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Progressive Christian

Spiritual Lessons I Learned At Disney World

June 08, 2011 by Greg Garrett

Continued from Page 1

Photo: edellepi, Flickr C.C. What? You say all of this is illusion? Concrete and fiberglass standing in for more substantial realities? Okay, fine. The Apostle Paul argues that in this life we see as in a mirror, darkly. We understand that all our ideas about heaven, God, what have you, are simple cardboard cutouts compared to the actual reality we will someday know. So maybe it's not real. Still, I have been on safaris in the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, and I have been on the Kilimanjaro Safari in the Animal Kingdom park. Maybe the latter is a fake safari, but it looks and feels like a real safari, and the excitement of seeing lions, zebras, and giraffes in what appears to be a savannah focuses your attention intensely toward what you might see next.

The spiritual lesson we might carry away from this element of Disney World is mindfulness. Admittedly, doing the dishes, changing a diaper, or listening to a spouse complain about a horrible meeting or a flat tire won't have the built-in elements of Disney World's Imagineering. But when we pay close attention to our lives, we are nonetheless rewarded. We are reminded that our lives are richer than we had imagined, we discover that we learn about others, and ourselves, and we often are surprised by wonder and delight.

Wonder and Delight
I've mentioned my experience of walking down Disney's Main Street U.S.A, dodging the crowds and dreading the day. Then suddenly I looked up, and there was the Cinderella Castle, 189 feet tall, just like I imagined it from the beginnings of all those Disney TV shows and movies. I looked across at Chandler. The same silly grin had spread across his face.

Those moments happen often at Disney, the unexpected moments when joy can break loose. Sometimes it's on an attraction or ride—the Rock and Roll Roller Coaster, say, in Disney Hollywood that suddenly throws a loop at you that you couldn't know was coming in the dark. Or Space Mountain, in the Magic Kingdom, the grandfather to the R&R Roller Coaster, still surprising and delighting people with twists and turns.

For small people (and some older ones as well, I suspect), wonder and delight may come when they encounter characters like Mickey Mouse or Goofy or Captain Jack Sparrow. Characters they have loved, watched, cheered on suddenly assume flesh, three dimensions, can hug and be hugged. I don't use the word "magic" easily, but watching some of these interactions does have that quality. It's as though the mundane has dropped away, and for a moment, we are in the presence of something bigger, better, more real.

In a sense, these experiences at Disney are "thin places," places where the world beyond (in this case, a story world) breaks into our own world. Spiritually, we should always be looking for thin places, always be open to the possibility of God's kingdom breaking into our day to day lives. In Pulp Fiction, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) describes the miraculous in this way: "I felt the touch of God." My beloved was talking about the same thing when she said: "God's fingerprints were all over it."

In either case, we are talking about developing an awareness, cultivating wonder and surprise, and becoming thankful. It may be easier to do this with the company of others, and so a final lesson we might learn from Disney World is community.

Community
You are never alone at Disney World. On any day, tens of thousands are walking through the park, queuing up in front of and behind you, riding in cars and boats and roller coasters with you. Yet, despite the crush of humanity and the truly international guest list, one rarely sees tension, anger, or pettiness in the Disney parks (although Chandler and his friend Lev said they witnessed a number of examples of pure human meanness in the Universal Studios theme park).

On one of the occasions that Chandler and I rode the Kali River Rapids in the Animal Kingdom, our "boat" was peopled by the two of us and a large family from another land. They did not speak our language, but before we had even begun the ride, we were smiling and gesturing at each other. As the ride continued we laughed and commiserated with those who were soaked, began to pull together, and when we disembarked, wet but happy, we had formed a little community. Barring a second Pentecost I couldn't ask where they were from or what their names were. But for a moment, we had come together around a shared experience, around shared joy and wonder, and we knew we were not quite so alone as we had thought.

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6/8/2011 4:00:00 AM

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About Greg Garrett

Greg Garrett is (according to BBC Radio) one of America's leading voices on religion and culture. He is the author or co-author of over twenty books of fiction, theology, cultural criticism, and spiritual autobiography. His most recent books are The Prodigal, written with the legendary Brennan Manning, Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination, and My Church Is Not Dying: Episcopalians in the 21st Century. A contributor to Patheos since 2010, Greg also writes for the Huffington Post, Salon.com, OnFaith, The Tablet, Reform, and other web and print publications in the US and UK.

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