Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

I must have run a mile yesterday morning, over dirt (and silt) roads, which was probably more of a workout for my ankles than anything else.

Along the way I had the sensation that some creature was stalking me from behind the first or second row of yellow, dried corn. But agriculture has a strange way of manipulating the breeze, and I soon discovered that the noise was localized, and that every where I stopped to investigate I only found corn sheaths rubbing up against one another. They just made a drier, huskier, less melodic version of the crickets’ legs rubbing, and actually both of these sounds blended into the wind. After I dispelled my fears of an intelligent coyote with more human hunting skills than even I would have had, I continued running to the reservoir about a quarter mile down the road. I passed little blue flowers on vines that were hugging the corn stalks to my right, and didn’t really pay them any mind because at the time they looked similar to the alfalfa flowers on my left.

As I approached the reservoir, I saw a white crane feeding on the bottom, and it didn’t take long to spot me jogging near . The reservoir had almost emptied, with maybe a few inches of water at the bottom now. But the crane was embarrassed at this, because as soon as it saw me, it flurried away hurriedly, disappearing into the alfalfa a few seconds later. I pondered this (a little sleepily) as I ran to my stopping point. All I could do was run around the corn field, but at the other end, which was close to my starting point, there was no way to cut across in front without having to run all the way around the neighboring house (which also serves as a base for a trucking company with scary Mexican clowns painted on the backs of the cabs). So I had to retrace my steps, or so I thought.

Today as I ran I found that the roads do connect, sort of, and so I can run a round trip around the corn field. As I ran this morning, I saw the same crane, but it was already on its way over the alfalfa to the southwest. I toed in a few anthills to liven up the ants’ day. I remembered the blue flower that I had picked yesterday, which had wilted by the time I had gotten back to ask my grandmother what kind it was. She told me it was a Morning Glory, and it was a threat to the crops because it takes over.

And it had taken over: the entire cotton field to the north of the corn field was topped by a crowd of blue flowers and creeping vines, and even though I knew it was a cotton field, it didn’t look like one.

I said that the blue flower had wilted by the time I got back home, and it had, but it had actually wilted a minute or two after I picked it. Milky liquid dripped on my fingers as I ran, and I thought about what being connected to a vine might be like, in the physical sense (I am connected to the Vine, and if you don’t know what that means, see the gospel of John, chapter 15, verses 1 through 11). I don’t believe that flowers have identity apart from their place on a vine, if they had identity in the first place. A flower without a vine (for the creeping varieties, that is) is a wilted or dead flower, or at least is struggling to survive, and dying in its struggle, perhaps when someone picks it and puts it in a small vase in the kitchen window.

So I started thinking: is this a symbol for the rest of life? Is my family a vine in a sort of way? I do depend on them in some ways, but not for nutrition or safety. I see commercials and ads for gangster movies where the slogans are a dark interpretation of “Family is everything” but I don’t think I’d go that far. What about spiritual nutrition? It’s possible, but it’s nothing predictable or secure, because even the most righteous and pious relative can fall into sin.

And I wound back up with the One True Vine, because that’s what was in the back of my mind the whole time, and I have since dispelled the fear that something running beside me is actually threatening, when it is not. Literature in general and other arts would have us believe that Christianity is not the fuel for creative thought, and the advocates dog us from angles we don’t even realize.

When I get started on this topic, it’s hard to end, and since I can’t have the rest of my day to write, I will remain focused on some meditations, for your reading pleasure and for my mental sharpening.

C.S. Lewis is the person who comes to mind when I try to think up clear, Christian thought, besides the obvious Apostles and Jesus himself. I have read several of Lewis’ books and some of his essays, and his thinking, while not perfect or inspired, is clear and effective. When I read The Four Loves I understood what love was a little better, not with a handful of poignant stories of true love or true friendship or cozy anecdotes about the familial bond. He explained the concept of the four different types of love in a way that made me rethink my writing technique. Before was this: conceptual is bad, and concrete is good. After reading Lewis and his efficient, understandable, and Christian literature, is this: concrete is good, and conceptual is good if it’s good. Conceptual writing is boring, for the most part, and also for the most part I want nothing to do with it.

