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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday April 16, 2001 Volume III Number 16 |
FOCUS - Every Fifteen Minutes
I never did buy into the notion that symbols are bad things.
I was raised to be religious. But I was taught that “idols” were an abomination. That just about covered everything that one might call “religious art.” They told me that only misguided, superstitious people needed tokens and paintings and sculptures as worship aids. And that they were missing the point. Maybe even violating one of the Ten Commandments (“Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”). We took that one literally. God didn’t want people worshipping images of stone and wood and oil on canvas. He wanted them to worship Him. And everyone knows that He is Spirit, can not be seen with human eyes, and will never be accurately portrayed by even the most imaginative artist.
So about the only things that approached religious symbol in our world of Church were a simple Cross, a Christian flag (up front in one corner of the sanctuary and across the room, in perfect symmetry, an American flag), a fifty-five pound open Bible (King James Version) on a wooden table with the carved inscription “This Do in Remembrance of Me,” a pulpit at center stage (right about where the Altar is found in other churches - stressing the centrality of the spoken word), and a electronic organ. Once in awhile, you’d see a portrait of Jesus hanging in some inconspicuous corner of the church. The only portrait sanctioned in our world was called “Solomon’s Head” (Solomon was the artist). It was an olive brown clear skinned Jesus, emotionless, with long brown hair parted down the middle and only a hint of a glow as a backlit radiance against an earth toned brown backdrop. (We were told, “No one really knows what Jesus looked like, but Solomon’s portrayal must be about as accurate as one can get.”)
Even now, churches in our tradition prefer the stark Multi-Purpose room with flexible seating over at the local public school to a hilltop cathedral with lots of stained glass and statuary.
I was raised to be suspicious, even cynical, about symbol. But it wouldn’t be long before I would come to understand its power. To dismiss symbols altogether is to miss powerful insights.
I’m a self-confessed “meaning junkie.” Sometimes, I am moved by deep emotion that comes by surprise. When it happens, I wonder, how did that happen? What was it?
And often times, there’s some kind of symbol involved. Not just in the world of religion. There are images and stories and characters that represent something far more significant than one might think with just a superficial look. Carl Jung called them Archetypes. Look a little deeper, listen a little more carefully, think a little more clearly, and a whole new world of perspective opens up. And you might even be moved. Warmed. Challenged. Changed.
I saw a couple of those this week.
* * * * * * * *
Rannulph Junuh grew up in turn-of-the-century Savannah. If he’d lived a hundred years later, his name might be Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson. He loved golf, and was a natural. His swing was silky smooth. He hit the ball long and straight. As a teenager, he took on Savannah’s best. And beat them all. By the time he graduated from high school, his drives were legendary. People would gather just to see him hit. His putting extraordinary, too. He was meant for the game.
When the first World War (the Great War) came along, Rannulph Junuh, in the tradition of Southern gentlemen, answered the call. His high school sweetheart, Adele Invergordon, the prettiest, wealthiest girl on campus, was there to send him off to war. Like most young soldiers, he followed his ideals. He fought for God and family and country, and was quite willing to die if so it be.
Combat on the European front hardened the young golfer. Weeks, months, years of battle at close range blasted away those ideals he embraced all the way across the Atlantic. Far from the fairway and the fair lady, young Junuh survived. But many of his friends did not. Mid the explosions and rattling of guns and booming cannon and mortar lighting up the sky night after night, Junuh hardened. The anguish and the hunger and the senseless chaos of war left him shell shocked and disinterested in sobriety and polite society.
Once back home, shunning welcome home parades for tattered Southern heroes, Junuh found an isolated hut in the woods to pickle himself in whiskey and smoke and poker.
Adele was fighting different demons.
Before the War, her father gathered all his considerable wealth, and with impeccably poor timing, poured it all into “the finest golf and country club in the nation, right here in Savannah.” But in 1913 the nation’s economy trimmed itself lean and geared up for sacrifice. Boom times vanished as the War effort took over. Golf, with all its excesses, became irrelevant. Along with the Invergordon Master Development Plan.
The Great War robbed Rannulph of his golf swing. It also robbed Adele her family’s fortune.
Adele’s father ended his own life with the hairpin pull of a pistol’s trigger.
She was left penniless, left only with her father’s ambitions and shattered dreams, and a project in ruins.
