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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday November 11, 2002 Volume IV Number 45 |
FOCUS - First Methodist, Kung Du
When Southern California gets a first rain, you’d think it was a first snow. It’s been months since we’ve enjoyed a good soaker. The grit and dust and oil accumulates on the highways and freeways for months at a time, and when the rain falls the roads can be slick as ice. Californians only know one speed limit – ten miles an hour over whatever is posted. Rain and fog (for that matter) don’t slow anyone down. Not around here.
This Friday, we had one of those rains.
So my weekly trip down to the University for lunch with our son Kevin (who is now a senior and thinking heavy thoughts about life beyond the classroom) took a little longer than usual. The freeway and side streets were a mess. “Sig Alerts” abounded, interrupting talk radio with reports of crashes and slides and injuries and blocked roadways and “rubber-neckers” and alternate routes, which really weren’t. Most of us were stuck. Bumper to bumper. Us solo drivers, many on cell phones, called in to let people know we would be late.
After I made a couple calls, I switched my radio back and forth between Dr. Laura and Sean Hannity. It appears as though Rush Limbaugh has a worthy protégé in the young Mr. Hannity, who is apparently on a meteoric rise toward talk show pre-eminence. Rush, after all these years, will become the Dean of Conservative Talk; Sean Hannity brings a new generation into a new department in the Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies and one wonders if these two purveyors of political conservatism had anything to do with the stunning Republican showing last Tuesday. Between the two of them, it’s colossal coverage.
Another sig alert.
Hit the brakes. Again.
Check out the sedan with the wrinkled fender up against the guard rail and the driver standing outside in the rain shaking his head.
Here comes the tow truck, lights flashing. CHP just behind.
Hit the button. Dr. Laura.
She’s reading a letter; a well written letter from a Mom (“I am my kid’s Mom,” she said) who addressed the issue of a child’s need for a Mom and Dad to nurture and care for the child as no one else can. For the writer, this role is a spiritual thing; requiring the help of God.
It was a touching, engaging letter. She spoke of her “natural impulses” and how parenting on a daily basis required her to set aside her natural impulse, and become something more, for her child. Her natural impulse would be to tell the child to be quiet. Or to leave the child in the next room, so she would have some space. Or to expect someone else to do the work. Or to find solitude from all the distractions. But with God’s help, she said, as a mother, she is learning to listen patiently. To set her own needs aside. To give, and to care, and to create a world not for herself, but for someone else. It’s a daily, hourly choice. It doesn’t come easy.
Then, she said, she watches other people in public places, deal with their children. Often times, those natural impulses govern the interplay between parents and child. And they go unchallenged. The children hear their parents scold and shout, as though they are unwelcome annoyances and generally in the way. Particularly when children are in the care of a non-parent, it appears to get even worse.
Where do we go, the young mother asks, to get help overcoming our natural impulses?
“I go to God,” was her answer.
Dr. Laura was moved in the reading. And I guess I was, too, there in the wet traffic, windshield wiper clicking back and forth.
And then Dr. Laura talked about the grief she gets from certain of her former friends who think her newfound belief in God is a capitulation. In fact, some say her ideas about religion are “dangerous.”
And then she referred to a scene in a movie.
* * * * * * *
I decided it was a good recommendation for a rainy Friday night at home. It’s been a tough week in the office, and I was ready for one of those old classics that has until now remained on the “someday” list. Someday would be today. On the way home, I made the quick stop and searched the Video Shop shelves. Spiderman had no appeal. I needed assistance to find the Classic I had in mind – with the help of the computer database and a friendly employee, I found in the section called The Greatest Films of All Time.
The stars are Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. It’s a John Huston (Angelica’s famous father) film; much of it shot on location. Bogart received his one and only Academy Award for the role. (Hepburn got a nomination.) Bogart’s character, Charlie Allnut, ran a riverboat up and down the shores of interior German West Africa just before the outbreak of the Great War (WWI). A loner, he liked to tinker with his broken down steam-boat, smoke cigars, drink gin and bring news from the outside world to other Westerners who for one reason or another, made their home in the heart of the remote and mysterious Continent.
Charlie was particularly amused by a brother and sister team of Missionaries who established an outpost in a village on the river, built a church, and worshipped there with their primitive converts in a little church which resembled a transplant from a street corner in the English countryside, complete with hardwood pulpit and intricate pipe organ and pews lined up in nice, neat rows. Charlie knew he was as much a target for mission work as the local tribal chiefs, and enjoyed playing the hopeless pagan whenever he made a call.
Rose Sayer, and her brother, the Reverend Samuel Sayer, ran the First Methodist Church of Kung Du. Rose played hymns from the Methodist Hymnal on the pump organ and the good Reverend preached with vigor sermons that only he and his sister understood. They would sing and teach in English, a contradiction that didn’t escape Charlie as he watched from the back of the Sanctuary leaning against the door jam and grinning like a truant school boy, puffing on a lit cigar. But their fervor and their sincerity were genuine, and deep down, Charlie admired them.
