Saturday, January 24, 2009
Theology of the Great Santini
Theology of the Great Santini
Lest you think I am plagiarizing Pat Conroy’s book, The Great Santini, I assure I am not. I am simply using the title of his novel as a metaphor for a number of different things. It might be that you boomers you never read the book but you surely saw the movie, and you pomos out there have probably read and seen neither- but I won’t hold that against you.
Who was The Great Santini? According to author Pat Conroy, The Great Santini was his Marine Fighter Pilot father who had served in Korea and now(at the 1967) was preparing to serve a tour in Vietnam, and who constantly had to move his family all over the eastern seaboard as he reported to new posts. I’m sure you can imagine how his family of seven children reacted when the Colonel came home and announced; “Pack up, were moving again. We’ll be on the road at midnight to make good time.”
The Colonel, usually in full dress, was competitive in everything, everything but academics and he wanted to make his boys in his own image and his way of doing that was to beat them, throw things at them, verbally and physically abuse them, and to tear their hearts out. When he beat his wife, Pat as a boy would jump on the Colonel’s back only to be swatted off like a persistent fly. Names like pussy, mama’s boy, weak, sad, you’re shit, you’re worth nothing, etc, were the words the of encouragement Patrick Conroy received from the Colonel when ever he tried something that required feats of strength or agility, like sports. He had to answer his father, “Yes, sir. No, Sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
For those of you who vaguely recall either the book or the movie, I need not go on describing the character of The Great Santini. I propose to you, ‘what did you feel when you read the book, saw the movie, or read my brief description above? Think about it for minute.
As it applied to me, years before I got married, I thanked God my dad was not The Great Santini even though his style might have been similar. I got my brain addled and my butt kicked a few times but I usually deserved it, and for the most part it was no where near a real Santini experience. On my part, I was every bit of the Great Santini to my younger brother who still shows the scars for it. Now married for eighteen years with children growing up in my household I ask; “Was I the great Santini? Or to what level was I the great Santini?” Unfortunately there were those times when I put on the colonel’s uniform and became The Great Santini to my children. There were times when I cuffed them, insulted them, verbally abused them, and times when I ground down their self-esteem with the heel of my jungle boot into the sand. Fortunately most of my The Great Santini days are over as I have learned to become someone else, but those days leave their scars behind with which I will have to deal with the rest of my life. A little bit of The Great Santini lives in all of us, no?
Pat Conroy was point guard on the Citadel Bulldog’s Basketball Team and averaged 25 points per game in his senior year. His coach was another The Great Santini type who destroyed his team through petty jealousies and his own insecurities, knowing that he himself would never be the famous college basket player he once was- therefore he went about ruining the potential professional careers of the Citadel’s Bulldogs Basketball Team players. Conroy majored in English and was also the President of the Honor Court, the editor of the school paper, and a major writer for the poetry club. His story of hazing during his plebe was just as full of a nightmare as living in the same house with the colonel- just a lot more of them.
We all have our Great Santinis in this life. I have had my share, thankfully most of them short-lived. It was The Great Santoni who dogged my soul and spirit, far across the oceans with betrayal, pettiness, game playing and uncalled for admonishment for close to fifteen years until I had realized I had given him the power to affect me like that. One day I just refused to give him power over me and The Great Santoni’s jabs and strikes withered up drier than a bone. He was done.
Sometime we have The Great Santinis in our lives who abuse us through mind games, through gossip, spreading of rumors, and through physical and verbal violence. Sometimes it’s hard to sort them all out. Life is full of them. Sometimes we’re akin to a pin pall rolling down through the life lines of lives bouncing off various forms of The Great Santini until we either get catapulted back up only to go through them again, or we luckily plunk into the whole on the bottom.
How does one overcome The Great Santinis of this life? How does one like Patrick Conroy overcome a life full of Great Santinis of all kinds stacked on top of each like cordwood? Conroy went on to write six excellent novels (most about his life) which were mostly best-sellers but not without a cost. He is on his third wife now, had dealt with severe lasting bouts of depression, and contemplated suicide a number of times (his brother committed suicide by jumping off a tall building and mental illness runs his generation of the family). He is a scarred man but somewhat fulfilled as well.
I recently saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire and couldn’t fathom how three children from an Indian slum in Mumbai made it through an unending maze of Great Santinis up until young adulthood. Actually, the real Great Santini would have been a blessing compared to the Karma parked on their front matts. How did they make it when no one, literally, was there to help them, only exploit them?
