As I sit here on the front porch of my house, smoking my pipe and looking out at the end of another day in Greer, South Carolina I try and ponder the barrage of thoughts running through my head and feelings swelling in my heart. Tomorrow is the beginning of August, a month which I will primarily spend on a different continent. It is two days since I have been back from Mississippi and almost a week since the last campers left my staff and I to clean up and clear out. So here I sit collecting all of these thoughts so that I may properly organize them and begin to figure them out. I find that writing is one of the best ways for me to do this.
Some of the thoughts are about camp and what it means to finally be done with it. Reading that sentence over in my head makes it sound like I couldn’t wait for it to finish, which is far from the truth. I have already admitted that at the beginning of the summer I didn’t look at FUGE as anything more than a fun way to spend a summer and a smart way to save money but of course GOD had different plans. Those plans included meeting a group of people which, for the second time in my life, helped me understand what unity in the faith meant. The people of which I speak are, of course, the staff of Mississippi College FUGE ’08. If it didn’t take forever, and anyone would take the time to read it, I could write a paragraph about every member of my team and some things I love about them. For some I could write more. Some times I think that corporations and conventions of Christianity miss the point but GOD can work anywhere and he’s not too shy to demonstrate that. I wish I could explain here, in eloquent words, what camp is like and what it meant to me but I feel like that task is beyond my skill so I will only say that it was a GOD experience and leave it to someone else (or challenge the reader to try it for a summer.)
As school was ending and May approached I was really thinking only thing of one thing (I wish I could say it was exams but it wasn’t…it wasn’t Indiana Jones either) and I think that everyone could tell. What I’m talking about is, of course, Africa. For those of you who don’t know, I will be spending the last three weeks of August in Africa with my best friend, Nathan Willis, making short films with locals and missionaries about HIV/AIDS in Malawi. For those of you who know me, know that this is the beginning work of something that I feel GOD is calling both Nathan and I to. When I reached camp I realized the danger I was in of simply getting through the next two months so that I could take this journey so I prayed that HE would direct my focus not on the future solely, but primarily on the present. Well, HE did just that in me. Not that my excitement faded in any way but that I was able to learn all that HE wanted me to learn from camp and do the ministry there that needed to be done and I was blessed by this. So blessed that I almost didn’t want to leave and am thankful that I had many things awaiting me (including Africa) after I finished. GOD is so good at what he does that HE even put a few things in my life which made part of me almost want to stay (don’t worry I haven’t lost any of my fervor and I know that it is where I haven been called which makes it even more exciting.) I have found lately the test of my patience to be one of the greatest lessons I am learning.
Most people my age don’t know what they will do with their life and find this rather testing. What GOD wants of them and their lives is something they have to search for and in this way he tests them and asks that they purse him in this way. My (and Nathan’s) lot is a different one but no less trying. In this case we both know where we want to be and what we want to do but we know that it is a long road that leads there. I have spent time praying and searching the Bible for something to teach me in this. After a few months of doing so I realized that which I was searching for in God’s word was terribly obvious but I probably just didn’t spend enough time looking for it. You see there’s this story of these people who are told by GOD of a place where the land is full of milk and honey and it is promised to them. Of course being human they screw it up and are forced to spend 40 years in the desert wandering around and unable to reach their destination. The funny thing is (read: not funny) their leader (Charlton Heston…I mean, Moses) has to wander around with them and take care of them (well, GOD worked through him in this way.) The thing is the 40 years in the desert isn’t pointless because GOD takes this time to teach lessons, reveal his presence, and bring the Israelites to the place they need to be in order to enter this place (of course the original group of people are all dead…good lesssons to learn in that as well.) There are also miracles in the desert (um…bread on the ground every day? Crazy.) and Moses doesn’t spend his time thinking about how great the promised land is but instead about what has to be done while in the desert.
So lately I’ve been tasting humility because before I’ve been struggling with pride. GOD has been showing me how he doesn’t need me but chooses to use me anyways. It’s a lesson I wrote down in Sunday School long ago but one I need to learn daily. My father told me today, when I began to worry about a lot of stuff that I had to do for Africa that GOD had it under control and that I should know that. I do know this but it’s too easy for me to forget. My friend Kathryn Justice pointed out that GOD was probably still teaching me patience and it was exactly what I needed to hear and instead of trying to figure out the problem immediately, which I wanted to do, I decided that I needed to spend some time with GOD. I spent time praying that HE would break me and take this away, that I would rely solely on him and then I spent time singing songs to him and finding some peace.
