The Neutral Zone Participle Vision Quest - Day 18
"The Hotel California Filter"
Let's just say the lenses through which I have viewed the last couple of weeks came to a head on the way to Cancun.
She was in the seat just in front of me to my right. Maybe 22 or 23 years old. She looked like she watched "Jersey Shore" and took it very seriously. Chanel sunglasses. iPhone in the cute little pink case. Manicure. It was hard to look at her and not be judgmental. (I say that as a character flaw about me, not about her.) And when I saw her, "Hotel California" started playing in my mind. It got me to thinking. When Glenn Frey took Don Felder's chord arrangements and wrote lyrics over them, he wrote the great American tragedy about materialism and consumer excess. "Her mind is Tiffany twisted," he wrote about the girl on the airplane I was sitting next to. I looked at her and wondered how so many of us get to a place that we think buying that next great thing will finally make us happy.
Once Jen and I landed in Cancun and got to our hotel, it all went away. We had parted company with the girl with lots of pretty pretty boys she calls friends. Everything settled down, including the amount of time I devoted to my cynicism. We holed up for five days on a beach where the only consumer labeling was the occasional tourist sporting his new Corona t-shirt. Other than that, we were free and easy. Such a lovely place.
Insert "sigh" here.
It didn't last. Vacations never do. But I knew one thing: I had no desire to find a passage back to the place I was before. I needed to come back from vacation a little more generous to those who still hear the voices down the corridor, including myself. I needed to dance to remember, but I also needed to dance to forget.
Another sigh.
When we returned, before we came home, we went to the mall, and then to the David Gray concert at Nokia in Grand Prairie. Once again we were overwhelmed by advertisements and product placements. I found myself craving cookies I don't eat, cell phones I don't want, and designer clothes I don't wear.
And then it hit me: "The Hotel California Filter." What if we could see all these things for what they really are?
How can we live simple Gospel lives that are supposed to reflect things Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount like, "Do not worry about what you will eat, or what you will drink, or what you will wear" when everything around us tells us to worry about such things?
How can we live simple Gospel lives that are supposed to reflect things Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount like, "Isn't life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes" when we are barraged by people who devote their lives to persuading us to buy their food and clothing?
You can check out of this culture any time you like, but you can never leave. It's always around. But I realize I'm not much different from the girl on the airplane. Before I get too proud in my cynicism as I sit and type on my Mac while wearing my Ray-Bans, I am struck by the possibility that we are all just prisoners here of our own device. We all give in to excess. But we don't have to.
We don't have to.
It's why we keep gathering as Christians to hear Jesus with fresh ears. Jesus reminds us that those worldly voices calling from far away that wake us up in the middle of the night are voices without promise, voices that gather for temporary feasts.
But we gather for an eternal banquet that goes beyond the occasional cool wind in our hair. We gather for an eternal banquet to commit over and over again to a promise that no matter where we go, whether to Cancun or the Hotel California or around the corner to the store, no matter where we go, God is with us.
The vacation was good. This neutral zone is a good place. Such a lovely place. But I'm getting hungry. I'm getting hungry, not for food that spoils, but to be back with a community of faith that longs to be people of a mission so great that we look at the things of the world and see them for what they really are.
