Jerking Knees

When I was a boy, I always wanted to play with the little tool the doctor would use to whack my leg just below the knee. It looked to me like a tomahawk, and I wanted one. I never did get my own Taylor’s Reflex Hammer, as the little tomahawk is properly called.

There are other designs of reflex hammers, but the Taylor’s is the most common. With it, the doctor tests our neuro-muscular reflexes by whacking on certain spots and then watching to make sure that we jerk appropriately. It is that whack just below the kneecap, and the accompanying leg jerk, that give us the phrase “knee-jerk reaction.”

Unfortunately, when we use that term, we are not usually referring to knees, but to the propensity most of us have to react unthinkingly when we encounter certain ideas or actions from other people. I regret to say that I can speak as an expert on this matter of knee-jerk reactions.

Fortunately for me, my son, Matt, has become very good at forcing me to re-think many matters on which I would previously react with a somewhat-predictably jerking knee. That is not to say that I always agree with him, even after I re-think a matter. But he has often pushed me, and he frequently – and uncomfortably – has done it by using my own words against me!

As a Christian conservative, there are a number of issues on which I have been well trained to jerk my knees. I appreciate the fact that my son frequently makes me take a fresh look at them. He does not always convince me of his perspective, but he is very good at identifying the key issues involved and presenting them with a logic – and with an attention to details of fact – that often leaves me no honest choice but to agree with him.

At the very least, he forces me to go back to my sources and re-examine and re-think that of which I had previously been so sure. Sometimes, I come away more convinced of my old position than before. More and more frequently, however, I find that my reconsideration brings me around to Matt’s viewpoint.

Meanwhile, why should I be surprised that Matt does this? After all, Patsy and I raised him. And as we, in our own generation, refused to accept everything we were taught as “Gospel” unless we “read it in the Book” for ourselves, so now Matt is doing the same thing. And he is doing it to me!

But, as I told him he should, he really is “knowing more and seeing further” than I. In so many ways, Matt has become my teacher.

Even before Matt came of age and intellect to press me so, I had already taken to trying to limit my own knee-jerk reactions to the bare minimum. Now, he will not allow me even those small luxuries! Using my own principles and logic, and using a deadly-sharp sword of facts, he often discomfits me and requires me to reconsider another long-held assumption.

Not surprisingly, I tend to find this intellectual stress uncomfortable. Sometimes, it feels as though the old soldier is having to go back through basic training. If I complain, however, I do so knowing that the exercise really is good for me.

There are certain Truths that will never change, no matter who challenges them. At the same time, I know that there have been many points of which I was sure, but which honest reconsideration forced me to see differently.

Jerking one’s knee is fine when the doctor whacks away with his little tomahawk-shaped hammer. It is not fine when one is dealing with the important issues of life. I am fortunate to have someone so close to help me deal with my own jerking knees.

Solifugids Among Us

I had never heard of a solifugid before I brought a couple of dead ones back from Sudan for my bug-collecting friend, Bill. I had a couple of these creatures, which I could tell were arachnids, but I thought they were some kind of spider. Bill set me straight; they are a separate order from both spiders and scorpions.

Later, a Google search for “solifugid” brought me far more information than I really wanted about these strange creatures, called variously “camel spiders,” “wind scorpions,” “sun spiders,” and other local names.

The name, solifugid or solifugae, comes from Latin and means “those that flee from the sun.” We never saw them in the daytime.

There are over a thousand known species of solifugids, generally living in warm, arid conditions and in virtually all desert areas in both eastern and western hemispheres. The unattributed drawing at right, which is easily available on the Internet, is a pretty good likeness of what we had in South Sudan, except that ours were a translucent tan.

I met my first solifugid on my first night in Akot. I was sitting under the lit Baptist Training Center shelter when something went whizzing by my feet. A moment later, it zoomed past me the other way. I still had not gotten a good look, but it appeared pretty fearsome. A little later, I managed to kill one.

