In perhaps my favorite documentary ever, I Am, created by Tom Shadyac, director of Evan Almighty and Ace Ventura, there is a scene about connection.
The yogurt scene.
Tom wears a shower cap of wires so a computer can read the electrical impulses of his brain. There is also an electrode in a bowl of yogurt...which is technically alive, if you don't know. Yogurt has live bacterial cultures in it...that's what makes it "good for you."
However...Tom is not connected in any way to the yogurt.
They talk about different things that stimulate a strong emotional response in Tom...the word "lawyer" got a reading off the charts. When Tom's brain reacted, so did the yogurt.
You got that right. So did the yogurt.
The premise of the film is that we are in no way a group of unconnected humans running around this little planet...we are connected and we influence each other in all kinds of ways, seen and unseen.
I've said before that you "fake it till you make it," treating others with respect even if you don't feel it. But this scene challenges my thought that that's enough. That is certainly better than the alternative, but feelings matter.
We are human and sometimes can't change our emotional response...at least not right away. But we can take ourselves our of a constant negative environment, stop speaking and listening to criticism, assume that speaking and hearing positive energy creates positive energy. (since we know negative creates negative)
Wonder if that was what Jesus was getting at when he suggested we not worry about our lives...look at the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.
Or as Bob Marley sings, "Don't worry, be happy."
Maybe radical hospitality has some component of recognition that our smallest thought can make a positive or negative difference.
I think this means we have to love our yogurt when we eat it...
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