I believe that we are all designed for adventure and a lot of things that I’ve been seeing and hearing lately only reinforce that. Well this summer has been full of adventure and it’s about start again. I am thankful, however, for this time to sit and read and smoke a pipe, and talk with friends and worship, and pray. There is beauty in the desert also. I ask that you all pray for me as this journey begins that I seek GOD fully in all of it and that he reveal himself to me. I hope the same for all of you.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Films with my Father
In honor of Father’s Day I thought I’d set aside some time to reflect on my relationship with my Dad. Here is what came out when I decided to attempt this.
It’s hard growing up. Everyone knows it. Even us kids who grow up in a home Norman Rockwell would have been happy to paint have a hard time of it. If you’re a boy then this probably has something to do with your dad. Whether or not your father was hateful, loving, absent, present but distant, or just a normal dad there is some chip on our shoulders with our dads. This isn’t some retrospective on manhood and the need a boy has for his father’s affirmation or anything (there are plenty of good books on stuff like that) or rather a poetic take on an absent father because I don’t know anything about that. Rather this is simply my attempt to understand my relationship with my father and the way that I do that.
My father is not me. I am not my father. He’s a former football player, an electrician, a sports fan, a stern man, and can fix anything in the world. I, on the other hand, am none of these things. When it comes to similarities, I am much more like my mother in every respect. Perhaps this is why, in my growing up process, we clashed so often. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that I was a teenager. Regardless of why, my father and I certainly had our fair share of disagreements. This isn’t to say that I never fought with my mother (in fact most of the time he was simply playing the strong arm of the pair, not enacting his own punishment) but I think that when my dad and I fought it was harder because we’re so very different. For example, my father has a temper. A BIG temper. It never took too much troublemaking to set it off (and there was always a fair share of troublemaking to go around). I, on the other hand, don’t really react to situations in the same way. In fact when I become irritated I turn into something everyone loves: a smart aleck. I know it’s one of my worst faults and something that’s probably going to keep me on the couch a few nights (if and) when I get married. It’s even worse that this is the way I react to my father’s anger because it only serves to make him angrier. I think sometimes it’d be better if I were one of my brothers and could simply have a yelling contest and be done with it.
I was also a rebellious kid. When I say rebellious I don’t mean that I was doing drugs, drinking underage, smoking (anything), partying, or anything like that. In fact I was in church every time I got the chance (some days I went even when my family slept in) and constantly on youth trips and hanging out with my youth minister. This isn’t to say that my rebellion was excusable but rather just to more accurately define it. I got into punk rock in high school thanks to two older influences (both of whom I still count as close friends). When I say punk rock I mean pop punk and when I say pop punk I mean Blink-182, Green Day, and all others to a lesser extent. My parents didn’t understand my taste in music and didn’t agree with what it stood for. The problem is that they tried to stop it and when you’re listening to punk, you’re already mad enough at authority that when your parents try and make you stop listening to it….it just gets bad fast. So there were many long nights of hard fights, broken CDs, snide comments, loud yelling, and that aching feeling that all teenagers get: “they just don’t understand.”
Still even through this time there are many good memories I have withy my pops and a lot of them take place in a movie theater. First of all you should know that my Dad is not a movie guy. At least not a movie guy like I am. When it comes to movies he’s just an average person. He watches them, he enjoys them, and there are some he enjoys more than others but that’s pretty much where it ends. Of course with me it’s always been more than that. For me, the cinema has been an escape, a place of solace, a place of belonging, the great educator, the good friend, and how I understand the world around me. So I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that the movies are also how I understand my dad. That the trips to the theater and the nights around the family TV were so important to me, that the films I saw with my father were more than just entertainment: they were how I connected with my dad on a personal level. The movie theater is the great equalizer because in the darkened theater we all come and participate in similar experiences and though we leave as strangers, for a brief time we are all related. I believe this is why, though my father and may have struggled to connect at all times, we found the theater as a place where we could connect (though we didn’t probably realize it at the time or at least I didn’t) and though my older brother may have had the sports field I had the movies. Briefly (because this is already probably too long winded) I would like to talk about several films and why they are important to me in my relationship with my father and why, whenever I see them, I will think of him. This is not an exhaustive list but rather three films which are most prominent in my mind right now and though at some point I would love to sit down and think more on the subject and rewrite this whole thing, at this point I just don’t have the time.
