Are you eccentric?

Yep. I watched another documentary this weekend. It is called VERNON, FLORIDA.As usual, you get to meet real-life, eccentric people--a man who lives, almost solely, to hunt turkeys; the couple who travelled to a desert area of the USA and has been watching their self-made souvenir jar of sand "grow" over the years; the old man who has an opposum caged in his back yard; and my personal favorite, an old man who talks through his personal theology as he paddles us through a swamp. He shares a dialogue he had with his neighbor about the existence of God. He recounted that his neighbor kept explaining the meaning of life, our existence, etc. with the fall-back phrase "It just happens." This wise elderly man suggested that his neighbor needs to decide that definition of "Just Happens" is the word/concept "God." He actually said it much more eloquently than I have explained it here.

His eloquence, like every person we meet in Vernon, was seen in his refreshing simplicity.

Are you simple enough to be eccentric? I looked up the word "eccentric" to find that it means "out of the center." I think that is why I am so drawn to watching documentaries about people. They tend to be people who live out of the center. They step out of the expected pattern for life, step away from the mundane. Maybe the way we become unique and most completely who we are is when we are simple. When we find the simplicity of our own "center" (live from the center of your heart, for instance) we are finally free enough to live outside the box.

Here's a peek into how my mind works. From these thoughts above, I begin to think about the concept of abiding as seen in John 15. There is nothing more simple than thinking of the life of a piece of fruit on a vine. A life of remaining attached and growing from within. Fruit grows from its heart (seed within) and finds its existence outside of itself---out of the center. Simple enough to be just what you are so that you can find life outside yourself. How eccentric!