No Place Like Home

Maps and Stories

I was a child in sunny California in the 50s, a dream time for post-war America. It was prosperity and promise; houses, streets, and shops spread like dye on wet cloth across the coastal hills. My family had an ordinary house like everyone else and lived an ordinary life - dad went to work every day with the same lunch in his bag, and mom kept the kids loosely corralled, taking attendance when we left for and arrived from school to be sure there were no strays.

When I tell the stories now about that childhood, it becomes richer and more interesting, the stuff of legends. Scrap lumber and plywood was our raft in the local marsh, but now the story takes on the shimmer of Huck Finn on the Mississippi. We kept chickens, but in my re-telling those poor hens become personal avengers. (You really should hear this story - it’s priceless.) My kids, my nieces and nephews, and their friends say “I wish we could have lived back then when things were so fun and exciting.”

I think a large part of their envy is tied to how I tell the story. I have perhaps adjusted the actual past and sold it as more than it was.

And that envy is a common issue with us. We see how someone else lives and then think, “if only I could have what they have - why then my life would be full and interesting.” We forget we all get the same chance for life - we all get the same general instructions; what we make of that life-map becomes our own story, and - more importantly - none of us can or should share someone else’s story.

I thought about this as Monty shared the story of Simon the sorcerer and Philip. You probably remember the highlights - Simon had great fame for his acts of magic, but Philip comes to town and the real God in action exposed his fakery. So Simon was baptized, perhaps trying to fit in, and then asked Philip if he, Simon, could buy the power of God expressed in Philip. This was not a good thing, and Simon was rebuked strongly.

Here’s my take on this: Simon saw Philip’s story and tried to copy it. The real thing is in Philip, and Simon gets envious. Oh I know, there was no ability in Philip for these things - they were of God who worked through Philip. But to Simon, what Philip did must have come from something Philip was or knew, and to Simon all it took to be like Philip was to do what Philip did or to use what Philip knew - it must have been just as fake as the stuff he himself knew to be fake. He couldn’t comprehend a life lived so that the God of the universe acted through an ordinary man.

There’s a danger in envy, you see. We stop being satisfied with how God is working in our own lives and think that we would just be happier if we could have a duplicate life.