One of my students just told me "Mr. O, just embrace the messiness of life." (They made a big mess on my classroom floor. Little Miss Sunshine does just that. The film is about a family, a messy family. You've got the cheesy, over-zealous dad (Greg Kinnear), the stoner grandpa (Alan Arkin), the mute, Nihilist son/step-son (Paul Dano), the fun-loving, innocent daughter (Abigail Breslin), the suicidal gay uncle (Steve Carell - the world's funniest man), and the mom trying to hold it all together (Toni Collette). Good times. "Hey, you know what would be a great idea? Let's go on a trip together." It's funny, trust me.The goal is to get Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in California. So everyone piles into an old VW bus, and the shenanigans begin. We laugh, we get offended, we laugh some more, and along the way we fall in love with this quirky family.
This family is messy, they don't always (or ever) get along, and life is just plain awkward. Isn't that how the Church at large is most of the time, when we are completely honest? If we hide behind our own perfect facades, everything looks great. We have it all together, and so does the next guy. But when we are real with each other, it gets messy. We as Christians are world-famous for splitting into smaller factions, and smaller versions of those factions, and micro-versions of the small factions, etc., etc.. We are not good at getting along sometimes. We would rather go off and start our own church/organization/ministry/theology/family. Some of us believers were "born in," some converted at a young age, some later in life, some (well really all of us) are still "in process." The point is, we are diverse. The church body is quirky. Sometimes we are weird, awkward, peculiar, and bizarre. None of us has it all together, so how could a group of messy people have it all together? It's okay that we aren't perfect, and we won't be until "that day." We should strive to be good, righteous, and holy. But we should not strive to win a beauty contest. Olive goes to compete in this contest for children with completely psycho, nut-job parents. I won't give it away, but it's a great metaphor for life. Why win the beauty contest to be something you aren't? Why not be your awkward, weird, quirky self?
Little Miss Sunshine reminds us that real life is messy. Why don't we focus on what's really important, the deeper issues of life. Too many times we get caught up in the surface. We look for reasons to reject each other. We point out things we don't like. Let's "embrace the messiness of life" and embrace each other as messy people. Let's remember that we are family (get up everybody and sing).
3 comments:
dude, how true it is. i really enjoyed the movie as well and took a lot of great things from it. in fact, i wrote a blog also about a scene from the movie. somewhat related is the book i just started reading, This Beautiful Mess, by Rick McKinley. have you read that yet?
Pants, what is your blog address? And, no I haven't read the book, but I've seen it advertised. I should check it out.
What struck me the most about Little Miss Sunshine is that when Olive does her "sexual" dance at the end, the pageant-goers react with disgust and condemnation, while it really is the normal pageant contestants who are sexual in a much more deep, disturbing way. It's as if they can't see the truth, and when Olive basically says "This is a young girl trying to be sexy before her time", they are horsh the rified. Hypocrites.
I loved this movie, and I think my new phrase is "Sometimes you just have to push the bus". But, as long as you have people to push the bus with you, you are good : )
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