It was sort of inevitable after the weekend. We went to go see a play called The Whale on Friday night. I spent most of the week looking forward to it. The boyfriend told me that it was a beautiful show, and he hadn't missed with a recommendation.
Most of the time I know what (and how to avoid) things that I find profoundly upsetting. I flatly refuse to see shows or movies with sexual violence. Ditto domestic violence. Actually, I consume very little violent media, at all. My favorite video games are puzzle based games rather than first-person shooters.
Aside from violence, I tend to do pretty well.
The Whale, though.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I spent most of the play crying. Or that it impacted my mood through much of the weekend. I went to bed sad on Friday, teared up a few times thinking about it Saturday, and spent a solid chunk of today writing and thinking about it.
One of the most interesting parts of the show completely opposite ways the boyfriend and I saw it. For me, it was a show about watching someone commit suicide by tiny increments. For the boyfriend it was a show about redemption and the ability to see grace and kindness in other people, even when they are verifiably rotten.
Either way, the show was a lot to process.
In theology, when we talk about grace, we talk about God breaking into the course of human events. For Christians, the major example would be the Incarnation, but also through sacraments and the liturgy.
One of the things I loved best about my theological education (especially graduate school) was the idea that moments of grace would break into our daily lives, without the sacraments, without liturgy, we could find these little moments of God's love in the everydayness. But more than the in-breaking-of-the-Divine-into-the-world, what appealed to me most was the idea that everyday grace could be transformative.
The accessibility of God in those moments, or the idea of it, always appealed to me.
It's been . . . awhile since I've thought about anything even tangentially related to theology. But our differing reactions to a play that was about depression, loss, and redemption, has me thinking about grace throughout the weekend.
Relationships are such grace-filled things.
Not in the big born-of-a-virgin or the slightly-less-big-consecration-of-the-Eucharist kind of way, but in the everyday way that has always meant more to me. The chance to see yourself in a different way is no small thing. Particularly when seeing yourself in that different way makes you want, quite simply, to be a better version of yourself. More than that, it's the other person's ability to look past who you are in your worst moments and say "I believe in the person you want to be and want to help you get there."
That kind of unflappable belief in another person and the transformative power of grace is, I think, what The Whale was about. And it's something I would have missed, had I not had someone there to help me see something that wasn't colored by my own experience.
Like I said, perhaps not the Incarnation, but in my worst moments, it doesn't feel any less miraculous.
No comments:
Post a Comment