Even dead, it was scary. Big, hairy, fast – and with those vicious jaws!

These “speedy spiders,” as I took to calling them, grew to nearly four inches long, and they moved in a blur. If one was in a small room, it would almost bounce off the walls as it ran laps around the perimeter. Knowing that these things were out at night made sleeping on the ground considerably less enticing.

After I returned to the States, it occurred to me that I had actually met a lot of solifugids before – especially in church. The Bible even refers to them. They might not have eight legs, but they certainly flee from the light.

In John 3:19-21, we read: 

And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

I preached on solifugids yesterday.

Not your typical Pentecost Sunday sermon, I’ll grant you.  But when one considers that the Holy Spirit was sent by God to bring the Light of His Presence practically into our lives, and when one considers how few church people really seem interested in “walking in the light, as He is in the light,” [a la 1 John 1:7] one might get the connection.

And another thing – I find that the solifugids among us have vicious jaws, too.

The Graduate

My son, Matt, graduated from North Carolina State University today. I am very proud of him. I think it is going to be fascinating to watch what God will do with him in the coming years.

But a graduation is a funny thing. It marks a point of change. Change in the circumstances of a particular life. Change in relationships. 


The change is not a bad thing ... but it can be uncomfortable, at least for a little while, because it means that someone is "moving on." And I am feeling that discomfort now. It is a strange feeling.


It is strange, perhaps because there is the mix of sadness for oneself and joy for the graduate ... very much like the mix of feelings I felt when my mother died last December. (It was not for nothing that I announced her death as a "graduation.")


I am so pleased for Matt and his lovely wife, Meghan. I think they have exciting times ahead, and Patsy and I will enjoy their excitements vicariously as we try to cheer them on their way. But more than ever before, we may have to watch from increasing distance.

We have intentionally been in a process of "turning loose" of Matt since he was an infant. He was never really "ours" anyway. We only had him on loan from God, even when he lived in our house, and even when we had to make most of his decisions for him. But we knew, even when his main choices were of the orange-juice-vs.-grape-juice variety, that we could never control his life, or his choices. At best, we could try to teach him that choices have consequences.

And we could try to point him back toward the God who made Him and who has cared for him and provided faithfully for him all these years.

When, after 10th grade, Matt went away to the NC School of Science and Math, I told Patsy that he would never again come back "home" the same way as before he left. It was so. Later, we moved him off to university. Then he was married. 

Now, Matt is a "graduate."

Change. I can't say that I really like it ... this "change" thing. Especially graduations.

At the same time, I would not stop such change if I could! Anything — anyone — who is not changing is dead! And if those we love do not change, that would be tragedy.

So I accept Matt's change of status with joy. A joy mixed with some discomfort, but nevertheless, joy.


And I will continue to delight in my son's successes.


I expect Matt to know more, to see further, to do more, than I have. He should, because as I have come through life "standing on my father's shoulders," so Matt stands on mine.


What a privilege I have, even if it is sometimes uncomfortable!


Go, Matt!

 

What Couldn't Be Written

I couldn’t write about it at the time. Perhaps a little paranoia lurks in my brain, but I wasn’t willing to risk that some of “them” actually might want to “get” me. So in one of my blog entries, I mentioned that there was something about which I couldn’t write until after I left the country.

On the Saturday before I left Sudan, Jermaine drove me from Akot to Rumbek. We had with us a couple of young Dinka pastors, also. Along the way, we picked up another man who had car trouble and was going to Rumbek for a part. The trip was going well – as well as any trip goes on a laterite washboard of a road where twenty-five miles requires an hour of driving. Then we reached a particular village, just over half way to our destination.

There are always huge “speed bumps” in the villages – as though 25 MPH might be too fast – and there are often police or army checkpoints, but these usually don’t cause much bother. That day, that village was different. 

As we approached one of the speed bumps, we saw an unusual number of soldiers, and then we noticed that there were a lot of stopped, empty vehicles. Then we saw that there was a large group of people sitting under a tree back off the road, and that soldiers with AK-47s and sticks were rushing more and more people into the group under the tree.

