zoo

Been thinking about core values lately. One of those that is really important to me is the idea of transparent worship; it’s the permission to be real before God and others. And that made me think today about my time with Lillian at the zoo. 

We found ourselves staring at a brown bear.  A little girl standing next to us turned to her mom and said, “Why does he look so sad?” Her mom said, “He’s probably just sleepy.” And then her little brother turned to her and said,  “It’s because this isn’t his real home.” Minutes later while making our way to a different part of the zoo Lillian says, “Bear sad.” Thereafter, she repeated the same line with every new animal she saw: “Giraffe sad”… “hippo sad”… “zebra sad”… “elephant sad”… “monkey sad…”

And by the end of the day I realized there’s just something kind of awkward about asking an animal to be wild while trying to cage it.  When you try to simulate natural habitat; make a fake world that isn’t truly natural or authentic to its existence, I think it’s inevitable that an animal’s instincts become suppressed or sleepy.  It stops being wild. It has no where else to go.  It’s not really free.

Imagine trying to live in a staged or fake world your entire life? Wouldn’t that reality sort of grind on ya? Isn’t being unauthentic sort of the antithesis of being free or wild? I mean I’m staring at these animals all day realizing that this is exactly how so many people live (i.e. me).

I think many times people just don’t know how unauthentic their lives really are… how caged we can become with our emotions, political views, theology, relationships… It’s not surprising to me, then, why our culture craves freedom of expression. Why we value highly original work or why the opportunity to have transparent-real community seems so attractive to us.

Anyway, I’m not trying to make some animal-rights statement here and I don’t mean to be overly spiritual about this stuff either. Just wondering if we’re enjoying true freedom or not…