Amelia Bedelia Problem

“In Athens, circa, 500 BC, the ancient Greeks create a new form of entertainment known as theater. Meaning at some point, there had to have been…THE FIRST PLAY.”

Saturday Night Live began a dramatic introduction of a sketch with this introduction. Jack Black and the cast portray what the writers envisioned the very first theater to be like.

As the theater actors performed, the audience could not comprehend the role of metaphor. “Look there off in the distance!” The audience would gaze away and respond, “There’s no one there!” When someone on stage died a fake death, the audience screamed at the murder they believed to have literally occurred.

This bit dramatizes a very real misunderstanding of the arts in our day. I call it our “Amelia Bedelia problem,” taken from the beloved children’s character.

Amelia Bedelia’s character is defined by interpreting language entirely literally. She takes every phrase and instruction at face value, without recognizing figures of speech, idioms, or implied meanings.

When we don’t assume metaphor when we view art, we turn into Evangelical Amelia Bedelias.

Practice Resurrection

RIP Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

from The Country of Marriage, 1973, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

Genres Come With Their Own Instruction Manuals

When we watch a comedy movie, we know we aren’t about to watch a documentary on math equations. When we listen to a poem, we know we don’t want Amelia Bedilia to pause and provide commentary. When we listen to 40 minute sermons, we know we aren’t at a 4th of July party. 

The genres come preloaded with instruction manuals.

Without any direction, they tell us how to set our expectations for receiving them and how we’re supposed to behave in their presence.

You Are.

Our Uber driver told me which suburb he resided.

He happened to live in the city my Grandma had lived my whole life (until her death over 20 years ago).

In one moment, a rush of emotions and wonder came.

I thought about how few people know my Grandma, how much her neighborhood had changed, how my kid’s childhood differs vastly from my own. I pondered posterity, legacy, death, life, dreams, and preserving stories.

My experience of my Grandma’s condo differed greatly from her own upbringing (wherever she lived).

I became jealous of the Shaman I met overseas a few years back. He can pinpoint the precise landmarks his ancestors performed such and such a thing. He possessed stories and identity because of a geographic location.

Back to the concrete…

Sitting in the Uber, I realize I am in real time making a memory with my son.

Eugene Peterson’s son asked his dad, "Dad, what do you want your legacy to be?”

Eugene replied, “you are.”

Art in a Post-Truth World

Art in the post-truth world has the capacity to expose the bankruptcy of self-trust and self-worship. But it doesn’t shove it in people’s faces. 

No, by nature of being art, these truth-mines are hidden within the nuances of beauty itself.

Imagining Ourselves to Faith

There appears to be a trend going around of people pretending God is real for 30 days.

One could argue this is a social marketing gimmick and that a product will come at the end of the 30 days. But I wonder if there’s something deeper going on here.

People are yearning for Jesus so much that they're using their imaginations to test if he's real.

Brian Guan seems to have launched the challenge and others have followed. You can see his transformation from this social imagining experiment on his instagram.

By the end of the 30 days, he claims it completely transformed him. It’s the ultimate test in fake it til you make it.

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A post shared by Brian Guan (@bdguan)

That Bird Isn’t A Better Player Than You

God designed the field for players to play. Not some players. All. 

Angels and the rest of creation are in the bleachers watching his handiwork. We are all players in this field. 

Doves were given wings to fly. As were artists.

Maybe you just developed yours. Maybe you tried jumping out of the nest 20 years ago and you fell hard. 

But falling doesn’t change who you are. 

It simply means you’ve fallen.

America Means Many Things

Americans have been deeply divided since the days of Jamestown and Plymouth. The original North American colonies were settled by people from distinct regions of the British Islands, and from France, the Netherlands, and Spain, each with their own religious, political, and ethnographic characteristics.

Woodard, Colin. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (p. 2). (Function). Kindle Edition.

In his book, American Nations, Colin Woodard traces America’s roots through eleven difference cultural stories. Anytime we’re talking about “America” or “American values,” we must assume the person across from us might not share the same narrative or historical backdrop.

There are two ways to react to this. One is to huff and puff. The other, lean into your natural curiosities about others.