RETURN OF THE JEDI
Something great happened during my childhood: me, the biggest Star Wars nerd I know (not the biggest one period for sure…God that would be awful) , got to see the original trilogy in theaters. Of course George Lucas had went through and added sometimes pointless special effects to them but the important thing is that they were on the big screen and I was there. For the first one it was a family event as I recall: during January we all traveled to the theater and watched A NEW HOPE. Then a beautiful thing happened: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was released the weekend of my birthday and all of my friends went to see it with me (I think that’s when it became my favorite). But by the time RETURN OF THE JEDI rolled around everyone was spent (except, of course, me) so only my father and I journeyed to the theater to watch the final installment in the STAR WARS saga.
I remember sitting there in awe of a movie I’d seen at least 30 times (yes, even at that point) and I remember my father sitting through it with me. I don’t know if he enjoyed it, I don’t know if he stayed awake, and I don’t know if he had even really wanted to go but for me, it was important that my father was there. And, though we hadn’t yet reached my rebellious stage, it was a rather fitting film. After all the entire original trilogy is about a father and a son. And while my dad isn’t Darth Vader (though sometimes I felt like it) and I’m not Luke Skywalker (I was always a Han Solo kid myself), I believe there is a deep struggle within each of us to prove ourselves to our fathers and when Luke refuses to make the same mistake his dad did (in my favorite part of any of the movies) he does that and saves both his father and himself (in a roundabout way). And though RETURN OF THE JEDI is now my least favorite of the original trilogy, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I was somewhat of a history buff growing up. Now I’m not saying that I was fanatical but there were many an afternoon spent watching the History channel in my house instead of doing my homework. So when Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic came out (WWII being my favorite subject…mainly because that’s what they play on the History Channel) I was anxious to see it. The only problem is that I was young. Too young to see it on my own (I couldn’t even drive to the theater let alone buy a ticket), so after much discussion my parents decided to let me go see it and my father was to take me (I don’t know if my Mom could stomach it).
It was rough. Real, gritty, and violent. It was, I think, as close as we’ll ever get to recreating those events. Still within the grand scale of the European Theater of War there is a human story (I mean, it’s Spielberg). The story is not unlike other Steven Spielberg films thematically. In reality Tom Hanks is an army Captain sent to find a young Private who has lost all four of his brothers to the War of the Century but it doesn’t take to much imagination to see that Hanks is a surrogate father to Matt Damon’s Ryan and that his sacrifice in the end is that of a father for his son. Whenever I see this film I can only think of the first time I saw it in theaters and in the end I can only think of my father and know that he would do the same thing for me that Captain Miller does for Private Ryan.
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
The last film is not one that I journeyed to the theater to see with my dad but rather one that we watch every year when Christmas rolls around. If my father loves any film, I believe it is this one. It is definitely his favorite holiday film (for though it transcends this genre it also fits perfectly into it) and, as a result, mine as well. Not only is the film a stirring tale of what one man can do against the evils of corporate greed and apathy, and how every person’s life matters but it is also the story of George Bailey trying to be a good husband, a good father, and a good man. It is the struggle that most of us guys are either dealing with or know we are going to have to deal with one day.
