JOURNAL
(Photo to the right, taken by Aimee Zaring in Santorini)

DIVINE ANIMALS
January 1, 2008

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black.

Johnny Cash, “Man in Black”

Scarcely a day goes by that I’m not painfully aware of the great divide between my divine and animal natures. I enjoy the company of my God-fearing “Bless his/her heart” friends as much as my irreverent, hedonistic ones. I like studying the Bible, reading Merton, and solitary walks in the woods as much as watching brain-numbing episodes of Entourage, drinking bourbon, and dancing at dive bars until the break of dawn.

A hypocrite some might call me.

I’m reminded of an article I once read online* in which actor Joaquin Phoenix recounts the time he met Johnny Cash and June Carter. Cash and Carter sang “The Far Side Banks of Jordan” for Phoenix. “To see them looking into each other’s eyes while they sang the song was magical,” said Phoenix. But no sooner had the song ended than Cash turned to Phoenix and quoted from his favorite part in Gladiator, one of Phoenix’s character’s most sadistic lines of dialogue.

Phoenix said that these two moments “encapsulated Johnny Cash to me, in those . . . two separate forces that lived equally inside of him. And it really is night and day. You wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it. And he . . . seemed to relish that dialogue as much as he relished looking into June’s eyes and singing a song.”

And here, for me, is one of the most frustrating parts of being a Christian: this constant struggle between our “night and day” selves. The pursuit of being more Christ-like is one of the few things I can think of in life that doesn’t necessarily improve with practice or age. In fact, the “better” we become, the more our eyes are opened to a whole new set of failings, flaws, and inner demons. (In the opera Dialogues of the Carmelites one character explains to another that God doesn’t test our strengths but our weaknesses.) The Trappist monk Thomas Merton said of the spiritual life, “We must expect to be making mistakes all the time. We must be content to fail repeatedly and to begin again to try to deny ourselves for the love of God.”

How easy it is to forget that David, from whose family tree Jesus descended, was a murderer and adulterer. And yet, he was considered a man after God’s own heart, a person worthy of emulation, not because he was sinless, but because he had the will to follow God.

Yet why does trying alone so often feel like a loser’s game? Where is the glory in forever screwing up?

But isn’t even the idea of glory, our need for it, a vain pursuit? More evidence of our pesky sin problem, pride? Maybe this constant struggle between our divine and animal natures--that hopeless feeling of never being good enough--is exactly the point. How else could we see the need for a savior? How else could we experience grace? How else could we extend it to others?

Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)
Johnny Cash and the Carter Family

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* From About.com: Hollywood Movies,
“Joaquin Phoenix Talks About ‘Walk the Line’,” by Rebecca Murray.