Movie Star

Last night one of my friends who is getting to know Jesus called to talk about some of his more recent insights, as he does. It's always very intense and fascinating. Anyway, he was telling me about how he went to this talk connected to his alma mater and it turned out it was about Ignatian spirituality. One aspect thereof which intrigued him, I guess, was the concept of life with God as the main character of the story/play/movie we're all in, and the rest of us as equal characters in it. As an aside and a contrast, he said, "Instead of thinking of ourselves as the star of the movie, like jennwith2ns' blog, for example."

He wasn't being mean. He's talked about himself as the star of his own movie before. Still, it cut me to the quick, probably because it's true. In the world of my intellectual beliefs, I know and assert that God is the main character of life, but in my head, I would say that more often than not, I am. I would like to think I am not alone in this self-centeredness (I only want to be alone in my movie-stardom, probably). But it doesn't really matter whether I am the only person who is the star of their own show or not, because the fact that I am the star of my own show at all is the actual problem.

The comment has had the equal and opposite effects of motivating me to get refocused on the One who actually is the star of this here show, and also of making me more self-conscious than ever about this blog. I think it stung so much because, as I confessed at the beginning of the making of this public self-narration, I realise what a self-absorbed medium this is. At least for me. (See? Self-absorbed. The irony is, of course, that I'm processing how convicted I feel of my own selfishness by blogging about it.)

I think I was hoping it would start to become more God-centered than it apparently has. And, to cut myself some slack, one is often told to write about the things one knows, and the things I know best are the ones in my head and my heart. But I do wish the ultimate result here was that people who read it would see God as the main character, and not as the catalyst to help me be one.