B.S.

B.S. There's a normal reaction to those two letters, as in "I know what that means." I know what that means too, but this morning those letters stand for something else: Britney Spears.

I don't watch a lot of tv, but what little I do has been liberally peppered recently with reports on this young lady's life; maybe this young girl's life. Shaving her head, problems with her family (mom, sister), her baby, her new boyfriend (emphasis on the word boy), an intervention from Dr. Phil, and so on, and so on. And just last night, a report where she was taken/led from her home and had a football field sized police escort to a hospital.

We have a weekly prayer time in the company I work for and yesterday morning's time held one of my friends asking for prayer for Britney: Don't ya'll just think she needs prayer? The responses around the table were obviously mixed; some chuckled, some sighed, and some said, she's brought in on herself. In the actual "prayer time" all the requests that were mentioned aloud were prayed for/over...except Britney.

I didn't think anything about it at the time. But I thought about it this morning: Why didn't we pray (and I was one of those who prayed aloud) for Britney Spears? If I had months to ponder and reflect on this, I could probably come up with some high-falutin' theological theory, but this is what I've got today and today's really all we've got, so here goes.

Do you ever think that little girl just wants to be seen by somebody? I mean, everything she does is so public, so media-attended, so news-worthy. She's been oogled or googled by billions, but she's never really been "seen." And to try and remedy that, she's willing to do anything, even stripping away an aspect of her femininity (shaving her head).

Who am I? Somebody see me. And tell me. Or help me. Or something.

And that's us, right? We've all got a little bit o' Brit in us. We're all looking for that same thing, trying to find an answer for that same question, being willing to do anything (relative to our situation) to try and remedy that. We didn't pray for Britney Spears that morning because Britney scares the livin' dickens out of us; she reveals the darker angels of our nature. And rather than face them, we'd rather chuckle, sigh, or point the moral finger at someone else. We're either wrestling with those darker angels, a.k.a. "demons", or we've wrestled in the past and they've won and we've resigned ourself to the belief that we'll never really be seen, known, understood, or some combination of all three.

Oh, we won't fumble the baby or make a scene at the restaurant, but we'll drop passive aggressive bombs on family members for years. We'd never put on that school girl outfit (quite effective, for the record) and flaunt down a row of lockers, but we'll sit around and seek to dazzle and amaze those around us with tales of well, when I was.... We'd never think of giving a halfass performance at a sold out concert, but we halfass our marriages, our kids, our friends, and the good Lord himself.

And so the easiest thing to do is turn off the tv, don't watch Entertainment Tonight, don't glance at the tabloid as I'm buying Breyers and Mountain Dew, chuckle, sigh, point the moral finger (infinitely worse than the "bird"), and ultimately refuse to pray aloud for Britney.

When we finished our "prayer" time the other morning, my friend (who mentioned Britney in the first place) said, "Well, I prayed for Britney in my heart." We immediately started talking about something else.

We've all got a little bit of B.S. in us. On second type, make that a lot of B.S. in us.