But here I am, writing about the concept of conceptual writing. And here I am, amending my writing philosophy, and coming back to the One True Vine, where I’ve been all along, and where I thought would be a sub-artistic point to be (because, we all know, that true artists have to chain-smoke, choke down liquor, and revert to at least one sexual topic in anything they do).

The concept of the Vine in the Christian life is crucial to say the least; there is no Christian life without this concept. Without the actual Vine, and the connection to it for the Christian, there is mere, base nominal Christianity, which seems to be only useful for preaching the gospel for any reason, although not necessarily condoned by the Apostle Paul, as seen in Philippians 1:15-18. The Vine should be recognized as being as important as a physical vine is to a Morning Glory. Jesus himself said, “Without me you can do nothing.” The Vine supplies strength, truth, and vitality to those connected. And the Vine is the strongest social network: meeting a fellow Believer (not just a Proclaimer) is always an exciting occasion!

In the vast scope, the sovereignty of the Vine, which he claims, provides atomic motivation for life to continue. In the minute scope, the Vine provides the comfort a Believer desires in even the smallest situations, such as when a tire blows out. And life on the Vine is the best life there is, no holds barred. Other types of lives may sprout up on their own, seeking their own merit, but they die off eventually. Only life on the Vine has the source to keep life vibrant in the droughts, anchored during storms, and fed in the famines.

Every other creed attempts to define life in some new, personal angle. Only Christianity thrives and survives on the concept of the Vine. Hedonism is the culmination of all the overtly selfish tendencies, but even more pious creeds like Buddhism (with the concept of nirvana) stress the self as the goal for any sort of improvement or fulfillment. The goal of nirvana is separation, nothingness, identity lost. The humanistic, psychological ideal of self-actualization is more or less the same idea, though many people will claim that someone who is self-actualized will be able to interact better with others, which begs the question: will that person care?

Christianity is the Vine, and everything else is a flower that blooms and dies in the desert, all in the span of a breath. King Solomon had this idea (over and over and over, et cetera, again) in his Ecclesiastes. He claimed that all life was like this, though he also kept on coming back to the command to fear God and enjoy life to the fullest (which reminds me of what I think is one of Martin Luther’s quotes: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength and do whatever you want”). Jesus wasn’t grabbing ideas out of the air when he said that he was the Vine. It’s the perfect illustration for the Christian life. I’ll bet God had it all planned out from eternity past, to create a type of plant that stemmed off its fruit and flower from a vine, just so he could perfectly illustrate Christ’s relationship to Believers.

All that from running around a corn field. I need to keep my muscles more active, on my body and in my mind. It’s been a while since I’ve run, and a while since I’ve written. I’ll write more.

I have never really found my identity in a theater, or even on the television, whether watching something on cable, local channels, or rented movies and films . But I think some people have.

Watching pre-teens and teenagers define themselves by paraphernalia and attitudes from the movies and TV shows is daunting and discouraging at the least. I don’t know how they can do it. Stores like Target and Walmart capitalize on these trends and then have a feeding frenzy. As a result of (or at least an uncanny correlation with) the recent Superman movie, I have seen too many boys wearing t-shirts and sweaters with the near-universally-recognized S symbol. Creativity has been malnourished, and is crawling to the door of its cell, breathing with pain, only kept alive by the remnant’s discreet care packages.

Is it a wonder that the postmodern, non-gendered “person” is griping about the difficulties of the search for identity? Boys can’t be boys unless they choose to be boys. Likewise with girls, except girls are encouraged to be more of boys than girls. Maybe we should realize that identity isn’t as elusive as we think it is. Reality and identity don’t come in bottles, and you can’t buy them at IKEA, so maybe we should look for them in other venues.

