Going Wild
One my favorite children's illustrated books is called Mr. Tiger Goes Wild. It tells the story of Mr. Tiger who gets tired of the orderly and civil society where he lives. The animals of his town stand on two legs, wear suits, and are very polite. Mr. Tiger starts to reject these norms he finds stifling; he begins to walk on all fours, climb buildings, and (gasp) strip naked. The village animals banish him out into the wild where Mr. Tiger happily runs, climbs, and roars as he pleases. Eventually Mr. Tiger gets lonely and misses his friends, he goes back to the village and is surprised to be greeted warmly with a peace offering, a Hawaiian shirt. The last image of the village shows all the animals happily a mix between civil and wild each seems free to chose.
I feel like Mr. Tiger right now. Except I don't know if I have the claws, teeth, and fur to survive in the complete wilderness. I want to skip to the end of the story, the freedom to be wild and civil as I please, yet here I am, trapped in civility with a roaring animal inside of me.
On Sunday I attended my parent's church, the church I grew up in. This church has changed quite a bit over the past few years. It is in a very wealthy area and has a huge congregation. I knew the service would be grandiose and it basically went how I expected until the pastor did a curious thing in his message. I was only half paying attention, I knew that the overall theme was how Jesus was not the savior people had expected. The pastor was picking stories from the gospel where Jesus subverts expectations or offends his audience. The pastor began telling the story from Mark 10 of a man who approached Jesus asking how to get into heaven. The pastor commented on how Jesus asked “Why do you call me good, no one but God is good” and how the man “walked away sad.” The man wanted to be good but Jesus said no one was good so his expectations were subverted. It took me a moment to realize that the pastor completely omitted the commands that Jesus gave the young man and even that the man was rich at all and was sad because he didn't want to sell all his possessions as Jesus had commanded. This enraged me. That story could hold a lot of different meaning, wealth aside, but the omission felt so purposeful coming from a man how stood in a multi-million dollar building with an audience of mainly white, affluent Americans. It was Easter Sunday after all, he probably did not want to drive away seekers. The pastor didn't want to offend the audience with Jesus's words. The level of hypocrisy seems comical to me now but it lit a fire in my heart as I sat in that audience. I have never felt so bound by the rules of civility in our society until that moment. I looked around at the crowd, at the balcony, at the man on the stage and every inch of me wanted to stand and shout the verses he had removed. I pictured the ugly looks I would get, I pictured the shame in my family's eyes and I remained in my cage.
I don't want to be in that cage but I also don't want to hurt people. Is there any way to live in both worlds? I am increasingly torn between these two worlds and the role my ego plays in both. I want to jump to the end but I know that each step is important. Perhaps becoming wild takes baby steps, one wild act at a time just like the story of Mr. Tiger.
If anyone would like to do this with me please let me know... maybe together it won't feel so lonely or so confusing.