Another movie worth watching, Gran Torino, directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood visits the same storyline except in the form of a Hmong family in Minnesota who wants to keep their son from joining a gang. In this scenario, Clint Eastwood as The Great Santini neighbor next door, ends up comparing his cultural values with those of the Hmong family and finds his own American values out of whack. He changes over the course of a few months to take under his wing Hmong teenager who calls "gook" and "slope" who was forced to try to steal his car by the Hmong gang and Eastwood teaches the boy constructions skills, then only to lose his own life in the process of peacefully saving the young Hmong boy from a joining gang.
Our world is stacked with Great Santinis. So who are we? Are we the Great Santini to our children, our neighbors, our parents? Or are we on the receiving end? Have we gone through Santini’s like cordwood? What price are we paying to get our souls back again? It doesn't seem like the factory will not stop churning them out too soon. The onslaught may be great but some Great Santinis can change.
Pat Conroy wrote The Great Santini as an act of revenge on his father who had severely beaten all members of his family from the time Pat was a youngster to his graduation date at Citadel. The Great Santini read the book, The Great Santini, written by his son Pat and was cut to the quick. Of course some things were disputed, but by and large, he began to change, and he changed radically. Pat Conroy tremendously enjoyed the new relationship he and his father came to build between themselves over the last 15 or so years of The Great Santini’s life.
Change is possible no matter how much the odds are stacked up against us, or against someone else. It won’t be fun, it won’t be easy, you don’t have to like it, and it will be messy, but let’s get on with it as much as we can. And God uses to The Great Santinis of this life to shape us into who and what he wants to be. God’s shaping is never fun easy either, but it is the way he chooses. I don’t know any other way that Pat Conroy could have responded to God’s shaping through his father, coach and plebes in his short 21 years. Would I trade his fame and fortune for those experiences. A tough call!
Lest you think I am plagiarizing Pat Conroy’s book, The Great Santini, I assure I am not. I am simply using the title of his novel as a metaphor for a number of different things. It might be that you boomers you never read the book but you surely saw the movie, and you pomos out there have probably read and seen neither- but I won’t hold that against you.
Who was The Great Santini? According to author Pat Conroy, The Great Santini was his Marine Fighter Pilot father who had served in Korea and now(at the 1967) was preparing to serve a tour in Vietnam, and who constantly had to move his family all over the eastern seaboard as he reported to new posts. I’m sure you can imagine how his family of seven children reacted when the Colonel came home and announced; “Pack up, were moving again. We’ll be on the road at midnight to make good time.”
The Colonel, usually in full dress, was competitive in everything, everything but academics and he wanted to make his boys in his own image and his way of doing that was to beat them, throw things at them, verbally and physically abuse them, and to tear their hearts out. When he beat his wife, Pat as a boy would jump on the Colonel’s back only to be swatted off like a persistent fly. Names like pussy, mama’s boy, weak, sad, you’re shit, you’re worth nothing, etc, were the words the of encouragement Patrick Conroy received from the Colonel when ever he tried something that required feats of strength or agility, like sports. He had to answer his father, “Yes, sir. No, Sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
For those of you who vaguely recall either the book or the movie, I need not go on describing the character of The Great Santini. I propose to you, ‘what did you feel when you read the book, saw the movie, or read my brief description above? Think about it for minute.
As it applied to me, years before I got married, I thanked God my dad was not The Great Santini even though his style might have been similar. I got my brain addled and my butt kicked a few times but I usually deserved it, and for the most part it was no where near a real Santini experience. On my part, I was every bit of the Great Santini to my younger brother who still shows the scars for it. Now married for eighteen years with children growing up in my household I ask; “Was I the great Santini? Or to what level was I the great Santini?” Unfortunately there were those times when I put on the colonel’s uniform and became The Great Santini to my children. There were times when I cuffed them, insulted them, verbally abused them, and times when I ground down their self-esteem with the heel of my jungle boot into the sand. Fortunately most of my The Great Santini days are over as I have learned to become someone else, but those days leave their scars behind with which I will have to deal with the rest of my life. A little bit of The Great Santini lives in all of us, no?
Pat Conroy was point guard on the Citadel Bulldog’s Basketball Team and averaged 25 points per game in his senior year. His coach was another The Great Santini type who destroyed his team through petty jealousies and his own insecurities, knowing that he himself would never be the famous college basket player he once was- therefore he went about ruining the potential professional careers of the Citadel’s Bulldogs Basketball Team players. Conroy majored in English and was also the President of the Honor Court, the editor of the school paper, and a major writer for the poetry club. His story of hazing during his plebe was just as full of a nightmare as living in the same house with the colonel- just a lot more of them.