* * * * * * * *
A couple of months ago, Chino Valley High School in Chino California, went through an exercise none will ever forget. Not the faculty. The administration. The students. The parents. None of them will forget. And maybe, just maybe, a few lives will be saved.
Every fifteen minutes, someone dies in an alcohol related auto accident in the United States.
One ordinary day at Chino High School, the “Grim Reaper” appeared in several classrooms. He wore a black robe that covered his head. His face white and ghoulish. In his hand, a long handled sickle. At random, the Reaper points to a student in the class.
For today’s exercise, this student, Sean, will play the role of the victim of a fatal crash.
Sean is ushered into a room where a team of make-up artists (from the motion picture industry – special effects) paint his face white, darken his eyes, give him a black T-shirt and instructions for the three day all-school exercise in accident prevention.
Sean is told to return to his class. He has been killed in an alcohol related car crash. Volunteers from the Chino community gathered on the campus for three days. These are the people who are called upon whenever there is a fatal crash. The Police Department. The Fire Department. The Paramedics. Local Clergy. The ER staff – doctors and nurses. The Media – print and television. The Coroner. All veterans of real tragedy. Sean, along with four other students, will be a central players in the on-campus drama for the next three days.
When he returns to class, Sean, white faced with a black T-Shirt that says simply “Every 15 Minutes,” is to remain silent. Say nothing. The Grim Reaper will explain to the other students that Sean has been killed in a tragic car crash on Highway 71 involving a drunk driver. He will sit in class, silent, as a reminder that sometimes people die. These are people with a name. With friends. And family.
And when they die, they are gone forever.
* * * * * * * *
The Great War ended in Victory and the town of Savannah, like every other American town, returned the business of restoring some sense of normalcy. It was the prelude to the “Roaring Twenties.”
Adele, now a shrewd businesswoman who inherited her father’s stubborn ambitions, flat turned down offers from Savannah’s business elite to rescue her failing Country Club. She hatches a daring plan. She will offer her last $10,000 as a very public and extraordinary prize. She will invite the two greatest golfers in America to compete on her course, and the winner will take home the purse. Just the very idea that Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen might personally appear in Savannah for the match will bring every red-blooded American to the course for the day, and jump start the Country Club back into the realm of profitability.
In a good-old-boy town meeting late one night, Savannah’s city fathers lament the absence of a Savannah star. Who will represent our fair city in the great tournament? There is no one who could come close to standing up against the Titans of Golf – Jones and Hagen. Is there?
It’s a little boy who suggests the obvious. Runnolph Junuh. Holed up out in the woods. “He could do it!” says young Hardy Greaves. The overweight company of cigar smoking patriarchs of this bastion of Southern charm recalls the legendary swing, the booming drives, the soft touch on the putting green. The steely concentration. They remember Junuh.
But they are doubters all.
* * * * * * * *
When Sean returned to his class, and after the Grim Reaper’s speech, the other students sobered up. At first, there were snickers and a rolling of the eyes at his made-up appearance. But then it occurred to some, then others, that people die. It could well be Sean over there with the color gone and the hollow eyes.
The next day, the school gathered outside. There, an accident was staged. The students were told, “this is what our community rescue teams find at the scene of fatal car crash.” There were two smashed up cars. And inside, fellow students. Recognizable faces. But each “made up” by the special effects make up crew to look like victims do when a horrible crash takes their lives from them in a metal crushing, glass shattering, body mangling collision.
At the sound of a siren, the emergency crew arrives. Paramedics care for survivors. Fire department specialists utilize the “Jaws of Life” to extract bodies from the wreckage. The carnage appears real, and many of the students turn away, unable to look at the awful scene that is all-too-familiar to the crisis professionals hard at work.
Parents are invited, too. And they are encouraged to enter into the drama.
Students are told, enter into the role-play. Show your emotions. They react in shock. They embrace their friends. And their teachers. And their parents. They call out words of encouragement to the emergency crews. They watch the professionals at work, taking in every move. Every command. They pray for survivors. And in the play-acting, they get in touch with something real.
Police arrest the driver, accused of reckless homicide under the influence of mind-altering drugs. In the hearing of all, they make the charge, read the Miranda rights, snap on the handcuffs and haul him off in custody to the Police Department where he is “booked” and placed in a prison cell.
Survivors are loaded on gurneys, and rolled into the back of ambulance vans, hooked up to life support machines. The “dead” are placed in body bags by the Coroner.
