Statues

Statues

by Ryan Billington

May 19, 2011

                I’m a college student.  While the fact seems fairly obvious, it seems my brain has its ganglia wrapped around certain parts of childhood over which I become a bit nostalgic.  Like official nap time.  Or Legos.   Or snack time with Cheez-Its and Jell-o squares.  Or flannel graph boards.  Seriously — how cool were flannel graphs?  I think some of my college classes could be greatly benefited by those felted figures, with the professor acting out the different voices and sounds, inching the happy sheep herd slowly toward the waterhole, unaware of the wolf behind the giant felt bolder.  I can feel the tension.  Who wants to watch a felt wolf engulf a herd of happy sheep?  But you know it won’t happen.  Everything always works out right in Flannel Graph Land.  The trees are loaded with apples, the people are always smiling.  I mean — where did we get the idea of warm-fuzzy notes?  Makes me wonder if they ever prescribe flannel graphing for stress relief.

I was walking back in the rain from a vespers I had almost skipped, feeling a bit contemplative.  It was late after vespers, and everyone had disappeared to after-vespers hang-outs except for the few stragglers around me — the few, the proud, the remnant that stays till they shut off the sanctuary lights.  Recently, the Walla Walla University alumni donated funds to create a statue monument depicting Jesus washing the feet of a small group of college students.  Jesus has a small water jar that pours a cord of water into a basin at the students’ feet. The water gurgles a bit as it lands in the basin.  It sounds like happy water — like the water molecules are smiling, just like the kids around Jesus.  The statues are artfully surrounded by curved benches and crisp red brick boxes, holding the small trees and many lights which cast a glow on the footwashing scene.  With the lights pitching a roofless canopy in the falling rain, I watched as droplets of light hovered over the figures, suspended in illumination as new raindrops replaced those that fell, gracefully cascading down upon the stilled figures, melting into rivulets tinged with bronze that traced the contours of the statues to splash upon the sidewalk.  It was beautiful.

                I turned away from the statues, raindrops misting the backs of my calves.  I’d worn shorts to vespers, and the raindrops felt very wet, very alive.  I liked it.  But as I turned, I saw that the rain away from the dripping figurines didn’t look nearly as picturesque as it fell from a black sky; no golden glow was set in each droplet by those lights that warmed the statues.  And the people with whom I walked did not seem nearly as warm and inviting as the bronzed figures.  These real people were cast in shadows with hands shoved into pockets, arms tight to torso, bumping along in disjointed steps.  I think human beings look funny when walking.  I mean, there are a few exceptions, but for the common person, it seems like their gait lacks fluidity, or perhaps that their hips are jutting back just a bit too far so that their torso seems stuck in a perpetual overbite of their legs.  I even feel this way about my walk.  It’s really a shame they don’t have orthodontists for such things — you know, fixing people’s torso overbite.  But back to the people in the rain.  Cast in the shadows, stumbling through the night, the people next to me seemed — well — like less-es; loser aura; stragglers that didn’t get an invite to an after-vespers party; probably those awkward, socially sketchy people that I wouldn’t care to get to know.  This all sounds terribly elitist and judgmental.  But let me clarify:  I wasn’t feeling vindictive or prejudiced, I was just basking in a blah-ness towards friendliness that sucks away any desire for amiable aquaintancing.  I’m overemphasizing these slight feelings a wee bit to set the sort of the mood that I think many of us know well.

                As I walked away from the statues, my mind lingered on the light canopy, the happy water, Jesus and the college students, and the raindrops on my calves that made everything feel so alive.  I thought that the statue scene felt right.  Right, because I felt that it showed what Jesus would be doing on a rainy Friday evening such as this — out in a raincoat, serving the surprised and hesitant individuals that stumbled within his reach.  But then an epiphany hit me like a hello from Pedrito.  I realized — genius that I am — that such a Jesus would no longer be hanging out in his golden canopy.  He’d be cast in flitting shadows that would make his cheeks gaunt and his frame ambiguous, just like the people next to me.  Frankly, I liked Jesus in the warm glow of the lights.  He looked all Jesus-ish and inviting, just like he had as a flannel graph so many years ago.  I was kind of worried what he’d look like outside the lights, like he’d mutate into something else.  Fact is, I think if Jesus had walked across the Kretschmar lawn that night, and I would have thought him a less, with his odd raincoat and his hands stuffed in his pockets, which would have made his hips seem odd and awkwardly placed.  I probably would have avoided him.

                I think that I struggle to imagine a real-life Jesus.  Whenever I imagine him interacting with people, the scene turns into this meaning-packed, tension-filled melodrama that the sages and theology majors will study for centuries, critiquing every move and word and syllable from Christ.  It’s like those flannel graphs from primary class have never gone away, and Jesus is stuck on them, always surreal, with his perfect hair and little red sash.  It seems like if Jesus ever had any fun, then he’d be wasting precious moments in which he could have been ministering to someone.  I can’t picture Jesus just cutting loose and going waterskiing with me in the morning.  It seems I’ve trapped Jesus in this “meaning box,” in this canopy of light-lit, gold-flashing droplets under which everything — every action, thought, and eye shudder — must carry some grandiose purpose that should probably end up changing me, my life, someone else’s life, or — heck — the world.  And well — I guess when I step back and look at my perspective, it doesn’t seem like that fits into a very real reality, into very real relationships — I mean, at least, none that I’ve ever experienced.

                I guess I would hope that I get to know the other Jesus — not the one in the golden canopy — but the one with the funny raincoat and oddly shaped hips.  It seems like that’s the Jesus I need to learn to imagine and follow, the one that can fit into real moments and real relationships and my very real problem situations.  Perhaps one day I’ll learn to escape from the image of Jesus I saw on the flannel graph board, the Jesus that’s trapped in that golden canopy …