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A World of Our Own
A "FIRESTARTER" Spiritual Essay by Rev.
Dr. Benjamin
Berinti, C.Pp.S.
I’ve heard teachers describe children
in their classrooms this way...when hard-pressed to explain someone’s dabbling
at the edge of reality, we put it this way...when our own flights of fancy take
us beyond the here and now, and our minds seem a thousand miles away from the
present, others would say it about us:
they are in a “world of their own.”
On a trip to
Key West,
Florida, I was reminded about the fact that many people, myself included, often
inhabit a “world of our own.” Key West is the kind of place that brings this
quality out of people in a dramatic way. In fact, perhaps so many people flock
to live in
Key West
precisely because it seems to openly embrace those who walk to the beat of a
different drummer. In the “Conch
Republic”
(as Key West likes to call itself), one need not look far or long in order to
have a close encounter with an “other-worldly” being. The exciting flavor of
Key West is captured every year during the celebration of “Fantasy
Fest”
week. I was somewhat surprised to see that the theme of the week a couple of
years ago was “Circuses
and Sideshows”—after
all, it seems like a circus or sideshow is occurring in some corner of Key West
every day; there seems no need to assign a special week for them!
I remember walking down the infamous
Duval Street one hot afternoon. Amidst the din of people
shopping and drinking and celebrating life, I could hear the distinct voice of
someone carrying itself up and over the crowds. Curious as to what event may
have been taking place, thinking perhaps that some visiting poet or author may
have been reciting on a public square, I searched out the voice.
After wandering for nearly two blocks,
I finally came upon the mystery person. He was no poet or author reciting a
classic piece of literature from the pages of one of
Key West’s notable writers, rather he was a clown! Dressed in
characteristically baggy clown attire, sporting a huge, white afro-wig,
sprouting a bulbous red nose and wearing dark glasses, this eerie clown was
pacing back and forth in the small park, reciting the contents of a book! I
strained to see what the title of the text was, but never was able to make it
out. The clown cradled the book in his hands as though it were the most sacred,
ancient text of Judeo-Christianity. His recitation was slow, methodical and
loud! He wasn’t spouting off any particular religious message; not warning any
of us about the impending end of the world nor the arrival of UFO’s from the
planet Mars. He was simply reading from his book—for no apparent reason to any
passerby.
Indeed, my first reaction to this
wandering clown was—he’s in a world of his own.
But then, I began to think
more about him. I wondered what was going on inside of him—– in his mind, in
his heart. And then, it dawned on me: all of us are not far from drifting in
to “world of our
own.”
We are all often oblivious to the
people, places and events around us. We may kindly refer to it as being “distracted,” but in many ways, we drift into our own worlds, cutting
ourselves off from the whirlwind of life around us. Sometimes, we catch
ourselves in the midst of it, not even realizing that we have drifted, but then
there are other times when we purposefully detach. We do so, we tell ourselves,
to restore our balance, our sanity, our perspective — or simply, just to take a
rest from the overwhelming demands of our lives.
And so, what makes us any different
from my thespian clown wandering the streets of
Key West: OK, maybe we don’t do it with a red nose or floppy
shoes, but we spiral off into a world of our own whenever life squeezes us too
much or too hard. We are all tempted to pull away at times to regroup, to “be
strong,”
since the world around us, the “world
of others”
can be frightening, and often makes no sense to us.
It was clear that the
Key West
clown was fixated on a mission, even though the nature and cause of his
“mission” was unknowable to me. And yet, as Christians, we too say that we are
on a mission; we too are supposed to be fixated (what the Scriptures refer to as
“single-minded or single-hearted”) on the
Kingdom
of God. We, too, are invited into a different kind of world than the one that
consumes us. We, too, are invited into a different path, a different way of
living and being, which the world around us does not grasp nor understand.
And it is precisely because of the
nature of these invitations by Jesus, it is precisely because of the challenge
of the “otherness” that discipleship demands, that we often fail repeatedly.
We simply do not want to “be
different.” We don’t want to buck the system or play the prophet —
the price is often high and the rewards are not immediately visible. That part
of Jesus' game plan which boldly says: “Anyone
who does not take up his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me!” — is no pleasant pill to swallow.
Caught up in the frenzy and fantasy of
life in Key West, perhaps it was easier for me to see and to admit that what
first struck me as bizarre and outlandish, in the end wasn’t really so unusual.
Yes, the
Key West
clown was clearly more public and unashamed of inhabiting “a
world of his own”
than we are, but in the end, I recognized what we both had in common. We are
both called to commitment, to single-hearted pursuit of what we value in our
lives — and sometimes, this commitment and single-heartedness means entering
into a
world of our own.
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