"I see you."

Paul and I went to see Avatar the other night. I went kicking and screaming I have to admit. I detest the whole “capitalism kills your soul” routine. My views on capitalism are not communistic by a long shot. Although I do think capitalists must have social responsibility. In the end I was won by the lure of special effects. Ok, they were really good!

I noticed immediately that the natives all have large eyes and mild features making them seem like the good guys. And who doesn’t love a story of good versus evil even if the evil is us humans? The humans are the bad guys, inflicting pain on the harmless aliens, disrupting their lifestyles, etc. We’ve heard it all before.

The most significant thing for me was the intimacy among the natives. Jack learns to link his Avatar tail with other beings to communicate, but not with words, with his mind. That was clever, it strikes a primal chord – language has many forms as we know. And then, the greeting of intimacy, I see you.

High impact, those three monosyllabic words. I see you. It started me down a path of many thoughts. What if we saw each other the way God sees us? I know 90% of the population will cringe because they think God sees us as wicked sinners needing a savior. Yes and no. My impressions of God, since I was a very young child, have been that God sees us as his children needing a father. We’ve been orphaned on planet earth and held against our will to sin. He sent the posse, the prophets, and then sent his son to pay the jailer. Now, it’s a matter of time before we are completely redeemed after living out the rest of this earth sentence, like Jack having to live out his earthly lesser life while playing alien.

How many marriages would thrive if we simply said I see you? How many would fall apart? Some require honesty to survive and others need anonymity don’t they? How many teens long to hear those words from their parents and how many do not? Some lose their hearts to others who claim to see them while others hide all they can from those who see them and want to see them more. Children demand that we see them, no problem there, and if somehow we don’t, they wail until we do – they have it right, that yearning to be seen, to be noticed. How many a child’s heart would be quieted by those simple words, I see you. I see the drawing, I see your smile, I see your tears. Is it any wonder the small boy runs to his mother breathlessly interrupting her, risking her wrath, to exclaim, “Mom, did you SEE me?!” The little girl twirls in front of her father while he watches TV, knowing he will get annoyed, calling out to him to watch her; not to be rude, but to be seen.

The wicked say in their hearts that God is blind. The condemned say he sees and they fear. Those who answer his call rest in his forgiveness and look up to meet his gaze. God, who is always naked, says to his naked man in the garden, I see you, as he tromps around the place with his favorite couple. And isn’t that what God says to us outside the garden? I see you through those clothes you have on, covering your soul, hiding from the hand that made you, trying to fix it yourself… let me do that.

I see you, and then he adds, I want you.