Context Is Everything

It's interesting to be sitting here and relaxing after watching a good movie. Interesting because of the surroundings, and stirring because of some of the dialogue from the movie. It was “Good Will Hunting” that I watched in the dark of the staff room while the brothers watched their movie in kwongyeh (wilderness), as they affectionately call the main assembly area. If you haven't seen the movie, and you can stand a lot of South Boston expletives being thrown around, it tells a very intriguing tale. In it the character of a psychologist, played by Robin Williams, confronts a brilliant young man, played by Matt Damon, regarding his lack of true knowledge about the world he could so blithely quote and critique at a comfortable distance. He had never experienced anything outside of his hometown. It made me think again about where I am, because as a friend of mine once said, “Context is everything!”

Context in this case is strangely inescapable, and even more so strangely familiar. I really have to focus on it before it seems out of the ordinary. Reflecting intentionally on my past will show the odd juxtaposition of my current situation, but it cannot sustain the sense of oddity. Like pushing on a minor obstacle, it falls away with little effort leaving only what was before my eyes to begin with. The only thing that is sustained is the sense of belonging that comes not from being in an environment where I am the eternal stranger, but rather the rightness of being wherever I am with my Father.