The soldiers were not gentle, either. We saw them striking men on the heads and bodies with sticks.

The soldiers motioned us off the road, into the field by the tree, and they began ordering us out of the vehicle. They were reasonably polite with me, but they began to herd Jermaine and our other passengers toward the tree. I intentionally played the “old man” card and moved as slowly as I safely could so as to stay close to the vehicle for as long as possible. 

Perhaps I should mention here that Jermaine, from Cleveland, is black, and although he was wearing his Baptist Mission ID, there was nothing that would immediately communicate his Americanness to the soldiers. What followed probably did not span more than four minutes, but at the time, it certainly seemed much longer.

On my side of the Landcruiser, I was trying to stay close while the soldiers searched the vehicle. I just kept smiling and being cooperative, while moving quite slowly with obvious elderly stiffness. I lost track of Jermaine and the others as they were being hurried toward the tree.

A sergeant came up and apparently realized that we were unlikely to be carrying whatever contraband they were looking for. About the same time, Jermaine must have managed to communicate to someone that his ID meant something to which they should give heed. 

Suddenly, Jermaine was back on his side of the car, and one of the soldiers, who had snatched the keys from Jermaine, handed them back to me and told us to go on.

Jermaine and I replied that we had to have the other men from our vehicle too, and the soldiers told him to go to the tree and find them. Jermaine is not noted for being often in a hurry, but he accomplished that task with remarkable speed. We piled back into the Landcruiser and were about to leave when a soldier told us to take another passenger along. We did not argue.

As we resumed our journey and drove slowly on out of the village, we weren’t sure quite how to act. Another soldier tried to stop us a little further on, but Jermaine called out that the other soldiers had told us to go on – and he did not stop. A quick image of AK rounds riddling the vehicle flashed through my mind.

As best we could figure it, the soldiers were searching vehicles for illegal weapons. After many years of civil war, there are still thousands of AK-47s hidden all across the countryside. These cause concern, and occasional trouble, for the military.

Note, also, that in many third-world countries, people from one section of the country are often used to “police” the people of another area – people with whom they may well have had centuries of traditional hatreds and war, and with whom they may not even share a common language. So it is in South Sudan. And no love is lost between a local population and the soldiers stationed in that area.

The rest of our journey was anticlimactic.

I have previously expressed my appreciation for American security officials and their adherence to the rule of law. That day on the road to Rumbek was one more reason why I feel that way.

Beans and Rice

At lunch today, by request, Patsy fed me red-beans-and-rice. It seems a little strange, but I have actually missed the beans-and-rice since leaving South Sudan. Of all the things I might have anticipated, that would not have been one.

This afternoon, I called my friend Bill, for whom I had collected the bugs. He came over to get them, and he was excited. It will be interesting to see them after he has a chance to mount them properly. He knew immediately about the "speedy spiders," which I had been told were female scorpions.

The speedy spiders are "Sun Spiders," or solifugae, an order of arachnids distinct from both true spiders and scorpions [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solifugae]. Their bite is probably not poisonous, but their jaws can cause a mean wound.

Since I have been back in Rocky Mount, I have had a lot of "catching up" to do on things that went undone while I was gone. And I have tried to rest a little to get over the "jet lag." But I have also been doing some thinking -- some "processing" -- about what these last few weeks have really meant.

I don't think I have yet understood all of what God has been doing through these days, but I think I am seeing  certain things with some clarity.

There is a war on. It is the same old war between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Darkness, but for whatever reasons, it appears that the Lord has chosen to prosecute this war in a fresh way in Southern Sudan. In His process, He allowed me to go there to have some small part. Now, my friends Jermaine and the Fusion team are there on the front lines of this particular battle, and they need our prayers.

The enemy is not to be taken lightly; he is real, he is powerful and he cheats.

But our God is a mighty God, and He shall win the battle!