Episode 247 - Shoe Horn

People are constantly trying to shoe horn their search for God into containers too tight for the Object of the search. This is probably true of some of your interests, whether it's food or Hammer horror films or "Philadelphia Soul" -- to name two of my current but chronic faves -- or you name it. On something or someone, you are probably pinning very high hopes.

The blogosphere is full of such shoe horns -- interests such as a movement or style or movie or type of music that attracts your "ultimate concern" (Tillich). But they don't actually produce for you what you need.

Take Joe Cocker. I love Joe Cocker, and think "Hitchcock Railway" is one of the irreducibly GREAT rock 'n roll songs of all time. Or Led Zeppelin 2, the album. I honestly thought once -- in practice, tho' I'd have denied it in theory -- that Led Zeppelin 2 could save me. Or for that matter, the movies of Jacques Demy. The latter are wonderful, but they can't save a person.

Nor can another person save a person. (Tho' they can come close. Listen to the Spinners' songs at the beginning and the end of this cast.)

We are just chronically trying to shoe horn our aspiration for unity with God, peace with God, into spaces that don't fit. They're too small! Can you think of a "space" within this world, within what Paula White calls "the natural", into which you are trying to shoe horn something inside you that is Ultimate. Luther would have called it an idol.

But hey, I still like the Spinners. And then there's Blue Magic. LUV U.