seaside storm

Seaside, Florida is a curious place. Beautiful, clean, planned. It was chosen as the shooting location for the film "The Truman Show" partly because it has this nearly perfect look about it that fit the theme of the movie. For the movie, Seaside was chosen as the fictional town created just for a real human being who had no idea his life was nothing more than entertainment for television. Seaside is a real community, and real people live there living their real lives. But like the movie, it seems to exist in a kind of protective bubble. Someone's dream of a community.

Bonhoeffer wrote, "Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a dream wish .... God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.... God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth.... He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." From Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer