Very Life-Like

Well, both Dad and Mom are back home now, so things are back to - well, not normal, but at least to almost how they usually are. And I received the Narniaweb T-shirt that I ordered nearly a month ago. On the back is a portion torn from the classifieds section of a newspaper, listing: For sale - Fine collection of stone sculptures. Very life-like. Ask about our custom-made specials. - The White Witch. This evening I started to think about the ad, and the story it referenced. It was an interesting choice, after all, to have a villian who didn't kill her enemies outright - but instead froze them indefinitely in lifeless stone. Perhaps Lewis just made that up on a whim, or maybe he was influenced by Medusa of Herculean mythology who had such a terrible (in the old sense of the word) face that anyone who looked at it was turned to stone.

The point about it that caught my train of thought though was the fact that stone doesn't change. It's immobile, inflexible and dead. Living creatures, on the other hand, are constantly shifting, changing, and becoming something that they weren't just a moment ago. Aside from the obvious fact that we're moving all the time even when at our stillest, it's fascinating to note that our body completely renews itself (inside and out) in a matter of about eight years. Which means that by 2014 I will have a completely different body, and will've left the old one (yes, in stages) by the wayside. From conception, we're perpetually in motion and perpetually changing. And not just physically. Our soul grows and alters, our mind is shaped and pruned this way and that. It's a natural God-ordained process. Like most of those processes humans have attempted to tinker and mess with it, with dire results. Sometimes we don't want to change, we like things the way they are - or were. But there's no surer way to make someone useless than to trap them in the past. The future won't be utopia but that's where we're going nonetheless. Those who continue to cling to who they were and what once was - those who look 'life-like' but have stopped themselves from living - will inevitably damage themselves and those around them. And it will take the breath of The Lion to make them flesh again.

I'm preaching to myself here - I like stability, and knowing where things are at. I enjoy being comfortable. But I'm realising that comfort and life (or should I say - living) rarely go hand in hand. We must continually shed the old familiar skin, or become crippled beyond use and effectiveness.