, or perhaps it's not the same in the movie... but in the play there is a really beautiful scene reprised through out that emphasizes that those who have passed on do not truly leave us. Instead, they in us. The past comes 'along the side of us' as the movie Everything is Illuminated so rightly points out.
I simply find it intreguing that most of the dramatic performances I have seen... the ones attempting to address 'big questions' anyway deal in the immortal. And people eat it up. Everything from the great works of Homer- the Illiad/Odyssey to Hugo's Les Miserables-- even to Harry Potter (though the self righteous are sometimes loathe to admit it)... deal with this overarching narrative that death itself leads to life. The Ellysian (sp!) fields for the ancients... Val Hallah (also sp, and not blissful in my book) for the Norse... the list goes on and on. And for millenia people have eaten it up. There wasn't a dry eye in the house last night when the reprisal of that (cast of thousands!) was sung upon Simba's return to Pride Rock. (Yes, perhaps cheesy, but it really was nicely done).
The strange thing is to me, that when people are truly confronted with the immortal, the eternal, the reality of this dream humanity seems to share that there is more-- many turn around and refuse. OH religion is stuffy old stuff they say. The church is full of sinners (um, duh.) they claim, I dont want any part of that. "It's a nice symbol but..." I am a bit like Lewis here, with a little Flannery O'Connor on the side. It cannot be an accident that for the whole of human history we have pursued, imagined, and dreamed of immortality. If it were the case that Christ is simply a myth- only a nice symbol- I agree with Miss O'Connor, "I dont want a dammned thing to do with it." But the crux (no pun intended) of the matter is, that when faced with the reality of the cross, we begin to understand that while immortality is already ours for the taking, we cannot pass into it in this moment. Nor can we pass into it as our present selves. No, in fact, things get squirmy when we consider living upon a cross. It is relegated to a symbol and left meaningless.
Perhaps it is long since time that we, you and I brothers and sisters, began living on the cross. It is a powerful story, but I do believe that were one to realize it as a life, the life- we would then be getting somewhere. If there is power simply in the 'nice symbol' imagine what power the reality would invoke in us.

just the musings of a guilty bystander.
love, anna