Searching

Today is a strange day, and to keep my mind occupied from the things it would rather not occupy itself with I'm thinking about Jimmy Buffet. Not so much the man, but that fictional character that many of us think we now and sometimes rely on for advice in times of questions without answers and wrestling without an opponent.

I've been thinking about Parrot Heads and Margarittaville and the party that is the Jimmy Buffet franchise, and thinking how different that is than how I think about my first Jimmy Buffet record (yes record, my Dad still has it). When I discovered Jimmy I had yet to taste a Margaritta, but there was some deeper longing for meaning that I could tap into, and as I have gotten older songs like "A Pirate Looks at Forty," and "Tin Cup Chalice" seem to speak even more clearly to me about what I'm still looking for. I don't have any desire to go have a cheeseburger in paradise or drink margaritta's until I can't remember the questions, but I'd like to sit down with Jimmy, at least the fictional one in my head and ask him what he meant when he wrote or sang some of that stuff. The parrothead franchise doesn't appeal to me, but their is something deeper that does.

As I was thinking about this I'm going to make a quantum leap and say the same is true with Christianity for me these days. I still love going to church, still love to hear about Christ. But there is a franchise nature to it that makes me want to run away and hide or worse. Like wanting to find out who Jimmy was when he was hanging out in Livingston, Montana (not Texas as has been reported) I want to read my Bible and find Jesus that was hanging out with real people. Yes, as the story of Simeon shows Jesus was God from the time he was a baby, but somehow like Jimmy Buffet in the mass marketing of it all I think we have it wrong.