Following afternoon tea, Charlie, as though he nearly forgot, announced that war broke out between Germany and England back in Europe. The news shocked the missionaries, especially so because they were English missionaries serving in a German colony. The fearful threat bolted them into readiness, and to prayer.
Shortly afterward, German troops invaded the tranquil village, forcefully rounding up would be soldiers and slaves to support the war effort, burning the village and assaulting the good reverend. In his brokenness, and grief, he took sick with a fever, went delirious, and died.
Leaving his sister alone.
Until Charlie stopped by once more.
The movie bears
the name of Charlie’s ramshackle steamer – The African Queen.
* * * * * * * *
Dr. Laura (I guessing her detractors are annoyed by the name… “Dr. Laura,” as though she is a physician or a psychiatrist or a philosophy professor or a psychologist with a terminal degree. She is none of the above. But now we have Dr. Phil. There will be more to follow, no doubt.) spoke about a scene in the movie she found particularly poignant.
Charlie and Rose (Miss Sayers and Mr. Allnut they called one another) could not be a greater contrast in outlook and values and personal style. In modern parlance, Charlie is from Mars and Rose is from Venus. They could be archetypes of the Mars/Venus model of Male/Female. Neither had time for the other. Neither possessed the slightest patience for the other’s concerns. There was no hint of appreciation for the other’s sensibilities. No interest in the other’s perspectives. They both spoke English, but that was all their language had in common. Hers – the crafted King’s English; skilled diction and proper grammar. His – the utilitarian and crude English of the waterways, punctuated with a repetitious “ain’t” and mismatched verb tenses and dangling participles.
The two opposites find themselves caught in a war zone, isolated in a small boat, with little hope of escape. She the prim Christian, he the grimy boatman. On their journey, they discover one another. And in the discovery, something about themselves.
Shortly after their departure down the Ulanga River from the burned out village of Kung Du, the two argue over their destination. He is content to find a quiet hiding place on the riverbanks to wait out the war. She is convinced that they might together strike a devastating blow against their German enemy for the sake of their homeland, England. At an impasse, they each turn to their own favorite place of solace: she opens her Bible and he a bottle of gin.
The more he drinks, the less she is interested in further conversation. Finally, she withdraws altogether, refusing to respond to him at all.
“Uh, how's the Book, Miss?”
Silence.
“Well, not that I ain't read it, that is to say, my poor old Mum used to read me stories out of it. How's about reading it outloud?”
Again, silence.
“I could sure do with a little spiritual comfort myself.”
More silence.
"And you call yourself a Christian! Do you hear me? Don't ya? Don't ya? Huh?"
Rose remains stoic, unmoved. She’s absorbed only by the open Scripture.
Pitifully, he pleads for mercy. "What ya being so mean for, Miss? A man takes a drop too much once and a while, it's only human nature."
For the first time after a long and painful silence, she looks up from the page and with utter coolness and replies, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
* * * * * *
That’s the line Dr. Laura repeated for her national audience on Friday afternoon. “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
To be fully human, fully alive, is to rise above the instinctive self-centered, self-serving responses that too readily dominate our lives. According to the talk show host, God’s help is required. It’s the lesson of parenthood. It’s the lesson of serving the customer in business. It’s the lesson of ministry to people in need. It’s the lesson of healthy, wholesome, growing marriages. It’s the lesson of team play. It’s the lesson of shared responsibility. It’s the lesson of mature adulthood.
The journey of the
African Queen down the Ulanda River, through the rapids and the dangers of
fortified enemy outposts and crocodiles and lions and tigers and leeches and
broken down equipment, is not one sided. Rose learns from Charlie, too.
Because of him, she discovers the magic of the river, the wild-life, the color,
the changing sky, the perpetual flow. His mastery of the machine, his ability
to tweak it, and repair it and keep it running, inspire her. She is
exhilarated by the freedom and the tumbling of the water over rocks and his
ability to make-do. It isn’t co-dependence, it’s interdependence.
This unlikely pair find themselves a perfect match.
Apart, they are alone, unhappy and vacant. Together, alive.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Your journey is taking you down-river. You’ll never return to life as it once was. That life is gone now. A distant memory. I trust a good memory.
You have a companion, too. You are still learning to understand each other. Your values and your upbringing and your habits and your world-view clash with your partner in ever new ways. Things you thought were resolved, aren’t. There is work to do.
A young mother wrote a moving account of lessons learned in the simple but profound duties of motherhood. Any honest dad could write a similar account. There are certain natural impulses that must be overcome.
Help is available.
And the rewards are indescribable.
As for the African Queen, the destination is not nearly as important as the journey.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
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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