Dear Bruce, You Need the Almighty, Not Caitlyn

Celebrities aren’t my thing. I’ve just never been interested enough to keep track of what they do with their lives. But Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn, kept showing up on my network yesterday . So I’ll play amateur armchair psychologist here and theorize.

What really puzzles me isn’t what Bruce/Caitlyn did with his/her body. What puzzles me is the response he/she is getting from the world.

Didn’t Michael Jackson just die a few years ago? And didn’t the world, especially the last few years of his life, know that he was a severely disturbed individual, who struggled with so many issues about his appearance, his identity, his sexuality? Wasn’t that struggle evident in the numerous surgeries and physical alterations and chemical treatments and medication he went through and received, in an endless quest to find himself, and to find happiness? In the end, we all know he died a deeply troubled, unhappy man.

So why are we celebrating Bruce/Caitlyn now? I must be blind, but all I’m seeing is a man on the same path that Michael Jackson was on: the path of self-destruction.

Bruce Jenner, once a very popular athlete, has been overshadowed as of late, judging by the almost daily commentary on Kardashian this and Kardashian that.

That must have been difficult to live with, especially if you’ve had to struggle with your appearance or your self-esteem, when people have looked up to you in the past and put you on a pedestal. Perhaps he found the adulation addictive, once upon a time. Perhaps it was a high that he came to live for and tried to keep, and failed. And now at 60+ (?) he found himself not just sharing the limelight but completely shoved out of it by his own stepdaughters, who get all kinds of attention for their shenanigans and their physical attributes (whether surgically acquired or not I don’t know and I don’t care).

That must be tough on a guy. I’m not surprised that the conclusion he arrived at was that he needed to surgically alter his outward appearance in an attempt to calm down the inner turmoil.

What is this world we live in? Why can we not see that superficiality is self-defeating in the end? We all seek communion, to be loved and accepted for who we are INSIDE. We need people to see beyond the masks, past the walls, into the very core of who we are as human beings, as God’s creation. When that happens, we blossom, as flowers in the sun. We don’t cower in the darkness waiting for death to come for us.

The world seems to think this is the blossoming, the ultimate freedom for Bruce Jenner. But he has simply exchanged the masks he was wearing before, the walls he put up around himself, for new masks and new walls. Sooner or later the masks will have to come off, and the walls have to crumble.

Michael Jackson was used by so many, and that’s exactly what’s happening with Bruce Jenner. I can’t imagine the pressure that he’s in, prior to and after the “transformation”, and I hate to say this, but I have a feeling it’s not going to end well.

For his sake, I do hope he finds happiness and acceptance where he is now. I do hope he finds that communion that he so desperately seeks. My worry is that he’ll be in the limelight just long enough for everyone to take a gander at this new persona, and that once the novelty passes, he’ll be left alone to deal with his inner demons, and then what? Hopefully it won’t be too late. I hope that one day he’ll open his eyes to the truth and beauty of his being, and the truth of his Creator. Until then his heart will be restless, until it rests in Him and Him alone.

Meanwhile I’ll be asking St. Augustine’s intercession for him.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.