What Love's Got to Do with Nachos, Dogs, and Mummies
Virtually every Sunday night without fail, I walk down the stairs to the basement of my house with a huge cast-iron pan of nachos. To be safe, I holler down the steps, "hot nachos coming in,” but most likely, my daughters are already seated on the couch with the TV ready for our family movie selection. Christa is still upstairs, gathering the last few supplies we'll need for our weekly movie night.
About three weeks ago, our cherished ritual was threatened. It was something we had anticipated but were nonetheless concerned by. Our hallowed nacho movie night was in danger of destruction by a young pack animal with a frenzy of teeth, slobber, and fur. Yes, we bought a dog.
Her name is Elenor (a Jack Russell/Chihuahua mix), and she's turned out to be quite a lovely little lady. We had tried incorporating her into the Sunday ritual, but it was not fair to her, and it definitely did not work for us. We ended up bringing her big wire crate downstairs so she could eat her own nacho-night treat without getting all up in our business.
This how we've changed our ritual to accommodate this new life in our house. The old and simpler way is gone, maybe forever. This new little life has brought death: death overnight to the simpler way of life we knew. Death to space and time in our minds that never had to worry about the sanitary needs of a dog. Or the mealtimes. Or exercise time. Or sleep habits. Or the what-the-hell-is-she-eating-now concerns.
I remember this feeling from when Christa and I came home from the hospital with our first-born daughter. The beautiful and terrible knowing that asks the question, "What did we get ourselves into?!"
We already had two people to lose sleep over! Why did we say yes? We knew how this whole love thing goes! It's wonderful and meaningful, sure, but it also opens the door to anxiety! Anytime you choose to love anything you live with the inevitability of loss.
So why do we do it? Isn't one of the most primitive human motivations to escape suffering and pain? Isn't this why we're all wearing masks right now?
What compels us to put ourselves directly in the line of fire, opening ourselves to being wounded repeatedly?
Last Sunday, part of our movie night double-feature was a documentary series from National Geographic called "One Strange Rock” (Daren Aronofsky). It examines the mysteries and paradoxes of our planet from the perspective of astronauts who spent significant time in space looking at Earth. The episode we watched covered the fascinating ways the Earth and its species handle death.
SELFIES WITH THE DEAD?
One story they highlighted came from the Torajan people of Indonesia. Ma'nene is a tradition in which they visit the graves of their grandparents and great-grandparents every one to three years, open their caskets, and pull their mummified bodies out for a picnic. The bodies are cleaned, and the clothes are changed. Great-grand-children snap selfies with their dead relatives and sometimes share a smoke with their deceased uncles.
To the Western American mind, this practice might seem shocking and horrific. Can you imagine a family doing this in your local cemetery? They would be arrested, right? Because, in our culture, death is to be feared, hidden, or controlled. Our preferred national strategy of dealing with death is either denial or domination. Anything we can't control, we hide from (take a look at our history with racism, for example). It's unthinkable for us to want to make friends with death and make it part of our story.
The Torajan people repeat this ritual because they know they are connected to an ancient story. They know the past is never gone. It is always with them, and since they know there is no way to escape the pain of love, they integrate it into their identity. It's like they move the sofa over a little, stop the movie more than they used to, and make a little more space for the love they collect in their lives.
The amazing thing about love is it is always expanding, like our universe. One scientist/theologian I was listening to last week put this in terms I hadn't considered before. Author Ilio Delio said that the evolution process is always moving toward greater complexity, and with that growth in complexity comes an increase in consciousness.
In my ears, I hear the correlation to spiritual maturity. Our sense of love is intimately linked to our consciousness. As we continue to mature through the death and resurrection cycle, we gradually adapt as people who have an ever-expanding capacity for love. Could this be what it means to become more like Christ?
Perhaps the purest and most direct form of obedience to Christ is to actively look for ways to let Jesus mess up your life for the sake of love. To let Emmanuel put to put death all the simplicity of your life to bring about a deeper and more mature existence.