What Are We Holding Onto Sam?

Do you remember Frodo's words at the end of this part of the story?

I spent a little time with The Two Towers--middle film of the Lord of the Rings trilogy--last weekend. I watched some of the background features while I was doing laundry and bills and such.

The timing was providential. I was very weary of my 6-month commute amid the challenges of life and family, and I was feeling a tad overwhelmed. Hearing the screenplay writers talk about the choices and edits they had to make brought out more clearly the overriding theme of this middle episode: the journey is long and dangerous and difficult, but if we keep going when there is no hope left something unexpectedly good might come along and change everything. Hmmm...

Friends

Packing up the dreams God planted

In the fertile soil of you

 In the summers of 1988 and 1989, I had the honor of traveling with two different groups of folks from my first college, North Central Bible College, now North Central University. They called us One Accord and we represented the college for 8 or 9 months on the road throughout the Midwest. Two summers of doing music at youth camps…I attended 17 one-week-long youth camps over that span. Still trying to catch up on sleep! Almost every camp ended with the Michael W Smith classic: Friends.

Cant believe the hopes he’s granted
Means a chapter in your life is through

They were the best of times, they were the worst of times. Mostly the best. But I’m not just thinking about the old OA friends tonight. I’m thinking about the whole enterprise of friendship with all of it’s color and life. It hit me a couple of years ago that I’ve had so many great friends and I had this sort of desperate feeling of disconnection from most of them. It was triggered by some sappy movie where a bunch of friends lived in a big house, but then they kinda moved away at the end, and one of them goes to visit another one at his beach house and finds pictures of the old gang plastered all over…unforgotten.

But we’ll keep you close as always
It wont even seem you’ve gone

By the way, if anyone thinks they know what movie that is, please let me know. I have no idea what it’s called. So a friend, over an Applebee’s lunch, suggested Google groups as a way of reconnecting. I started there with a degree of success. Facebook is easier to maintain and find old friends with.

I hear people say all the time, “I don’t have time to waste messing around with Facebook!” Point taken. But I’m actually find this an extremely efficient way of connecting with folks. Brandon, Virden, Winnipeg, Kenora, Manhatten Beach, Minneapolis, Stevens Point, Spencer Lake, Racine, Wausau, the Midwest, all over Canada, all over the US, all over the world…my old friends are scattered to the four winds…

‘Cause our hearts in big and small ways

Will keep the love that keeps us strong

Some say that electronic friendship is not meaningful. Again, point taken. But to push back a little, there’s also a depth and richness in surveying profiles and notes and connections that goes a whole lot deeper than shooting the breeze at the water cooler. And if we got a hand written letter, we’d think the world of that friend and their deep thoughtfulness. Hello?! I feel so much more informed and connected now when I’m fortunate enough to run into the old friends, or the new ones, or the ones I live with…

[photo: Evan, Sheri and Heather, 1972]