Take this morning, for instance. I was thinking about graduation for my entering class on May 22 (hope I got that right), and felt a sense of abandonment that surprised me. I guess I've been holding it at arm's length, as I typically do with such things. Anyhow, it must have crawled right up my sleeve, because there it was, perched on my shoulder like a pirate's parrot and whispering in my ear. "Your class is moving on and you're going to face the next two years alone."
Now, this is not at all true, strictly speaking, and I tried to be understanding. After all, it's the nature of fear to take on unrealistic proportions, so it wasn't being wicked or mean, it was just being itself. My job, at times like this, is to point out the distortions in order to restore some inner balance. And that's when I thought about Popeye.
Not Popeye the Sailor Man of cartoon and movie fame (Robin Williams, 1980), but Robert "Popeye" Wynn from Band of Brothers. If you're familiar with the HBO series or have read Stephen Ambrose' book, you know Popeye was wounded on June 6, 1944. Shipped back to England for surgery and recovery, he went AWOL and left the hospital before his wound was completely healed, in order to rejoin his unit.
A recurring theme in Band of Brothers is the intense connection formed by the men of Easy Company, particularly those who went through basic training together. In several blog posts I've tried, similarly, to conceptualize the relationship we established as members of an incoming medical school class. I keep coming back to it because the reasons remain elusive.
For me, these 125 persons represent the context in which my dream of becoming a doctor first began to be realized. They are my witnesses and when the demands are great and the obstacles huge, they remind me of the truth: I'm going to make it. In some indefinable way, what we've created transcends friendship and I really don't know how we did it. You can't predict the way genes will combine during the crossing-over phase of meiosis and what happened with us may not have been something anyone could have predicted either. We were just the right people at the right time in the right circumstances who, like the men of Easy Company, became sisters and brothers -- a family -- without even knowing it.
(Creative Commons image of Popeye and Oliveoyl by norwichnuts via Flickr)
I can recite the whole speech. "This day is called the feast of Crispian..." I'll show your post to Bruce. He bought the DVD set of "Band of Brothers" and is familiar with Popeye's story.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way about my class at Perkins. Most are graduation on May 15, and I'm sticking around for another 2 years, applying for the M.Div. degree. The M.T.S. just isn't enough. The great thing is, a new community is formed in every course. Preaching has been a rite of passage in a big way. Letting go of the detached, completely intellectual approach was like prying my fingers from around a piece of dark chocolate. But it's impossible to convince anyone that you believe the Gospel, much less spread it, if you don't.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to contrast the reception given Popeye with the one gotten by David Kenyon Webster in Band of Brothers, but didn't have the space. It took the other guys in the unit time to "forgive" Webster for taking so long to return to the unit after having been wounded -- through no fault of his own -- especially since he missed the Bastogne experience. All this despite the fact that Webster had been with Easy Company since its inception at Toccoa. These events are formative, no question of it.
ReplyDeleteElaine:
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you bring up preaching class as a rite of passage, because I was going in that direction in an earlier draft. I had been thinking how we learn the craft of sermon preparation, practice in front of peers, and how the process changes a person's perspective. Any time "formation" is involved in an educational environment, there's going to be change. We do formation somewhat differently in medical school, but the outcome is similar and I've argued that we should adopt more of the model from theological education in that regard. Immersion in a tradition until it becomes second nature.