'Chocolat' A missiological Fable

One of my favorite film stories for thinking about the struggling and displaced organisation I feel called to be part of [the church] is 'Chocolat' The film adaptation of the original story sees Vianne and her daughter literally blown into the town by the wind and they land right in the middle of 'Lent' (or the time of going without) over 40 days.
Vianne rents a space and opens a chocolatery at this time and immediately causes a stir and earns the ire of the Compte or Mayor who is the Senior Priest in the original story.
This disrupts the community value of 'tranquility' so important to the Compte yet so stifling to true community and doing a poor job of papering over: the Compte's marital difficulties; domestic violence; moving on from grief; and appearances. The river Gypsies stretch the villages facade to breaking point as all the fear, anger and certainty shake everything up.
The story speaks to: the challenge of societal and values change; the hypocrisy of retaining a holy image in the face of understandable human frailty; and the threat of the new... Which demands SPACE, PERMISSION and VALIDITY and bring new life the old cannot domesticate easily... Tending to the lowest common denominator in response...

- How does someone perceived as being from the edges give leadership in the middle
- how does someone whose heart is in change and the new make a case for working with what exists
- why is it so often what exists which holds up the new
- &@$!? it

addition:
- I know they can stay on the edge but when what exists attempts to squash, domesticate or castrate the new it's missing out on regrowth, resurection etc the move might be necessitated by opportunity, funding, to begin to work at what stands in the way of the new and bring a fresh perspective.... Or because the edge is always uncomfortable on some level and that wears you out or becomes too fragile so often...
- I'm always disappointed when opportunities are missed, by me, by others, by working groups or communities of faith, by structural reviews, by committees or again by me
- peripheral stuff so often seems to take up the oxygen when a little bit of creative difference would be actually about giving the space, permission and validity to the new...

OK just thinking aloud... In the words of my neighbor "I'm over it!!" today that is...