The next day, in a large assembly, there is a memorial for the victims. Parents, siblings, coaches, teachers, friends, take the microphone and pay tribute to lives once vibrant and active and alive. Even though they all know it’s so much drama, the value of friendship and family and camaraderie sinks in. There are tears.
A speaker comes and tells a real life story of losing a child in an alcohol related crash… and that week, at Chino Valley High School, a whole community embraces in a new level of resolve. Prevention is not merely some zealot’s paranoid fear… it becomes a way of life.
Symbols have power.
The next day, the students like Sean who were randomly gathered in by the Grim Reaper are given one more assignment. They must write a letter to their parents, describing the feelings they had about a life cut short by accidental tragedy. The parents are also asked to write their “victim” children letters… the letter they never wanted to write. In those letters, they talk about the enormous potential. The joy those children brought. The hopes and the dreams, all cut short. And the words that were not spoken, but should have been.
Chino Valley children and their parents say they never felt closer than they did that day an entire community came together for a symbolic reality check.
* * * * * * *
When the boy Hardy Greaves found Rannulph Junuh in the woods, the outcome looked doubtful. But the boy’s hopeful, innocent appeal got through to the battle worn golfer. Late one night, after dark so no one would see, Rannulph returned to the driving range, just to see if he could still hit. And from the shadows came a Caddie. A counselor. A mentor. A coach.
No one really knows where he came from. Who he was. Or where he finally went.
His name was Bagger Vance. But he assumes the assignment… to be there until Rannulph Junuh, the greatest young golfer ever to compete in the city of Savannah, finds the golf swing he lost somewhere in a firefight in Germany. He tells Rannulph things like, “Golf is a game that cannot be won, only be played.” “A man’s authentic swing cannot be learned, only remembered.” “You can’t make the ball go into the hole, you can only let it.”
But
mainly, Bagger Vance is there to help Rannulph find his integrity.
Rannulph reluctantly agrees to enter the match with the two American
greats, Jones and Hagen. Three
rounds. Junuh has a terrible start, but as the match progressed, he
made a spectacular come-back. And
as the three approach the eighteenth green on the third round, exhausted,
pushed to the limit… and even, something happens just as Rannulph approaches
his ball for his final hit to the green. He
bends over, clears some leaves and pine needles from around the ball… and the
ball moves.
Only three saw the incident, which would cost Junuh a stroke and probably the match. Bagger. The boy Hardy. And Junuh. No one else.
“The ball moved,” Junuh announced. “No!” cried out Hardy, seeing the Championship slipping away. Bagger just watched.
“It moved,” Junuh repeated.
Hardy protested, “No one’s going to know… what DIFFERENCE does it make?” He threw up his hands in disgust. Junuh was throwing away the greatest match in the history of Savannah.
“Who’s gunna know?” Hardy asked.
“I will,” Junuh said flatly.
The Tournament Field Judge stopped by. “Are you SURE, Junuh?” His two competitors also stepped over, and let Junuh know they had seen nothing, and that sometimes what we see isn’t real.
Every one gave him an out.
“The ball moved. I’ll take the stroke.”
Hardy threw up his arms. The judge nodded and marked his card.
Bagger turned and disappeared into the crowd.
His work was done. Junuh not only found his swing, he found his integrity. He learned to be honest, and true to himself.
* * * * * * * *
On this Monday morning, you come to the task after a weekend full of symbol. Easter represents all the color and re-awakening of nature in Springtime. And the Resurrection story impacts all who will take time to consider the reality of the Empty Tomb.
When the high school student body in Chino entertained a program called “Every 15 Minutes,” they were exposed to a symbolic re-enactment of tragedies that strike families all across our nation with disturbing regularity. And maybe those charged feelings will prevent one more.
When Rannulph Junuh encountered an uninvited caddie who accompanied him on a journey towards wholeness in the new hit movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance” he did not know this unassuming man would symbolize all the things he really wanted from his life. That this “angel in disguise” would usher him home, turning from a road to self-destruction back to a sense of who he really was and what he could become. And Rannulph Junuh would become a man reborn.
Have you seen them? The people? The symbols? Those things that happen in your life that have powerful meaning? The potential for positive change? Moments of consequence?
Are you listening?
You are a leader. Take notes. Pay attention.
Spring is in the air.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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