Grace has started watching movies at nap time.
All right, all right, I
did say that we don't have TV. Which is kind of true. We don't have access to TV programming. But we do have a television, which has been hidden away in our bedroom armoir only to be used long after the kiddos are asleep and Scott and I watch our latest
netflix DVD.
There we are, at 10:00 at night, snuggled up watching Hotel Rwanda, and the faint sound of the girls' bedroom door opening kicks us into high gear. Scott dashes to the armoire with remote in hand, frantically pausing the DVD and turning off the television while he slams closed the armoire doors, and I jump into the hallway, closing our door behind me, and then calmly redirect Grace back to bed. When I return, we wait a good 5 minutes to make sure she is out before resuming our movie. Brings back the days of stuffing rolled towels under closed doors to blocks certain smells from leaving college dorm rooms. Quick! Spray the air freshener! Open the window! (Just because I wasn't a smoker myself doesn't mean I wasn't there!)
Really, we've just wanted to avoid her asking to watch TV or movies all the time. What she doesn't know won't hurt her, eh? I changed my tune after she pretty much gave up napping the last few months. I end up with a cranky, over-tired two year old on my hands all afternoon, which seriously cramps my mood, not to mention my ability to blog.
So I decided last week to begin watching a movie with her at nap time in my bed. Natalie goes down and then Grace and I cuddle, watching Noah's Ark given to us by her godfather Greg, or the Madeline's Adventures demo DVD we got in a Rice Krispies box. Usually by the second time around when the animals are all singing on the ark, Grace starts snoozing. If Noah thought enduring the 40 days of rain was boring, try watching a movie about someone else being bored. Seriously. Yawn.
But then at Costco the other day, I spied
this movie about Easter and thought it seemed timely. I had already been wondering how much to share with Grace about Jesus' passion and resurrection--I mean, she doesn't even know what it is to die yet--so I figured perhaps a movie might help me introduce it to her visually.
This is, of course, a loaded issue. As an older child, I remember crying every year when we read the Passion aloud at Palm Sunday. I could barely bring myself to utter the words, "Crucify him!" out of total disgust and shame that people would betray Christ like that. That people could go from "Hosanna!" to "Crucify him!" in the span of a week. If only I had been there, I thought, I would have shamed them into releasing Jesus. I would have exposed them for the hypocrites they were. Or die trying. In fact, I even felt uncomfortable singing "Hosanna" in the weekly service, so connected that word was in my mind to the fickleness of the followers during Holy Week.
Then, many years later, I had a monumental realization.
We crucify Jesus on a daily basis. I do it. You do it. Every time I divert from God's will, or put my will above His, or give in to hatred or judgmentalism, or destroy His peace with anger instead of prayer, I am hammering another nail in the cross. My friends occasionally irreverently joke when we do something naughty, that "Baby Jesus is crying." Someone takes the last mint milano? "Baby Jesus is crying." But God
is hurt by our choice to separate ourselves from Him, however trivial it may be (mint milanos aside). And furthermore, we don't only crucify Christ with each selfish or cruel thought; we crucify the divine that is within each of us. As He said, "The Kingdom of God is within you," (Luke 17:21). If we have God's spirit in us, then living by worldly values and not heavenly values slowly kills off the still small voice of God within. Our divine selves die a little death each day that we ensconce ourselves in worldliness.
Before watching the movie, Grace and I talked about what it means to die. That when we die, our bodies go to the ground and our spirits go to God. We began the movie and Grace was a little confused from the get-go. "Where is Baby Jesus?" she asked. Her eyes grew wide at Jesus turning over the tables in the Temple. "Jesus is mad at them!" she observed. But irony of all ironies occurred at the part about the Garden of Gethsemane. For all of you unfamiliar with the story, Jesus and His followers were in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper. He asked them to keep watch while He prayed and then chastised them for falling asleep on the job. He was arrested there and executed the next day. This begins the part of the story that I was most concerned about sharing with Grace--the betrayal by Judas, the mocking and beating, the crucifixion, Jesus' death.
But two days in a row, Grace
fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. And I wondered: is there is a part of all of us that wants to fall asleep at that point in the story? Peter did. The other disciples did. Grace did. Perhaps we want to follow Christ through the easy parts of His ministry: as He teaches and feeds people and heals lepers. But when it comes time for us to choose to stand up for Him when the going gets tough, we would rather fall asleep and be so passive that we can hardly even be blamed for not supporting Him, for not being true to the divine within. It's too hard to be Christ-like. All this spirit stuff is great, but I need to get back to the real world: my job, my plans, my life. I'll come back after the resurrection, when it is easier to be all “rah-rah Jesus,” a cheer leader for God.
Let's stop falling asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. Let's be the people who pray along with Christ in the hour or darkness and betrayal. When things are tough, let's choose to feed the divine within, instead of running from all that we are. And perhaps we can stop dying a little death every single day and live fully into God's intent for us.