We all have our Great Santinis in this life. I have had my share, thankfully most of them short-lived. It was The Great Santoni who dogged my soul and spirit, far across the oceans with betrayal, pettiness, game playing and uncalled for admonishment for close to fifteen years until I had realized I had given him the power to affect me like that. One day I just refused to give him power over me and The Great Santoni’s jabs and strikes withered up drier than a bone. He was done.
Sometime we have The Great Santinis in our lives who abuse us through mind games, through gossip, spreading of rumors, and through physical and verbal violence. Sometimes it’s hard to sort them all out. Life is full of them. Sometimes we’re akin to a pin pall rolling down through the life lines of lives bouncing off various forms of The Great Santini until we either get catapulted back up only to go through them again, or we luckily plunk into the whole on the bottom.
How does one overcome The Great Santinis of this life? How does one like Patrick Conroy overcome a life full of Great Santinis of all kinds stacked on top of each like cordwood? Conroy went on to write six excellent novels (most about his life) which were mostly best-sellers but not without a cost. He is on his third wife now, had dealt with severe lasting bouts of depression, and contemplated suicide a number of times (his brother committed suicide by jumping off a tall building and mental illness runs his generation of the family). He is a scarred man but somewhat fulfilled as well.
I recently saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire and couldn’t fathom how three children from an Indian slum in Mumbai made it through an unending maze of Great Santinis up until young adulthood. Actually, the real Great Santini would have been a blessing compared to the Karma parked on their front matts. How did they make it when no one, literally, was there to help them, only exploit them?
Another movie worth watching, Gran Torino, directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood visits the same storyline except in the form of a Hmong family in Minnesota who wants to keep their son from joining a gang. In this scenario, Clint Eastwood as The Great Santini neighbor next door, ends up comparing his cultural values with those of the Hmong family and finds his own American values out of whack. He changes over the course of a few months to take under his wing Hmong teenager who calls "gook" and "slope" who was forced to try to steal his car by the Hmong gang and Eastwood teaches the boy constructions skills, then only to lose his own life in the process of peacefully saving the young Hmong boy from a joining gang.
Our world is stacked with Great Santinis. So who are we? Are we the Great Santini to our children, our neighbors, our parents? Or are we on the receiving end? Have we gone through Santini’s like cordwood? What price are we paying to get our souls back again? It doesn't seem like the factory will not stop churning them out too soon. The onslaught may be great but some Great Santinis can change.
Pat Conroy wrote The Great Santini as an act of revenge on his father who had severely beaten all members of his family from the time Pat was a youngster to his graduation date at Citadel. The Great Santini read the book, The Great Santini, written by his son Pat and was cut to the quick. Of course some things were disputed, but by and large, he began to change, and he changed radically. Pat Conroy tremendously enjoyed the new relationship he and his father came to build between themselves over the last 15 or so years of The Great Santini’s life.
Change is possible no matter how much the odds are stacked up against us, or against someone else. It won’t be fun, it won’t be easy, you don’t have to like it, and it will be messy, but let’s get on with it as much as we can. And God uses to The Great Santinis of this life to shape us into who and what he wants to be. God’s shaping is never fun easy either, but it is the way he chooses. I don’t know any other way that Pat Conroy could have responded to God’s shaping through his father, coach and plebes in his short 21 years. Would I trade his fame and fortune for those experiences. A tough call!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Prisoners of Disobedience
Victor Frankel was wrong. Unless we go the through the very rigorous process of examining our cultural values and world view, and making the necessary corrections (a long process), we will never be free. God nor the Bible cannot set us free unless we agree to follow God in obedience into the deep, deep process of shaping that moves us along in our spiritual development until we reach a phase where we can hear Him granting us freedom from our cells of cultural captivity by engaging in a reworking of our enlightenment, modern and American cultural values and world view.
Brian
Brian
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Listening to God?
I began fasting once a week and I really don’t like it all that much but I feel the need to seek God more intently and intentionally as I tread the turbulent waters of marriage-family tensions, and financial pressures. About 11 am this morning I took a break and lay down upon my bed. I just lay there for awhile, enjoying the silence and thought about the concept of listening to God. I waited for God to speak to me in the deafening silence, but words came not, nor was there the thundering voice of God like Saul heard on the road to Damascus, or that still small voice that Elijah heard on the side of Mount Carmel, breaking into my cottage-like bedroom/office.
