"The picture that I had inside me was more real than anything outside, and yet it was getting ever smaller and farther away and harder to call back. That, I guess is why I got so sad. I was living, but I was not living my life. So far as I could see, I was going nowhere. And now, more and more, I seemed also to have come from nowhere. Without a loved life to live, I was becoming more and more a theoretical person, as if I might have been a figment of institutional self-justification: a theoretical ignorant person from the sticks, who one day would go to a theoretical somewhere and make a theoretical something of himself - the implication being that until he became that something he would be nothing."
(words of Jayber Crow in Wendell Berry's novel, Jayber Crow)
Personal sadness is an elusive thing in the sense that we often don't know where it comes from and we're not sure we know where it will take us. Since it doesnt seem to take us anywhere we often look for where it comes from. We end up looking outside of ourselves to locate the source of our sadness and we try to fix it with things outside of ourselves. But, if young Jayber Crow is right...and I think he's on to something...the source of our sadness can often be found inside of ourselves. The sadness finds us when we realize that we are living...we're just not living our life. We're living but we are living the life everyone expects us to live and imagines us living. We have never truly given thought to who we are and where we might be going and what it is our hearts calls us to be and do. Jayber Crow says it well, "The picture that I had inside me was more real than anything outside, and yet it was getting smaller and farther away and harder to call back."
The picture that we have inside of us is often the dream that God plants within. It's the picture of who we feel called to be and do..it's the "God dream" planted within our soul. Young Jayer Crow is fighing with all his might to keep that dream alive amidst his struggles with who he is, where he is from, and where he is going. He is on a journey...literally...back home Port Williams where he eventually becomes the town barber. But, he is also on a different kind of journey - the journey back to who he truly is and what he truly believe. That picture of ourselves is inside of us and it is more real than anything outside but it gets smaller and farther away as the years go by. And, if we let it, that which is real inside of us becomes nothing more then a distant memory. It becomes so distant that we convince ourselves that it's not real and that it was foolish to believe we could ever do "this or that." Pretty soo, we just give up and we enter into living a resigned life...resigned to "that's just the way things are" and we go through the motions of doing what is most productive and necessary.
The spiritual journey, among other things, seems to me to be an experience of calling back that which is most real inside of each of us. It's a "going home" to who we truly are and who we knew we were created to be. The spiritual life is exactly that...a life. It's not an event. It's not a show. It's not an exercise in "impression management". It's a life - a life of calling back that which is more real within us - and living our life.
The danger, as Jayber Crow put is, is that we may end up living a "theoretical life". The meaningof "theory" is simply, "A set of ideas offering an explanation on how something work or why something happens but has not been completely proved." A "theoretical life" is a life that has all sort of opinions, explanations, and ideas...but it's not a life that has been lived. A theortical faith is the same - all sort of opinions, ideas, explanations, ideas, and answers - but not something that has really been lived. Jayber Crow tells us directly that without a loved life we simply become theoretical people...and what's worse...who we really are and were created to be becomes a distant memory which, some day, we might never be able to call back.
Dont' just live...live your life...live a loved life.
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