I have developed a tendency I’ve been trying to shake.
To be fair, I’ve actually developed a lot that I’m trying to shake, but there’s a particular one that’s relevant to what we’re doing here.
I grew up in the church. It raised me in many ways.
Churches like messages with resolutions.
I also grew up on ‘90’s family television.
Family television in the ‘90’s also liked resolutions. Often with some moving music over the final few minutes of the episode to pull on your emotions as the message was driven home.
Or wait… was that church too?
Clean endings in both cases, with just the right amount of ambient synthesized strings to let you know this is the point where the whole thing lands. The runway is lit. Time for a smooth touchdown.
All writing needs to make the resolution clear by the end: a life goal to walk away with, a resolution to the mystery, or a feel-good moment to carry away. In my years of life in the church, this means making the evangelistic point that intersects with day-to-day, week-to-week life: generously pepper the message throughout with relevant cultural messages, but make sure the last few minutes have the “God stuff” in it that can ostensibly be applied in life until the next week rolls around and the pulpit mic can be amplified again.
I don’t want this to be that.
At least not really.
Fair warning: sometimes it will be. The “God stuff” is important. Whether you believe in the God chronicled in the Torah, of the prophets of the Old Testament, of the Messiah in the Gospels, I think most of us are in consensus that Jesus of Nazareth had something worthwhile to say – whether the cross he hung on was an ending or an invitation to a beginning. And sometimes the things he taught, the things he did, and the stories that led up to him and followed him still have things to say for the lives we lead today.
That said, I’m not here to profess that I live those lessons better than you; and I’m not intending to have them serve as the neat bow at the end of each “episode.”
Still, they’re the lens I see life through. I’ve tried to examine that lens over the last few years. What scratches have formed on it? What dirt has accumulated that needs to be wiped off? What have I allowed others to etch into the glass, for better or for worse?
Religion, faith, politics… they’re all streams that feed the river that bends around the mountainsides, course alongside the city skylines, and carve paths out to the sea. They all leave marks on the landform, even when the creek beds begin to dry up.
The small town I grew up in had multiple creeks in it. Some were clear. One fascinating creek was a reddish orange, vestiges from mine pollution from an industry that had packed up decades ago when the profits plummeted. The creek looks interesting and is certainly memorable, but its uniqueness lies as a direct result of its contamination.
I don’t want neat endings to be the contamination. After all, life isn’t a linear path of neat endings. Not every episode will end with a tidy “God moment” – after all, even Jesus asked questions that lingered.
I hope to do my best at shaking the tendency to put a neat bow on things and instead shake the questions loose from the trees – questions worth asking ourselves and worth asking others.
So how should we end this thing, anyway?