Wandering

Occupation for the mind. Something affording pleasure. I truly, very much, absolutely enjoy reading Entertainment Weekly on a daily basis. It is my new favorite online destination. The writers pick apart the latest Grey’s or Lost, and I delight in experiencing the tug and jerk of every relationship played out in my living room. I am fascinated by the writing, the emotion that a fictious portrayal can evoke from me. Michael hugging Pam on Thursday night. Jack realizing his father betrayed him last Monday.

And then – on a Sunday afternoon – I pause to consider a theology of entertainment. Where is God in my consumption and delight in fiction? Fiction that consumes time. Fiction that consumes emotional space in my home. Energy that may be better spent directly engaged in another human being. Entertainment is sometimes depicted as the antithesis of truth, perhaps the antithesis of worship - just this morning Rob said from the pulpit that his job was not to entertain but to speak truth. I was struck by the positioning of truth as the opposite of entertainment. But isn’t truth the ultimate form of entertainment? Isn’t it the search for meaning that drives our consumption of entertainment? Or is it an escape from meaning, from the truth of our mortality, that drives me to check our Tivo line-up?

 So I’m pausing to consider entertainment and what it means in light of God’s mercies. I’m wondering if it fosters community by triggering emotion and providing a narrative through which people reevaluate their own journeys. Or does it foster isolation and seclusion by bringing forth vulnerability behind closed doors and in between commercials.