My mind wandered to a shabby Rhododendron I transplanted for my landlord. The plant was barely surviving as the roots had no where to grow, so they grew around the root ball making it a solid mass of circular dead-end roots. When I dug the hole for transplanting the “Rhodie” to a new location, I dug the hole rather wide, and then plopped in the root ball. I back filled my wide hole with the excavated soil so the roots would not hit a ‘brick wall’ of compacted soil when they began to grow out of the root ball. I bought some bone meal to apply as organic phosphorus which helps the roots grow out of the ball and into the surrounding soil. “Plant down your roots, you shabby shrub,” I commanded it.
My mind suddenly changed channels and I saw an image of the infamous Bonsai maple I agreed to root-prune for a friend. I pruned the roots a bit too drastically and the leaves withered, turned yellow, then brown, and the little Bonsai went into dormancy. It sits there in now in our house looking rather pathetic with its brown leaves, a few falling off here and there each day. I’m holding it for safe keeping until next spring when I bring it back to the owner.
Here I am one day, encouraging the roots of a Rhododendron to grow out of its bound up root ball into new soil, and another day root pruning a Bonsai Maple so the roots don’t grow out of the root ball.
I saw the Bonsai in my minds eye mocking me. I had pruned out the deadwood, crossing branches, and thinned it a bit, and even removed girdling roots, but that made no difference at all when looking at the dormant midget-maple with the crispy brown leaves hanging on for what seemed like dear life. The more I thought about it, the more I could relate to the poor little Bonsai. Over the last few years God has been doing a lot of structural pruning in my life, which, by the way is painful, but nothing like the root pruning he initiated in my life most recently.
I was thinking, “Gee, I feel rather dormant here isolated on “The Island.” Maybe I’ve gone into spiritual dormancy. Is there such a thing? And I might even look dormant to the general public. Oh, no! But, then again, dormancy doesn’t mean growing has ceased, does it?” Did God intend for me to go into dormancy in order for His severe root pruning to heal and grow below surface where no can see?
You may be wondering by now, ‘how do you know the Bonsai is dormant and isn’t dead?’ Good question. I mixed coffee grounds in the soil for organic nitrogen, and gave it the proper amount of bone meal for root growth, and water it regularly, but you’re right in thinking, “Well, you might be creating great soil conditions for a dead tree.” Well, my trick is to scrape a little bit of the bark off each week which exposes some very ‘green’ cambium. This gives me a hint tree is still alive and the roots are still functioning (what roots there are left). The more I though about it, the more my recent days seemed to reflect the plight of the Bonsai. Both of us are so severely shocked by root pruning, that we went dormant to heal and grow in deep places.
I began to wonder why God didn’t just didn’t transplant me into good, moist, properly structured soil, with all the right macro and micro nutrients where I could put down some healthy roots. Then I realized that God didn’t want me to sink my roots down to deeply. Just like the Bonsai, he wants to keep my roots pruned and from sinking them deep into any soil so that at any moment I can be plucked up and transported into the environment where he wants me. I am reminded once again that I am a stranger and alien in this land, that I am a pilgrim, a modern day global nomad, just passing through, looking for a place to pitch my tent.
When I took the Bonsai home from a friend’s house, I just lifted it up and put in the back of my truck, pot and all. There would be no transplant shock like the shabby Rhodie is experiencing now. It dawned on me that true freedom is found in being a pilgrim with the roots of one’s soul not anchored down deeply into any cultural or social soil, or not deeply entwined in any particular economic, religious or political systems and beliefs that would prevent a Jesus Follower from responding to the call of becoming a ‘glocal’ (global/local) nomad for the Kingdom of God.
I found myself thinking about spiritual transformation, and how that bible knowledge does not necessarily translate into more spiritual growth. In a similar way, it is the same with trees or shrubs-just because the soil may contain all the right nutrients, it doesn’t mean the root system can access them and cause the tree to thrive. Organic materials (grass, leaves, bark, woodchips, etc) need to be applied in order to transform the soil so that the roots are able to take up the nutrients. I began to see the difficult challenges I am experiencing these days as the organic material that God seems to be applying to the soil of my inner-life. The process of trying to respond positively to these challenges is similar to adding organic material to a plant’s soil. It appeared to me that “spiritual organic material” transformed bible head knowledge into a more experiential knowledge of God. The application of both physical and spiritual organic materials leads to transformation and growth. Both the key and the challenge to the spiritual transformation of the people of God are found in responding positively to God’s shaping activities, even if it is severe root pruning which few can observe by examining the exterior.
After all this day dreaming and musing about the Rhodie and the Bonsai, I realized that God had spoken to me.
