COMMENTARY: A Manufactured World, a Transfigured World

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) ORLANDO, Fla. _ I’m not actually in Orlando, it seems. A two-day business trip has landed me on something called International Drive, a self-contained world created by entertainment giants to […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

ORLANDO, Fla. _ I’m not actually in Orlando, it seems. A two-day business trip has landed me on something called International Drive, a self-contained world created by entertainment giants to serve the amusement and spending needs of tourists.


It is a green and tidy world staffed by smiling people who clearly know what it takes to keep visitors contented.

Large hotels flank an enormous convention center. A drive beneath palm trees takes us by one amusement after another. I can see why children go gaga. Everyone is here, from the venerable Mickey to happy dolphins to leering monsters.

For dinner we end up in a Chinese restaurant whose architect apparently visited Hollywood ranch-style mansions in search of inspiration before seeing his first pagoda. Smiling young people lead us to a table beside two demure Chinese musicians, who play haunting string music and are ignored.

Across the room lights suddenly go on, the “Wedding March” begins, and here in Ming Court, to the sound of dishes, chatter and taped wedding music, a bride in flowing white and a groom in a black tuxedo edge between the tables, stand before a video camera and exchange wedding vows.

My first thought is, “This is beyond bizarre.” My second is, “Why not? In a manufactured world like this, where allegedly Szechwan dishes are absent spices, why not manufacture weddings, too?”

I am here to work, however, and as a working environment, almost-Orlando is superb. Everything happens smoothly, from airport transportation to hotel check-in to setting up our booth at a trade show to finding coffee. I’d miss quirkiness, spices and odd little corners eventually, but for a quickie, this city knows its business.

When Jesus took his inner circle up the mountain, he led them to a stage where human history would pivot. In their presence, he would be transfigured, and his new reality would replace older realities. Like the Mouseketeers who transformed Central Florida flatlands into a well-managed setting for commerce, Jesus would transform a barren mountain into a picture of God’s kingdom.


The fact that the resulting vision terrified Peter, James and John suggests how far God’s kingdom is from the Magic Kingdom. No amount of smiling or convenience could mask the stark reality that God was doing a new thing, this new thing didn’t have to do with their pleasure or delight, and they had better “listen up.”

I don’t want to pick on almost-Orlando. Like the guy who runs Don’s Dogs back home, they’re just folks trying to run a business, and they do it better than most. The airline industry, for example, could go to school on almost-Orlando. So could those banks that seem determined to eliminate customer service, and every bureaucracy staffed by the stony-faced and unwilling.

But the tension between the manufactured world and the transfigured world is compelling.

From the beginning, humanity has tried to construct its own more pleasing world. Call it arrogance, or call it insecurity, we have tried to build stairways to heaven, install God inside man-made boxes, create empires that rival creation’s vast sweep, build churches that look like Roman temples and mansions that look like churches. Clergy have dressed like princes, and princes have claimed religious authority. The young try to look old, the old try to look young, and artifice is all.

The Ming Court restaurant is just a well-lighted example of our reluctance to be ourselves. Walt Disney didn’t invent escapism; he just made it more fun.

The transfigured world could hardly be more different. Fashioned by God, not by human hands; revealing God’s glory, not human hubris, the transfigured world points to the center of being, not to the tickling of human appetite.

In a transfigured world, would a couple exchange vows in a tourist restaurant? Sure, why not? Most of life takes place to the sound of other people’s dishes and chatter. In a transfigured world, however, we might look closely at the bride and groom and see in their hesitant faces those dreams that are not only universal but are our bridge to God, namely, that out of noise could come peace, and that out of artifice could come reality.


DEA END EHRICH

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