Mixing Metaphors

I read earlier about an interview with Toni Morrison (a Nobel Prize author). The interviewer asked her why she had become a great writer--who has she learned from, where has she studied, what has she read, and so on. In response, Morrison just laughed and said, "Oh, no, that is not why I am a great writer. I am a great writer because when I was a little girl and walked into a room where my father was sitting, his eyes would light up. That is why I am a great writer. That is why. There isn't any other reason."

I have this theory about the individual man or woman. I think each and every one of us has limitless potential. I know we throw that word around a lot--"limitless"--, and so it's kind of been watered down. I'm talking about a potential that is bottomless, that has no confines. An incalculably infinite potential. A boundless and incomprehensible potential. Limitless. A potential for greatness. Every one of us, man and woman, child and adult, have been divinely composed, structured by some greater hand, each of us unique, distinguished, extraordinary. And for what? For greatness.

I don't know what it is, but something is holding us down. Sometimes, I force myself to look at people. I mean really look at people. When I take the time to really gaze into someone, I always see something, some fire hoping for the slightest breeze and a chance to burn like it was created to, to consume this world. It's especially visible in youth. I swear, it's like God makes their skin glass, that's how visible the fire is that's turning over in their bellies. I think the older you get, the harder it is to see that fire, though. It's like some people have been told to ignore the fire for so long, keep in hidden in your belly, and hopefully it'll digest like a piece of poorly cooked food and pass right through your system with only some slight discomfort toward the end.

There's something holding us down.

Every once in a while, I'll glimpse a fire that has been unleashed and given the world to feed upon. It is beautiful. Souls like Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr... I've even met a few of those souls, and the fire you encounter when you meet someone like that is dangerous. It's hyper-contagious, threatening to deeply infect you, penetrating to the bone, stoking and unleashing your own fire. Damn, it's so exciting! I know I've been made for more than this. I start feeling that rumbling deep, deep down inside of my belly. And it hurts. The fire has been caged, and it was created to breathe air and feed and consume everything, and it wants out. But there's something holding us down.

Donald Miller said, "Maybe a human is defined by who loves him." I think he's right. I think maybe that's the thing holding us down. We want to feel loved. We need to feel loved. We have to feel like someone really loves us if we want to go on, especially if we want to reach our potential. And it has to be a love that isn't dependent on what it gets back. Independent and unconditional. A love that makes a lot of room for failure and disappointment and setback and pain. I think it's only under the sky of a love like that that we can really reach greatness. Maybe that's why it's so important for so many of us to believe in God.

But whatever it is, whether it's feeling loved or not, we can't deny the facts--something is holding us down, and we were fashioned for more than this, for greatness. The ability to create; the ability to imagine and dream; the ability to recognize beauty; the ability to love. But why? For what larger greatness were we bestowed these gifts? To be doctors and lawyers, astronauts and physicists, authors and politicians. Or maybe Donald Miller was right--maybe the greatest desire of humanity is to be known and loved anyway. If so, to be the source, the provider of such a love-- that is really the highest purpose, the greatness we were created for.

"That's the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love--but to persist in love." --Sue Monk Kidd