Saturday night, when the sky was still clear and the week ahead filled with workdays, The Husband and I headed out for a Suburban Date: dinner at Chili’s and a movie.  We watched the Seahawks beat the Saints over chips and salsa, then headed to the theater to see the movie he had been anticipating:  Tron.  My experience with video games was limited to Frogger as a young kid, Super Mario Bros. as a medium kid, and the refurbished Donkey Kong as a college big kid; TH boasts a much more complex record than that.  While my nose was buried in Sweet Valley High and Babysitters Club books, he was enmeshed in the galaxy of games like Tron and their pop-cultural accompaniments, the original movie being the piece de resistance.

All of which is to say that he was beyond excited and I was willing to tolerate two hours of confusion for some popcorn and M&Ms.

Being a writer who keeps a well-appointed apartment in her head as a second residence, I look for meaning anywhere I can find it.  Being a believer who lives in a world that often seems devoted to tarnishing the sacred, I look for God anywhere he may show up.  Which, as it turns out, is pretty much everywhere, especially outside the church walls and predictable boxes where we file him.  And that’s how I walked away from Tron with a renewed sense of the ever-presence of divinity.  And a blog topic.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we here in Atlanta have been housebound since Monday, preserved under sheets of ice and mountains of blankets.  Businesses have shut down, government has run even less effectively than usual (in other words, not at all), trash has remained uncollected, mail undelivered, and children uneducated.  We live in a neighborhood that is wooded, hilly, and therefore practically undriveable for those of us without four-wheel drive (read: everyone–suburban SUVs are for show, not function).  And so, two weeks after the Christmas break, we are experiencing another week off from Regular Life.

Here’s what such a week looks like in our house:  endless pots of coffee, countless batches of baking cookies, P90X workouts in the basement, soreness all over from said workouts, sledding with the Sis-in-Law and nephews on boogie boards and trashcan lids, and a messier house than usual due to the combined presence of two people who are, in “normal” circumstances, at work most of the week instead of burrowed in the couch, spilling coffee and scattering cookie crumbs.

Let’s stop there.  At the messy part.

I know in my head the metaphor that marriage and mess provide for my walk in faith, for my growth in grace, for my move toward becoming less of an asshat and more of a person.  I know, as I have constantly chronicled, that chasing life with a dustbuster is not the surest way to find it, that laying that wonderful appliance down and being still within the mess of life is the tea party (no political affiliation implied) at which God is most likely to pull up a chair.  I know all this.  Know know know. After all, I’ve been a student most of my life; retaining information is my specialty.  But that distance from my brain to my heart is not a straight line, and much like the roads in my neighborhood now, it is long, convoluted, and filled with stalling and sliding.  Retaining is an act.  Change is a process.  Only the perfect dance of time and grace can wrench the spray bottle from my hands, the planner from my bag, the pen from my fingers, and replace them with peace amidst chaos.  Character amidst corruption.  Faith amidst turmoil.

So.  Back to Tron.

The climax of the film involves a confrontation between Jeff Bridges’ character, Kevin Flynn, and his creation, Klu (Jeff Bridges plus makeup and CGI).  Flynn’s original intent behind the game was to create a perfect universe, and Klu was to be the agent who enacted that perfection.  Klu carried out his purpose, leaving a trail of destruction (in the form of genocide) in his wake. Sound familiar, history buffs?  A bit heavy-handed, but this is a video game movie.  What Flynn discovered too late was what he told Klu: “Perfection is not what we are striving for” after all–it is both “unknowable” and “standing right in front of you.”  Two seemingly contradictory ideas if this world we live in is all there is.

When I opened our front door on Monday morning to the scene pictured at the above left, I caught a glimpse of that perfection that is unknowable this side of eternity: unblemished whiteness.  Sparkling counters, functioning faucets, dustless surfaces.  The kind of perfection that, here on earth, can only be observed from a distance if preservation is the ultimate goal.  Then…the picture on the right. A day of sledding, of climbing, of laughing, of falling.  Of being in the mess.  Life this side of heaven, standing right in front of me.