Jagged and Smooth

"I remember quite clearly one of my middle school teachers telling me that I was a stone with sharp, jagged edges, but that I would turn into a smooth river stone as I grew older. During the years while I was making this film, I felt like I was getting sharper and sharper instead." … Zhao Ling, a filmmaker of a documentary that angered the Chinese government.

I very much like the teaching of the middle school teacher in China. We are in fact raw when we are young, unpolished in our emotions and maturity. We are jagged with innocence and excitement, with the sprint into life, hot energy burning to know, to grow, to show who we are. We are tumbling through life, making a path in that river … not always clear but often full of dynamic action.

That tumbling makes us wiser. We learn more about life, feel the thrill and too the hard disappointments that we encounter. We are polished by time and space. We see what is and what isn’t … we experience truth and falsehoods, not just about the world but about ourselves. We are more deeply in that river of life and every bend, every bank teaches us … and smoothes our journey and our being.

And then there are those times when we become sharper again, by circumstance or by choice. We take our newfound polish and make a statement … whether making a film or striking out in a new way, changing our lives in ways we never expected. In this, we know what we are about … we know we are at risk, but we see more sharply what we must become. It is a new path, one we are sent toward … in that, He is there, our God of faith. He believes in us and knows that we must be who we were destined to be.

I pray that we see both of our edges, the sharp and the smooth, as two sides of a being rich in detail and rich in faith … we are all jagged and smooth.