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Scar is more than the name of the evil lion in Disney’s “Lion King.” A scar is something that remains on our skin or in our psyche from something painful. Scars are not all equal in visibility or pain.

What scars do you carry around? If those scars could talk, what stories would they share? A childhood fall? Some serious or some routine surgery? The loss of someone or something greatly cherished? A hurtful deed or word done or said to you? Sometimes a person’s life at a given moment is a scar. I think, for example of depression. Depression many times begins after a great loss, either real or imagined.

Some scars may make us chuckle a bit. When asked what that scar on one’s arm is, the response may be “I can’t believe I did that.” Another scar may be a mark of pride: “Oh, that little thing? I got that sliding into home with the winning run.” Some scars are from times when we remember only too clearly how we scarred another.

Scars can serve as a monument to some past or even present pain. They serve as proof that we have lived. We have been both victim and victimizer, we have been heroes and goats, careful and clumsy, healthy and ill.

I can’t help but wonder if we have no scars, does it mean we have not lived? That is, does it mean that we have not truly lived? Have we been so careful or so fortunate that pain has somehow escaped us? Were that the case, would ours have been thus far a wholly human life?

Scars are our reminder of the cost of living. We cannot forge strong and loving ties with people and not get hurt. Tears of grief are part of the price we pay for loving someone. To take away those tears would be to take away the love. Physical scars are the reminder of life being lived both by being immersed in life and by sometimes not being careful in life. Some physical scars from surgery can be a reminder of a fearful time and hard work to keep living.

It is no wonder Thomas in the closed room following Jesus’ resurrection, wished to see the scars of Jesus. Thomas wanted to make sure it was the same Jesus who was crucified; that is the same Jesus who once lived and walked the earth living a human life. Thomas wasn’t doubting. Thomas wanted to check Jesus’ credentials to make sure Jesus was still one of them. No doubt a completely heavenly Jesus would have had scars disappear.

We carry around our scars, we live and will no doubt acquire more. Can one live life without gathering scars? Perhaps the better question is this: “Ought one live without receiving scars?” That is, can we say we have truly lived if we have a life without scars?

In “Lion King” it is the evil one named Scar. For followers of Jesus it is not evil to carry around scars… They are simply signs that we have lived.

Spiritual. The word means different things to different people. It can have various understandings in different places and times. Studies and polls agree: many in our culture today identify as “spiritual but not religious.” In fact, this is the fastest growing group of people often referred to as “ The Nones”, as in no religious preference. The word religious, too, we see, can take on varied understandings.

What I often do see in many instances where the word spiritual is used whether inside or outside of church and the Christian faith, is that when one is being spiritual, the understanding is they are somehow being transported away from the life of this earth. In so doing, they hope to encounter an experience with God.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and a martyr for his role in a plot on Hitler’s life for which he was later hanged in a concentration camp, had something to say about those trying to find God by escaping the world. Bonhoeffer said, “Whoever evades the earth does not find God, they only find another world.”

It may be both helpful and healthful to take a break from life and the world from time to time. However we cannot evade the fact we do indeed live in the world and we are part of the world’s “stuff”. We contain many of the same elements listed in those 10th grade chemistry periodical charts; elements found in both living creatures and inanimate earthly objects like rocks.

In addition to those elements we also share in the joy and heartbreak of life and living. We are born and we die. We rejoice and we suffer. Like all God’s creatures and people we were created for life on this earth. The Garden of Eden was not some spiritual locale. It is specifically and geographically located in Genesis, smack dab near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Adam and Eve were not called to escape it or spend their time there in prayer, but to till it and care for it. They were called, in other words, to live in it.

Spiritual is a good word. Retreat, solace, reflection, prayer, contemplation are valid and often necessary activities, or, in some cases, in-activities. Their purpose is not to escape, but to regroup so that we might re-enter that in which we are called to live and serve. We don’t need another world. We need our world to be a place where God’s children live as God calls us to live.

Faith is not to be surreal. We are not to somehow be able to get above or apart of life and live in some spiritual atmosphere. Faith is to be real. It is to engage and encounter, even at times confront life; it is to be used to relate to real people, navigate through real events, and live in real times and places.

That’s the wonder of the incarnation, God in human flesh. This too is where God is found. God chose to not be surreal and float around in some heaven in some spiritual body. God chose to be so close as to look us in the eye. God neither evades nor avoids earth. Faith calls us to do the same.