My daughter Paige loves Twilight. When she was in high school she did her senior thesis on vampires and posthuman archetypes and what they tell us about our humanity. She used Dracula, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Twilight as examples which involved lots of research. She fell in love with the cheesiness and message of the Twilight films and all Twilight movie related things. She owns a couple of tshirts, the make-up set and other pop culture items. This year Lego released a kit to build the house from the movies. Paige asked for it for her birthday. It is a $200 kit and came out this week, although her birthday is not util May. I went ahead and preordered the kit. And I felt a little badly about it. It’s a lot of money. Surely I could use that for something more important in the world or even something more useful for Paige. And sending it so early, because I was worried it might sell out before May makes her eventual celebration in May feel less special.
The kit arrived Yesterday and Paige and her roomate set about working on it. She called us when she finished building the car and the joy in her voice, the laughter between the roommates, the fun of the whole moment made it so clear that this had been the right things.
Sometimes, especially when the world is hard we can feel like joyful things are frivolous. We can feel guilty for the simple pleasure of building legos when children are living in fear. But are lives are a balance. Jesus teachers this when the woman anoints him with perfume. Surely this money would have been better spent to feed the poor says Judas. But Jesus reminds him that sometimes love and joy and ritual are more important than the practical things.
So this week do something joyful. Buy the pasty. Send the flowers. Go out for a nice meal. Buy a new sweater. Give a gift. Go see the play. In our work for justice, in our love of God we need to make space for joy, for the things that make us laugh and that put the song into our soul.
Buy the Legos.
Eilidh
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