Brian, reporting from dormancy
My mind wandered to a shabby Rhododendron I transplanted for my landlord. The plant was barely surviving as the roots had no where to grow, so they grew around the root ball making it a solid mass of circular dead-end roots. When I dug the hole for transplanting the “Rhodie” to a new location, I dug the hole rather wide, and then plopped in the root ball. I back filled my wide hole with the excavated soil so the roots would not hit a ‘brick wall’ of compacted soil when they began to grow out of the root ball. I bought some bone meal to apply as organic phosphorus which helps the roots grow out of the ball and into the surrounding soil. “Plant down your roots, you shabby shrub,” I commanded it.
My mind suddenly changed channels and I saw an image of the infamous Bonsai maple I agreed to root-prune for a friend. I pruned the roots a bit too drastically and the leaves withered, turned yellow, then brown, and the little Bonsai went into dormancy. It sits there in now in our house looking rather pathetic with its brown leaves, a few falling off here and there each day. I’m holding it for safe keeping until next spring when I bring it back to the owner.
Here I am one day, encouraging the roots of a Rhododendron to grow out of its bound up root ball into new soil, and another day root pruning a Bonsai Maple so the roots don’t grow out of the root ball.
I saw the Bonsai in my minds eye mocking me. I had pruned out the deadwood, crossing branches, and thinned it a bit, and even removed girdling roots, but that made no difference at all when looking at the dormant midget-maple with the crispy brown leaves hanging on for what seemed like dear life. The more I thought about it, the more I could relate to the poor little Bonsai. Over the last few years God has been doing a lot of structural pruning in my life, which, by the way is painful, but nothing like the root pruning he initiated in my life most recently.
I was thinking, “Gee, I feel rather dormant here isolated on “The Island.” Maybe I’ve gone into spiritual dormancy. Is there such a thing? And I might even look dormant to the general public. Oh, no! But, then again, dormancy doesn’t mean growing has ceased, does it?” Did God intend for me to go into dormancy in order for His severe root pruning to heal and grow below surface where no can see?
You may be wondering by now, ‘how do you know the Bonsai is dormant and isn’t dead?’ Good question. I mixed coffee grounds in the soil for organic nitrogen, and gave it the proper amount of bone meal for root growth, and water it regularly, but you’re right in thinking, “Well, you might be creating great soil conditions for a dead tree.” Well, my trick is to scrape a little bit of the bark off each week which exposes some very ‘green’ cambium. This gives me a hint tree is still alive and the roots are still functioning (what roots there are left). The more I though about it, the more my recent days seemed to reflect the plight of the Bonsai. Both of us are so severely shocked by root pruning, that we went dormant to heal and grow in deep places.
I began to wonder why God didn’t just didn’t transplant me into good, moist, properly structured soil, with all the right macro and micro nutrients where I could put down some healthy roots. Then I realized that God didn’t want me to sink my roots down to deeply. Just like the Bonsai, he wants to keep my roots pruned and from sinking them deep into any soil so that at any moment I can be plucked up and transported into the environment where he wants me. I am reminded once again that I am a stranger and alien in this land, that I am a pilgrim, a modern day global nomad, just passing through, looking for a place to pitch my tent.
When I took the Bonsai home from a friend’s house, I just lifted it up and put in the back of my truck, pot and all. There would be no transplant shock like the shabby Rhodie is experiencing now. It dawned on me that true freedom is found in being a pilgrim with the roots of one’s soul not anchored down deeply into any cultural or social soil, or not deeply entwined in any particular economic, religious or political systems and beliefs that would prevent a Jesus Follower from responding to the call of becoming a ‘glocal’ (global/local) nomad for the Kingdom of God.
I found myself thinking about spiritual transformation, and how that bible knowledge does not necessarily translate into more spiritual growth. In a similar way, it is the same with trees or shrubs-just because the soil may contain all the right nutrients, it doesn’t mean the root system can access them and cause the tree to thrive. Organic materials (grass, leaves, bark, woodchips, etc) need to be applied in order to transform the soil so that the roots are able to take up the nutrients. I began to see the difficult challenges I am experiencing these days as the organic material that God seems to be applying to the soil of my inner-life. The process of trying to respond positively to these challenges is similar to adding organic material to a plant’s soil. It appeared to me that “spiritual organic material” transformed bible head knowledge into a more experiential knowledge of God. The application of both physical and spiritual organic materials leads to transformation and growth. Both the key and the challenge to the spiritual transformation of the people of God are found in responding positively to God’s shaping activities, even if it is severe root pruning which few can observe by examining the exterior.
After all this day dreaming and musing about the Rhodie and the Bonsai, I realized that God had spoken to me.
Brian, reporting from dormancy
