About 3.5 hours ago, Angie and I walked out of the movie theater having just seen Where the Wild Things Are. For some reason, maybe because it’s the story of a little boy’s wild imagination, I connect with this story. He gets in trouble, is sent to bed without his supper (a horror that no boy should ever endure, but I’m sure my son will at some point – Angie disagrees), and in order to escape the anger within his own soul he imagines a wild place with wild things that threaten him and he tames by his own mettle to only be drawn home by the alluded apologies of his mother leaving his dinner still warm on a table for him. The apology is shown most tenderly in the last line of the book “And it was still hot.”

I enjoyed the movie but felt a little in the dark as the first 10 minutes of the film had no sound… the supposed monitor of the film from the video booth had apparently not been there… it was awesome, let me tell you. Also, I wouldn’t recommend it for kids… at all. The giant dancing animatronic bears and gorillas at Showbiz Pizza used to send me under the table in a crying fit (ask Kathy, our daycare provider) so the movie surely would have brought me to tears and hiding under the chairs on the sticky floor.

It did, however, brilliantly convey the sense of working through remorse and guilt. I’ve always been a guilty kid. The guilt of being bad was worse to me than getting caught. [SPOILER] Max learns this lesson in the film by watching relationships deteriorate between the WILD THINGS from his “back and forth” attitude in his “kingship.” He feels remorse. You can see the guilt in his face as he begins the journey home and receives the love he felt he missed from his mom as he reenters the house.

I connect with Max.

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After we got home, I sat down to read Rob Bell’s Drops Like Stars. It didn’t even take me 2 hours to read. The picture above comes from page 115. The entire book is a series of reflections on creativity and suffering. How suffering brings us together. How creativity can so regularly be spawned from suffering.

How many songs we listen to come out of suffering? A thought he delves into as well.

In the pages surrounding page 115, Bell tells a story of a ceramics class that was split into two groups.

One to be graded on quantity of work produced.
One to be graded on the quality of one piece.

The instructor found that the QUANTITY group overwhelming produced better art because the QUALITY group spent too much time theorizing and deciding what to do rather than just doing and learning from their mistakes.

A damaged creation creates more creation.

Likewise, the above picture shows how Native American rug makers leave imperfections because this is “where they believe the spirit enters.”

A damaged creation has room for the Spirit.

We’re all damaged. GOD wants us to admit it and move on. There’s a moment where we all connect when we recognize and accept that we all have issues.

Because we do.

I connect with the rug.

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I focus on the little snags and cracks about myself.
Frustration from past mistakes and relationship hurts like Max.
Anger I feel over a situation unfolding in front of me at this very moment.

Yet, being damaged leaves room for GOD.

GOD wants us to admit that we’re banged up, broken down, and tired.
He rebuilds us.
He restores us.
He chooses us.

And, even when we run away in our anger… He leaves dinner on the table.

“And, it’s still hot.”

+ PJT