Amber Tamblyn stars as Joan Girardi on Joan of Arcadia. © 2004 Sony Pictures Television Inc.
There is a fable about three old monks living in a small monastery. Their home was falling into ruin and they knew that once they were gone it would be lost with no younger monks to care for it. Looking for ideas to save their home, they consulted a wise friend who told them the astounding news: One of you is God.
Not knowing which one of them was God, the awed monks started to treat each other as if they were God. Soon word spread of the tiny monastery where the inhabitants were so good to one another, and people began to travel to see it. In time, the monks were famous and the monastery was saved.
Except for the fact that she talks to God, Joan Girardi, of Joan of Arcadia, is a typical teenager. She teases her brothers and gets teased back, suffers and smiles with her friends and fights and makes up with her boyfriend. She manages to survive school with no more and no less grace than the rest of us, and her trials and triumphs are just as big to her. And, as it is for any typical teenager (if there really is such a thing), Joan faces a lot of choices.
Some choices are easy: Will she go on a Real Date with Adam? Heck, yeah! Some are hard: What to wear? Better ask Judith. Others are insurmountable: Can she manage to go on living after Judith's death?
Most of all, Joan and the other characters face moral choices like us. When her Aunt Olive makes her life more miserable than ever, Joan could have been miserable right back at her. She chose to be patient and eventually found understanding.
Joan, of course, does not always make the right choice. Spying on Adam one day, she sees Judith hug him and jumps to conclusions that make her sorry later. Lessons are learned, truths revealed and apologies made, but the hurt is still there.
God used to appear to Joan in every episode of the show's first season. This year, he has been appearing less often, but she continually watches for Him in the strangers she meets. Sometimes she mistakes ordinary people for God, but oddly enough, she seems to hear God's messages in their words anyway.
So maybe that's the answer. We, like the monks, like Joan, must learn to see God in everyone. It saved the monastery. Maybe it can save our world. After all, God made everything so there must be a bit of Him within everything: In stray cats and crabby aunts, and in the disasters — accidents, deaths, losses — that strengthen our bonds with others. He is in our pain, which teaches us to appreciate our joy, and in our nightmares that promise an awakening. God can even be found in alcoholism, because it can be overcome and the sheep that is found is counted more blessed than the sheep that never strayed. He is in our fear that lets others know the peace found in comforting someone else, and especially in our love. No matter where we look, God is there. He is even in death; through death He brings us home.
I said Joan mistakes ordinary people for God. Maybe there are no 'ordinary people' and Joan was right to see Him in them. Maybe everyone is God in a way, with a little bit of Him shining through. Shouldn't we all be like Joan and the monks, seeing and hearing God everywhere?
God is in everything. We forget to look for Him in the guy who cuts us off at the intersection, the ditzy waitress who mixes up our order, that crabby bus driver, our political leaders. God must be in them too, if we only look deep enough. We can choose to look for the Good in everyone, the God in everyone. What if God is one of us? Maybe He is.