My father is George Bailey to me. Growing up and staying in the same town most of his life, he has done what my restless heart couldn’t do. He has made a life that is simple but full and he has shown me what a good man looks like. I don’t know the things my father struggles with (for a boy his father usually stays invincible) but I know that, like George Bailey, he could overcome it (of course not alone because we all need a guardian angel). My father loves my mother as fiercely as James Stewart loves Donna Reed and has always been an example to me of what love looks like. But mostly my father is a good dad. Though we are worlds apart I hope that I can be as good of a father as he has been to me. Through our arguments, struggles to understand one another, and sometimes-insurmountable frustration we have gained the relationship we have today and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Though he’s still not perfect, I wouldn’t want to call anyone else “Pops”. I look forward to continuing to growing up and learning more about my father, I look forward to one day asking his advice about a woman I love, or children that I am trying to raise, and I also look forward to a few more trips to the movie theater…
It’s hard growing up. Everyone knows it. Even us kids who grow up in a home Norman Rockwell would have been happy to paint have a hard time of it. If you’re a boy then this probably has something to do with your dad. Whether or not your father was hateful, loving, absent, present but distant, or just a normal dad there is some chip on our shoulders with our dads. This isn’t some retrospective on manhood and the need a boy has for his father’s affirmation or anything (there are plenty of good books on stuff like that) or rather a poetic take on an absent father because I don’t know anything about that. Rather this is simply my attempt to understand my relationship with my father and the way that I do that.
My father is not me. I am not my father. He’s a former football player, an electrician, a sports fan, a stern man, and can fix anything in the world. I, on the other hand, am none of these things. When it comes to similarities, I am much more like my mother in every respect. Perhaps this is why, in my growing up process, we clashed so often. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that I was a teenager. Regardless of why, my father and I certainly had our fair share of disagreements. This isn’t to say that I never fought with my mother (in fact most of the time he was simply playing the strong arm of the pair, not enacting his own punishment) but I think that when my dad and I fought it was harder because we’re so very different. For example, my father has a temper. A BIG temper. It never took too much troublemaking to set it off (and there was always a fair share of troublemaking to go around). I, on the other hand, don’t really react to situations in the same way. In fact when I become irritated I turn into something everyone loves: a smart aleck. I know it’s one of my worst faults and something that’s probably going to keep me on the couch a few nights (if and) when I get married. It’s even worse that this is the way I react to my father’s anger because it only serves to make him angrier. I think sometimes it’d be better if I were one of my brothers and could simply have a yelling contest and be done with it.
I was also a rebellious kid. When I say rebellious I don’t mean that I was doing drugs, drinking underage, smoking (anything), partying, or anything like that. In fact I was in church every time I got the chance (some days I went even when my family slept in) and constantly on youth trips and hanging out with my youth minister. This isn’t to say that my rebellion was excusable but rather just to more accurately define it. I got into punk rock in high school thanks to two older influences (both of whom I still count as close friends). When I say punk rock I mean pop punk and when I say pop punk I mean Blink-182, Green Day, and all others to a lesser extent. My parents didn’t understand my taste in music and didn’t agree with what it stood for. The problem is that they tried to stop it and when you’re listening to punk, you’re already mad enough at authority that when your parents try and make you stop listening to it….it just gets bad fast. So there were many long nights of hard fights, broken CDs, snide comments, loud yelling, and that aching feeling that all teenagers get: “they just don’t understand.”
Still even through this time there are many good memories I have withy my pops and a lot of them take place in a movie theater. First of all you should know that my Dad is not a movie guy. At least not a movie guy like I am. When it comes to movies he’s just an average person. He watches them, he enjoys them, and there are some he enjoys more than others but that’s pretty much where it ends. Of course with me it’s always been more than that. For me, the cinema has been an escape, a place of solace, a place of belonging, the great educator, the good friend, and how I understand the world around me. So I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that the movies are also how I understand my dad. That the trips to the theater and the nights around the family TV were so important to me, that the films I saw with my father were more than just entertainment: they were how I connected with my dad on a personal level. The movie theater is the great equalizer because in the darkened theater we all come and participate in similar experiences and though we leave as strangers, for a brief time we are all related. I believe this is why, though my father and may have struggled to connect at all times, we found the theater as a place where we could connect (though we didn’t probably realize it at the time or at least I didn’t) and though my older brother may have had the sports field I had the movies. Briefly (because this is already probably too long winded) I would like to talk about several films and why they are important to me in my relationship with my father and why, whenever I see them, I will think of him. This is not an exhaustive list but rather three films which are most prominent in my mind right now and though at some point I would love to sit down and think more on the subject and rewrite this whole thing, at this point I just don’t have the time.