Jason Bourne found his identity three days ago. And he generated more than seventy million dollars in that time. Amnesia and many, many injuries hindered his identity-search, but he found it, and his case of amnesia is the best used in Hollywood in decades, to my knowledge. Leonard Shelby comes close, except Memento didn’t deal with any kind of amnesia—it was anterograde amnesia (Shelby’s mind could not translate short-term memory into the long-term memory banks). Jason Bourne, though, had the foggy and reverb-filled flashbacks little by little, the standard treatment.

Seven years ago Bourne started making his income, which is rising as I write this, and is right now somewhere around three hundred million dollars. Shelby tried hard, but only made twenty-five million; he doesn’t mind, though, because his audience is mainly among the college students and curious, older, intellectuals, and, of course, the immature kids who get a rush from hearing swear words. Bourne’s audience is who used to be called Everyman, but who has since been neutered, because those who speak this language forgot that the masculine pronouns and such have always been neuter unless specifically referring to a male. Everyperson watches the Bourne movies with triumph, and walks out of the theater or turns off the DVD player with confidence, saying, “I, too, can be Jason Bourne.” But then they catch themselves, saying, “But I cannot be Jason Bourne, because he is already someone, and I am not yet anyone, and if I become Jason Bourne then I will only be one of them.”

Bourne may be the new James Bond, or the new, better-groomed, better-mannered Walker, Texas Ranger. But he is so much more to the postmodern journeyperson (silly me, I almost wrote “journeyman”). He is the epitome of the Search with the capital S. He is the hero of our cause; we have lost our identity down the rain-gutter of our discontent, and he has swam through the oceans to find it. Of course, on the way to his swim, he had to jump off of a twenty-story building.

Leonard Shelby lost his identity and can never recover it. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before he’ll wake up in prison, not knowing how he got there, and won’t believe the guards who insist that he was proud to have killed several “John G’s”. There will be Polaroids of Shelby with blood on his chest, happy that he has once again (for the first time) avenged his wife’s death. But he will burn them if he can because his identity cannot be at rest.

Jason, on the other hand, had to do what he could to get his identity back, and that was his goal. He is the cheerleader of the power of identity; he woke up with holes through his whole body, confused, but soon realized that he has all the identities that he needed to shift around the world as needed. And soon enough he found out that he could run really fast, jump across rooftops, kill people with ordinary household objects, and speak at least four foreign languages. I wish I could wake up and speak Italian. Everyperson wants to wake up and have the training to elude fifteen police cars until they have all either given up, crashed, or blown up.

And driving away from the theater, Everyperson thinks, “Maybe, even though I cannot be Jason Bourne, I too can drive off of roofs and weave through traffic like a crochet needle. Or maybe I can at least feel the triumph in saying, ‘I remember everything, and now I am who I am!’” Now, I wrote that for effect, but I believe that anyone would like to make that claim. Jewish people, at very least, will realize the danger and gravity of making such a statement, and would, at least traditionally, condemn such a statement as usurping YHWH’s identity.

I hope that we are wise enough to know that idols can be made out of thought bubbles as well as wood. That glorious identity over on the other side of the stream, where the grass isn’t as whithered as it is over here, is a god. But just because Jason Bourne remembered everything doesn’t mean he’s a pagan. In fact, his dogtags said he was a Catholic. The fact still stands, though, that people can make an idol (an inferior, vastly inferior, image of the real thing) of a picture of Jesus. Bourne is no real Messiah, but he is a literary and visual character, not inherently evil, and has become a Messiah for Everyperson, who has made its pilgrimage to Edwards Cinema to find its nirvana.

Nirvana, though, is the wrong term, because the idea of nirvana is losing all identity. So this, therefore, is an inverted nirvana. But Everyperson is content to rebel against all preconceived religious standards, because Everyperson also has a trusty sidekick, Anycreed. Anycreed is the shadow cast behind Everyperson, changing with every step that Everyperson takes, and growing and shrinking depending on the time of day. And Anycreed pants and pines for the success of Jason Bourne.

Shelby is the failure of the identity god, the dismal view of the 90s, drinking beer and mucus while Everyperson sits at the bar and laughs or pities him. But Bourne is the champion, the model, the type.