When I first started training InterVarsity Staff Interns, I remembered the word of wisdom I once overheard from someone else: never be afraid to train someone who will be a better staff worker than you. I think that this is excellent advice, except I'm not sure that it applies to bloggers. Thanks, Macon, for some excellent, thought-provoking posts over the past couple of weeks. I only hope that for the rest of you, your regularly-scheduled blogger is not a disappointment!
I've got lots of thoughts rolling around in my head coming off of camp that will serve for blogging material, but let me start with the end: recovery.
Each of the last several years, my wife Kelly has taken the kid(s) to her dad's in Ohio for the last half of the second week of camp. She schedules her return flight home for two days after I get home in order to give me two days to binge-sleep and recover so that when she gets home, I'm 100% ready to take over child-care for a couple of days.
In between 10-hour-long stretches of sleep and 2-hour naps, I generally try to watch movies that Kelly would have no interest in watching. Last year, I watched all three Lord of the Rings movies, extended editions. This year, I watched all ten episodes of Band of Brothers.
For those who are unfamiliar, Band of Brothers was an HBO series that chronicled the exploits of Easy Company during World War 2. Easy was on the front-lines of much of the war and had some pretty incredible experiences. The story is as much about the bond forged among the men of Easy Company as it is about their adventures in Europe. I was, of course, captivated for all ten episodes.
As I've considered my heart's response to each of the last two years movies (LOTR and Band of Brothers) I find they stir the same longing in my soul. In both stories there's a small group of randomly put-together companions who rally together around a cause and an enemy much greater than them and triumph in the face of overwhelming odds.
Not to get overly-Wild at Heart on you here, but I think I was made for this story. I think that most of us, men and women, were made for this story. I think we're born with a longing to find our place in the Story much bigger than our own in a community that's about something much more important than just ourselves. These stories make millions by hitting our taproot longings for community around God's purpose and mission.
I think that this is the story that Scripture invites us to participate in. Although I will confess that the enemy often doesn't feel quite so clear and the stakes don't feel quite as high. This has, I believe, more to do with our own dullness than the reality of the situation. And perhaps we need more gospel presentations and Biblical teaching that capture this part of the Story.
6 comments:
welcome back!
Now I can resume my regularly scheduled snarking.
but not snarking:
I think that this is the story that Scripture invites us to participate in. Although I will confess that the enemy often doesn't feel quite so clear and the stakes don't feel quite as high. This has, I believe, more to do with our own dullness than the reality of the situation.
Yeah, I think that the reality is that we do live in this adventure story, and growing up in Christ is discovering the adventure.
Thank you for not going overly-Wild-at-Heart and acknowledging that a lot of these feelings are common to males and females... Wild at Heart is NOT my favorite book and I KNOW you want to stay my tied-for-favorite staffworker... :-P
ashleigh: i know that you've got no love for wild at heart--i find it pretty easy to bash on myself. but i do want to defend it a bit as well. it raises some fantastic issues that most men deal with and the Lord's used it powerfully in many people's lives (mostly men) to free them to live as God designed them to be.
what w.a.h. doesn't do well: 1. it doesn't have any sense of nuance--i.e. not all men have these exact struggles and some women do deal with these same things. in my mind, any book or talk discussing gender issues has to have some sort of disclaimer or qualifier somewhere in there or else it slouches to stereotypes and over-generalizations. 2. w.a.h. raises all these fantastic issues that stir in men's (and some women's) souls and then does absolutely nothing about them in terms of re-defining them in terms of the cross. no redemption, no death, no submission or obedience or repentance or transformation required, according to w.a.h: God made men this way, so go and do that thing you feel in your gut you want to do! um, not exactly Biblical--which is really too bad because it almost creates a situation worse than the original. masculinity or feminity unredeemed and un-healed is only a sword wielded clumsily, waiting to cut off an ear.
thanks for your post alex, and for your comments. I've re-written this comment four times and am now giving up on commenting on w.a.h., due to the uncharitable nature of those first three drafts.
I'm not inclined favorably towards it, though I know some men who have found it to be helpful.
Yeah, those are sorta my two big complaints with it... but you put it a lot more eloquently.
I am not atually fully qualified to write about it because I read a few exerpts after hearing my dad rave about it, was pretty sure I didn't like it but wanted to read the rest, got a few chapters into it (maybe even halfway? this in 11th grade or something...), and then I got too busy reading something else. Oops. I am honest about telling people I didn't read it all... But I also freely state that it's just not my favorite (as wonderous things it has done for certain people). ;o)
My first time reading wah I did not like it - I felt it was too narrow in focus since I don't like cliff-diving, wrestling giant squid, or snatching raw meat from an alligator's mouth. BUT the second time I read it, I was really encouraged. No, I still don't like doing the above activities. But where wild at heart is MOST helpful (even more than ID-ing the longings of a man's soul) is that it really identifies well the problem deep within most men, which is the wounds we have received, "arrows" which have pierced our hearts and caused us to shut them down or reject them. If a person is in a place where they are willing/open to seeing those wounds revealed, this book can be a powerful tool. I feel like there is a lot of wah backlash because people read it and mandate it as necessary for all men, and then women read it, too, so they understand their future husbands and so those of us jaded with Christian subculture throw it in the Jabez pile, or if we read it we read it with a jaded point of view. I'm still not a big fan of the rah-rah men like to go rafting and rope steers stuff that I hear in it (and that I see on their promo video for the gruop Bible series), but it gets men to open their hearts, which is a place for the Holy Spirit to lead us, in our need, to CHrist. I will look back in the book to see if it takes us to the cross (but I am fairly sure that his earlier book, The Sacred Romance, did that.
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