RETURN OF THE JEDI
Something great happened during my childhood: me, the biggest Star Wars nerd I know (not the biggest one period for sure…God that would be awful) , got to see the original trilogy in theaters. Of course George Lucas had went through and added sometimes pointless special effects to them but the important thing is that they were on the big screen and I was there. For the first one it was a family event as I recall: during January we all traveled to the theater and watched A NEW HOPE. Then a beautiful thing happened: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was released the weekend of my birthday and all of my friends went to see it with me (I think that’s when it became my favorite). But by the time RETURN OF THE JEDI rolled around everyone was spent (except, of course, me) so only my father and I journeyed to the theater to watch the final installment in the STAR WARS saga.
I remember sitting there in awe of a movie I’d seen at least 30 times (yes, even at that point) and I remember my father sitting through it with me. I don’t know if he enjoyed it, I don’t know if he stayed awake, and I don’t know if he had even really wanted to go but for me, it was important that my father was there. And, though we hadn’t yet reached my rebellious stage, it was a rather fitting film. After all the entire original trilogy is about a father and a son. And while my dad isn’t Darth Vader (though sometimes I felt like it) and I’m not Luke Skywalker (I was always a Han Solo kid myself), I believe there is a deep struggle within each of us to prove ourselves to our fathers and when Luke refuses to make the same mistake his dad did (in my favorite part of any of the movies) he does that and saves both his father and himself (in a roundabout way). And though RETURN OF THE JEDI is now my least favorite of the original trilogy, it will always hold a special place in my heart.
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
Something a lot of people don’t know about me is that I was somewhat of a history buff growing up. Now I’m not saying that I was fanatical but there were many an afternoon spent watching the History channel in my house instead of doing my homework. So when Steven Spielberg’s WWII epic came out (WWII being my favorite subject…mainly because that’s what they play on the History Channel) I was anxious to see it. The only problem is that I was young. Too young to see it on my own (I couldn’t even drive to the theater let alone buy a ticket), so after much discussion my parents decided to let me go see it and my father was to take me (I don’t know if my Mom could stomach it).
It was rough. Real, gritty, and violent. It was, I think, as close as we’ll ever get to recreating those events. Still within the grand scale of the European Theater of War there is a human story (I mean, it’s Spielberg). The story is not unlike other Steven Spielberg films thematically. In reality Tom Hanks is an army Captain sent to find a young Private who has lost all four of his brothers to the War of the Century but it doesn’t take to much imagination to see that Hanks is a surrogate father to Matt Damon’s Ryan and that his sacrifice in the end is that of a father for his son. Whenever I see this film I can only think of the first time I saw it in theaters and in the end I can only think of my father and know that he would do the same thing for me that Captain Miller does for Private Ryan.
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
The last film is not one that I journeyed to the theater to see with my dad but rather one that we watch every year when Christmas rolls around. If my father loves any film, I believe it is this one. It is definitely his favorite holiday film (for though it transcends this genre it also fits perfectly into it) and, as a result, mine as well. Not only is the film a stirring tale of what one man can do against the evils of corporate greed and apathy, and how every person’s life matters but it is also the story of George Bailey trying to be a good husband, a good father, and a good man. It is the struggle that most of us guys are either dealing with or know we are going to have to deal with one day.
My father is George Bailey to me. Growing up and staying in the same town most of his life, he has done what my restless heart couldn’t do. He has made a life that is simple but full and he has shown me what a good man looks like. I don’t know the things my father struggles with (for a boy his father usually stays invincible) but I know that, like George Bailey, he could overcome it (of course not alone because we all need a guardian angel). My father loves my mother as fiercely as James Stewart loves Donna Reed and has always been an example to me of what love looks like. But mostly my father is a good dad. Though we are worlds apart I hope that I can be as good of a father as he has been to me. Through our arguments, struggles to understand one another, and sometimes-insurmountable frustration we have gained the relationship we have today and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Though he’s still not perfect, I wouldn’t want to call anyone else “Pops”. I look forward to continuing to growing up and learning more about my father, I look forward to one day asking his advice about a woman I love, or children that I am trying to raise, and I also look forward to a few more trips to the movie theater…
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