Note: This post contains spoilers for Finding Nemo and Finding Dory.
About midway through Finding Nemo, Marlin tells the story about his quest for his lost son. His friend Dory and a group of young sea turtles sit enraptured as he tells the tale. The scene dissolves as one of the turtles tells the story to another sea creature who then tells it to another. Fish, lobsters, swordfish, dolphins, and pelicans pass the account across the sea. The tale ends above Sydney Harbor, not far from Nemo's location, as one bird remarks, "I mean, it sounds like this guy's gonna stop at nothing until he finds his son."
Over the course of the film, Marlin doesn't work as a good God stand-in; he's quite flawed. But that scene and that line always reminded me of God's love for us. It is like a beautifully animated ocean version of Paul's hopeful assertion at the end of Romans 8. For I am convinced that neither sharks nor ships, neither anglerfish nor jellyfish, neither distance nor depth, nothing in all of the sea will be able to separate us from the love. It's an echo. Even when it's not specifically about God, these echoes can always be heard in good art. They are stories of love, parenthood, community, redemption, and coming of age. That's why my own Book of Common Prayer and Worship would include episodes of Parks and Recreation and Lost, songs by Arcade Fire and Chance the Rapper, and especially Pixar movies alongside the hymns and scripture passages.
Nemo began to mean more to me after I became a father myself. I remember watching it with Jim when he was two years old and holding back tears over this cartoon fish searching for his son. At the very end of the movie, Nemo swims back to his dad and hugs him. Jim saw that, threw his small arms around me, and buried his head in my chest. Suddenly there was flesh and blood on the story. It was no longer an abstract version of God's love for us, it was a tale of parenthood that I was beginning to know up close and personal.
This morning, EA and I took Jim and Liam to see Finding Dory at our local cineplex. It was the first time that either of them had seen a movie at the theater. Technically, Jim "saw" Toy Story 3 and Inception in a theater when he was a couple of months old. The fact that he slept through Hans Zimmer's foghorn-like BWAAAAHM! BWAAAAAHM! score to the latter is still a marvel to me. Regardless, this was the first real go at it. I was prepared for them to get too restless or that we would have to leave early, which would have stunk because it was the sequel to one of my favorite movies of all time. They did great, had fun, and we couldn't have picked better movie for their first.
I found myself again at the intersection of stories about heaven and earth. The movie centers on Marlin and Nemo accompanying Dory on a quest for her parents. Throughout she can only remember snatches of home and fears that her parents won't accept her because it was her fault that she got lost. Over the course of the film we catch glimpses of Dory's parents trying to help their short term memory-afflicted daughter make it in the world. One such example is that Dory would always forget where she lived and so they taught her to follow seashells placed on the floor to find her way home.
At the film's lowest ebb, Dory is separated from Marlin and Nemo and is told that her parents are gone. She is out at sea. Lost. Alone. Barely hanging on to any memory of anyone that meant anything to her. Then she sees a seashell. Then another. Dory doesn't know why, but she follows the shells. She keeps following them until she comes to a piece of coral that serves as a home to fish. The camera pans up and there are scores of shell paths leading to the house in every direction. Then her mom and dad swim into view. Their fins are filled with shells for more paths.
I lost it. I cried as a parent. I cried as a child of God. I cried knowing I would do anything if there was a shred of hope that my lost son would come home. I cried knowing the hollowness that comes with feeling adrift from my spiritual home.
We often divide these stories of sacred and secular, but I find that the two touch more often than not. There need not be any competition between the two. We typically talk about Incarnation in relation to Jesus in which God became embodied in human form. We believe that even though Jesus was God that it did not violate the parts of us that make us human. He still experienced hunger, tiredness, loneliness, and doubt. I think a smaller incarnation of sorts can take place in art and stories. God can become incarnate in our very human stories without negating the very human ways they touch our hearts. The sacred is found within. The stories are just another seashell left on the path to help us find the home we forgot.
