My personal relationship with Jesus has always been tenuous at best. Although I fault no particular individual or organization, I am approaching that station in life where I am trying to more closely determine “why things are the way they are.” Aside from my shaky affiliation with Jesus, I have other ponderables: How can Pete simultaneously respect Johnny Cash and Chance the Rapper? What series of events occurred so that Nina can de-bone a whole chicken but is unable to find her way out of a parking garage? Why does Ann Marie reorganize the bean and soup shelf in the pantry every Sunday, only for me to put everything back in the correct location on Tuesday? Body wash? Trump? Currently, the big questions are in abundance. So, of course, I have been on the case seeking the Root Cause of All Things.
Just in time for Christmas, I have arrived at a somewhat nebulous conclusion on the Root Cause of my Jesus Thing. My middling childhood years was dominated by a devotion to motorcycles and Evel Knievel. My bedroom walls were adorned on one side by two giant, red white, and blue Evel Knievel posters. One, a handsome portrait of the man in full leathers and billowing cape; the other a long shot of Evel executing an awesome wheelie on his Harley down an airport runway. On the other side of my room was proudly tacked an 11 x 17 photo-realistic print of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, an artifact earned upon my First Communion. It looked like a photo from the mall: Glamour Shot Jesus, or a senior picture he might later regret. It was the 70s, man.
The iconographic commingling of Jesus and Evel, two somewhat opposing images, yet equally popular, caused a great deal of confusion in my pre-adolescent mind. Jesus’ eyes would follow me wherever I moved to in the room. Perhaps by design his gaze was inescapable. And it sort of freaked me out. At night, due to the shiny emulsion on the surface of the print, even the faintest light, a passing car or waning moon, would illuminate his eyes. Jesus was watching.
Meanwhile, Evel was simply gassing it down the airstrip, rocking his cape, looking to the future, and maybe a few more busses to jump. The cheap, matte finish on the motorcycle posters turned to black at night. Evel never judged.
I don’t fault Photo-realistic Jesus for making me a little skittish. Maybe that particular picture was just a little too heavy for my 10-year-old brain. And other than an occasional whiff of nostalgia, I currently don’t have much to say about Evel other than he was definitely an asshole.
And so it goes… perhaps the Root Cause of All Things is not what we are taught but, rather, what we imagine. And I give thanks.
Merry Christmas.
