[Dialogue] A Meditation for Pentecost

[W. J.]

A Meditation for Pentecost

We live in a dangerous world.

If you're a bomb tech in Iraq, you risk your life to protect innocent civilians and your fellow soldiers.
You risk your life day after day to save those who hate you from getting blown up by IED's.
You're on endless duty every day, until, inevitably, one hot day, 
Ka-BOOM! you go to be with Jesus.
You've laid down your life and paid the ultimate price. And then you get replaced.

If you're a bomb tech in Iraq, you have family stateside, 
But basically you can't stand to be on leave.
You can't wait to get back to your unit, and to your mission.
'Cause your mission is your life, period.
And there's no backing off, no real vacations, no cushy 'weekend warrior' lifestyle.

If you're a bomb tech in Iraq, it takes every ounce of ingenuity, sensitivity, and daring you can musterto defuse a hidden IED. Or a whole field of them.
The clock is ticking on your life, and you have just seconds to find and defuse the timer.
When you have to go to ground zero, you strap on the lead suit with its one hundred pound weight on your body.
And in the scorching heat and searing intensity of the moment, you remain utterly cool and totally fearless to focus solely on the task at hand.
That's the core of your personal discipline that may prolong your survival. Or not.

If you're a bomb tech in Iraq, you know that you've been trained and set apart for this special task.
And while you rely on teamwork with the guys in your unit, and may enjoy their company, you know they're not like you.
Until they're ready to do what you do, they can't possibly know what you know about living on that knife edge between life and death.
When your life's on the line, you're totally alone. And utterly exposed.

If you're a bomb tech in Iraq, your life is an open book. 
No one can know what you're thinking or how you're feeling inside. 
But your actions--the precise, calculated, and transformative moves you make--tell the whole story.
And dramatically change the outcome of every situation you defuse.
For here, with everybody's survival on the line, outcomes are the essence of staying alive. Or not.

If you're a bomb tech in Iraq, and you survive today,
Tomorrow you just get to go back and do it all over again.
No vacations. No rewards. Just more of the same.
For other human beings are depending on your skill, your presence, your radical intentionality.
Whether they know it or not.

It's a very dangerous world we all live in.

--On Pentecost 2010

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Note: some may recognize themes from the film The Hurt Locker, which almost nobody saw last year, even though it won 6 Oscars including Best Picture. Strangely, this little seen little movie with a microbudget stole the Best Picture Oscar away from Avatar, the most expensive and highest grossing film ever made. And even more strangely, its director is the ex-wife of James Cameron, who directed Avatar. Funny thing about that. Ya know? Well, marriages can have stranger outcomes. I oughta know.

And if you read between the lines (hint, hint), how can you miss the themes from the RS-1 Freedom Lecture? So the movie The Hurt Locker is about a guy who is radically alive as the incarnation of total Freedom, or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, or the presence of Awe.

It's easy to critique the character and his many human faults. And maybe even dismiss him for those. But there's no getting around the reality that it's an incredible spirit that keeps him on the job and gives him the focus and power to do his work. More than just his egotism or an 'addiction' to the adrenaline rush of being in combat.

If you get the depth meaning of the word 'avatar', which comes from Sanskrit for incarnation, 'descent', 'crossing over', or a manifestation of the Divine in human life, then perhaps the real avatar is in The Hurt Locker rather than in Avatar. Funny thing about that.

Time to click on Netflix and put the flick in your queue. Put on your 'theological glasses' and enjoy the movie.

Marshall
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