We seem to be wired for this, for the escape, for the getaway car that takes us outside of ourselves, outside of the comfort zones, outside of the closed-in spaces, to visit chickens and goats, to remember another part of life, to recognize the full cycle, and to get the full picture. - Kaitlin Curtice
The comment about the chicken and goats ties in with what Curtice wrote about this morning, but its the larger point of it all that spoke to me as I took my dog for a long walk this morning. It was one of those mornings when I just knew the sunrise was going to be a spectacular combination of colors and I am grateful my hunch was right. As I got out of the car, I took a few shots and didn't intend really to include the parking lot lights in there, but it just fits what I heard this morning. What I heard was a call to seek the real and the full, not the artificial and the limited. This has been with me a lot from the last few days to the last few years.
This weekend, we watched The Breakfast Club with two of our kids and our son commented on how there were no special effects in the movie and how real it was. He might have been commenting not only on the lack of CGI but also the real-ness of what the story tells with all the key characters. The real and the false has been with me in some of my continuing enneagram work that I have been digging into. The real and the false has been a theme for the last few years since I encountered the wisdom of Richard Rohr. And of course, its central to the Christian story - Christ shows us how to strip away the false and get to the true part of ourselves - the part that is imprinted with the beautiful image of God.
So, no matter how beautiful and intricate the parking lot lights are, they are still manufactured and artificial and the light they give pales in comparison to the beautiful canvas behind that speaks of the fullness and the beauty of the Creator.