last night my beautiful and unbelievably amazing mother made a comment to me that has been sitting in my gut. i haven’t really known what to do with it since last night and it has been bothering me. she said, “you’re bored aren’t you?”
let me set the stage a little bit. i’ve had one of the best worst years. there have been soaring heights and plunging depths. it seems that the weekend might’ve highlighted some of those shadowy depths. due to the cynicism of my lows i’ve been seeing things pretty negatively as of late, and last week basically set my life in an orientation of jadedness. so basically, i’ve been kinda blase’ about life.
now i know that this apathy is not the way to live. it has been hard to be in this place knowing that there’s another way. unfortunately, i really was not seeing a way out. then by the urge of my gut (perhaps a nudge of the Spirit), i picked up my Bible, which had been collecting dust for about a month, and cracked it open to everyone’s favorite book, Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes? yes that book which seems to be the origin of the “emo” culture. The writer, mysteriously known as the “Qoheleth” (Preacher/Teacher/Quester) was quite the whining, feely, apathetic individual. Traditionally scholars think it was Solomon, so we’ll just go with that. So this udderly wise Solomon basically couldn’t use his own wisdom on his life. so instead he was snarkey and melodramatic about the world. i so wish that i wasn’t able to identify with him. the crazy thing is that i have read only the first chapter there has been a great move in my soul. last night it was mom’s comment was the eureka for my current situation.
after reading the first chapter of that contemplative existential diary, i realized something. the writer was being rather extreme, but ultimately he wanted something more. things looked cyclical and mundane, but he wanted something more. and i must say that although i am not “emo” enough to whine about the winds never changing, i have wanted something more. the crazy thing is that if i would have been writing a journal the last few months, it might have looked like a copy and paste of Ecclesiastes.
the redemption in all of this craziness is that even though Solomon talks about our lives being like a whisp of smoke, there was something in the subtext that was reminding us that we are more than smoke. we are “under the sun” as the book says. we are riding the curl of that smoky whisp knowing that even if life is short, we’ve been exhaled by something greater than the monotony, something alive and exciting.
so the answer to my mom’s question was yeah, i’m bored with all “this,” but today my response has taken a different shape. i submit that yeah, i could be bored with all this, but instead i am choosing to be enamored by the mystery of how my smoky existence dances, curls, and rises from the mouth of an awesome life breathing God. even if i am a whisp of smoke. he breathed me and i’m his smoke ring in the world.
