an unlikely lesson in reality...

Well, its been a while...probably because life has been ridiculously busy. I have been working TONS and it seems there is always something on the go. I thought since this is my first post in a while I would do something a little different.

The things that I am about to write are not my own, strange, I know, for a guy who complains about not wanting to speak other peoples' words. But I feel compelled to write about something profound I heard today. For those of you who know where this came from I apologize for sounding like a rip off artist... In a sermon preached at church this morning I was reminded of a story, the memory of which seems to have been lost, stashed away somewhere between my first steps and a thousand grass stains. It is the story of The Velveteen Rabbit. I can remember hearing this story when I was young, never realizing of course the impact this story would have on my thinking some twenty years later. It is a story about a stuffed toy rabbit and his journey to find meaning and purpose in life, to discover reality for himself. It may sound silly to find any great depth in a story such as this, but if you allow yourself to open up just a little bit to catch a glimpse of what I mean you may just gain a new appreciation for so-called "children's stories."
I won't put the whole story here, just a small passage. If you want to read the whole thing, click here.

"The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it."

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Im sure at this point some of you are thinking that I am completely nuts, for which I really can't blame you. But allow yourself to think for a moment here about the implications of this passage as they relate to your life. Im sure that at some point we all find ourselves asking "What is real?". I think this passage wraps it all up quite nicely. Im not talking about mere existence, it is easy to understand the fact that you exist. We are wonderfully designed to be able to interact with our world in a way that leaves little doubt about the way things are (at least in the physical realm). The reality that I am talking about here goes much deeper than simple understanding of your being in the universe. I am talking about the reality you achieve when you strip away all of the things we build up, our polished outer coating, and allow yourself to expose the inside. I am talking about moving past the understanding of your being in the universe towards an understanding of your place in the universe.

I can recall camping trips with my brother, Brad, and our good friend Tyson. We would go to our usual camping spot, set up camp and build the usual fire. As the night would go on we would sit around the fire talking, taking the opportunity to explore the questions of life, love and faith. Through these many late night fireside talks we developed a rule: whenever we all sat around the fire we all had to be completely real with on another. What did that mean? It meant that none of us had walls, none of us were wearing masks. We could be totally open and honest about every facet of life. It became a very special and amazingly powerful tradition. What we discovered was much the same as the lesson learned in The Velveteen Rabbit... being real with one another took time and patience. It wasn't always easy, sometimes it was painful. We had struggles with one another as we allowed our true, tattered and shabby selves to show. The result was well worth the journey. We developed an incredible friendship based on the real us, unlike so many of the shallow friendships built on facades that I had experienced before...

I hope that I can continue to learn these lessons throughout my life, and to constantly strive for more than outer beauty. I want to continue to be a real individual, to live my life as an open and honest friend and someone who understands the value in being tattered and torn. I wish the same for anyone who reads this...