beautiful people need not apply

have you ever wondered about barbie? for some reason, i am thinking about her currently. no, i don't have some unrevealed fetish for dolls - the only barbie i played with as a kid was my grandma's old one, who quickly dropped ken in order to be wisked away by iron man before she was vaporized by some random teenage mutant ninja turtles villan and his transformer minions. but i've been thinking about her because she's so...perfect. absurdly so. i read a report once that barbie couldn't live - she is the equivalent of a girl with breasts that would cause imediate spinal injuries, a waist so small she would be admitted to anorexia rehab, and feet reminisant of chinese-foot binding. but in the fantasy world of american soldiers who don't die and pink corvettes, barbie is perfect. she can cook, clean, model, mother (although she's never had children), fly, go into space, act, heal...there isn't much baribie hasn't done. and then there's her stuff - like the girl who was already perfect suddenly inherits enough money to have houses in malibu and miami while still finding the time to be an executive in new york and a rancer in texas. wow...i think i'm gonna be sick.

but in thinking about her perfection, i wonder things: does barbie ever cry? has she been hurt? does she still picture life with ken as opposed to her new beau (pictured above), austrailian surfer blaine? are her multiple houses/jobs/outfits a desperate attempt at finding identity and meaning in an ever changing world? perhaps she isn't so perfect after all.

like i said, this post should not be cause for alarm among my friends, and i have not acted upon some hidden desire for the color pink in its pondering. rather, i've been moved by events in the past few weeks that have tested my love for the church in a huge way. last week, the president of the national evangelical association, a leader in pro-marriage legislation, and one of the spiritual leaders on the president's speed dial, admitted to struggling (and falling) to drug use and homosexuality. i also struggle with my diverse youth group - there is a part of me that wants a group of youth who are willing to throw everything else to the wind and do "great things" for God. but that's not going to happen - i have fallen youth, just as i am fallen.

and the revelation comes - we do not live in a world of pink plastic. we are flawed, fallen, often evil people. i can no longer believe in a world where people are inherantly good when i know girls who have been abused by the very people who should protect them and have seen entire nations collapse under the weight of obesity when millions of people starve every day. and in all of that, there is hope.

i was praying in church a few weeks ago when i saw a picture of, in many ways, heaven. no, i don't think i see strange pictures of streets of gold and leigons of angels. rather, it was a picture of the fallen, perhaps the way church should be: a drunk next to a woman in white addicted to gossip rubbing up against a homeless man who reeks of urine. and a murderer, and an adulturer, and a porn producer and a rapist and a racist and a autisic child and an elderly grandmother and a foreign exchange student...people of all walks, with every sin imaginable against them, out in the open...and me sitting in the midst of them - me, my prideful, lustful, arrogant self, with all of us joining in the praises of the God who has redeemed us and is changing us into a picutre of His Son who died for us.

ghandi once said, "ask the poor. they will tell you who the true chirstians are." the church is made up of broken people, trying desperately to scratch out a relationship with the mysterious, infinite God of the universe. we fail, and we eat our broken, wanting to live in the plastic church world of "i'm okay, i USED to struggle, but now i have total freedom and peace." crap. pastors are sinners. the church is, in the words of john wesley, "a hospital within a mile of hell". we must stop wearing the masks of righteousness, and put on Jesus, who is all we have. our souls are ugly, every one of us. no one should think otherwise. as far as the kingdom of God is concerned, beautiful people need not apply.

see me, feel me, touch me, heal me

"see me, feel me, touch me, heal me..." -tommy, the who

this morning i hugged an old friend, and she commented, 'we hug now. we never used to hug.' it was a strange staement, but she was right. through our history, through the 'i kinda-sorta like you phase', the 'i'm hurting like crazy' phase, and the 'it's been so long since we've seen each other' phase, we hardly ever hugged. i mean, yeah, there were times when we did, but for some reason it was never a part of our relationship. there was always distance. this got me thinking about perhaps the most primal urge of humanity - to be touched. being touched means intimacy, relationship. if i hit a man in a bar room brawl, i have relationship with him. likewise to the kid whose hand i shake in church, the stranger i buy food, the last hand squeeze after prayer.

here's my question: why am i afraid of touch?

it seems that the very people i care about the most are the people i cannot bring myself to touch. my parents; i can remember the whole "yeah i love you okay goodbye" phase...and i'm not sure how far i am away from it. a girl; i fear myself, and what a touch, even a simple hug, would bring. the dirty; why am i afraid to touch the very people Jesus called me to love?

i'm not sure of the answer...or its remedy. i want to hold those i love and am called to love, to invest myself emotionally and intimately in the lives of those whose situations will require huge sacrifice, to step off the deep end and not be ashamed of who God is calling me to be.

but i'm not there yet.