Alice is essentially a film about finding yourself.
It’s about waking up to the reality of who you are and refusing to live within the confines of another’s dream or expectations. Underland/Wonderland serves as a catalyst for a young woman’s transformation, the characters and events in Underland ultimately finding correspondance in the reality of her life – and of her realization of who she really is as she journeys from the “wrong Alice” to “hardly Alice” to “almost Alice” to “Alice at last.” And she’s the one who has to take that forged identity from Underland into the world gathered and awaiting her answer.
And Underland was right there within her the whole time.
And so in this walk with God we are not pursuing or constructing a holiness that is exterior or foreign and alien to us, but it is Christ being formed in us, being “fleshed out” (as it were) in us. It is the inner life of God surfacing in increasing measure. Or as James puts it, it is “humbly accepting the Word already planted in you, which can save you.” “Word” here is not isolated Scripture references which we have mastered and memorized, but (joining together James and John) the expansive reality of the “Word” which was with God and was God and through which all things were made. It is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
And just as in Underland, we need a company of “mad” and subversive friends to help us discover and rediscover and unpack that identity. We each need our own Hatter calling forth our muchness; our own Absalem blowing smoke in our face and asking who we are; our own Mallymkun happily stabbing us in the foot; our own Cheshire with unique evaporating skills appearing at just the right moments; our own Bayard bearing us forward on our journey; our own Bandersnatch helping to lick our wounds.
Seeing these characters gathered around Alice near the end of the film I suddenly realized that I was seeing Alice’s own small group – a group about as diverse and seemingly random (and mad) as one can imagine. But they were essential to saving Alice – to taking her on that journey from the “wrong Alice” to “Alice at last.”
They also did their job and then let her go. Every impacting friendship in our life will be like that. The measure of good friendship is not how long lasting or how many others it includes (notice it’s the Knave that is obsessed with largeness), but rather how effectively that friendship challenges us to step into and be who we really are.
Real friends relentlessly poke each other with the question, “Who are you?” rather than merely echoing our own bloated image (like the “falsifiers” surrounding the Red Queen).
And what personally blesses me so is that I have just such an eclectic assortment of friends in my own Underland asking me that question and calling forth my own muchness…don’t be afraid to tumble down a rabbit hole to find yours.
No comments:
Post a Comment