Walking an A Frame

One of the many tasks we had to accomplish during our High Adventure was learning how to walk an A frame — a 2x4 structure in the shape of the letter "A", with five ropes connected at the apex. One or more people held each rope, arranged roughly in a circle, while one person stood on the crosspiece of the A. The frame "walked" by alternately lifting one of the legs of the A and swinging it forward.

At first glance, and from a distance, it looked as though the individual on the frame was making the frame walk, while the people on the ropes provided stability. In actual fact, the situation was almost the complete reverse — as one of our group discovered when he took his position on the frame, and tried to muscle it around.

In reality, it was the people on the ropes who made the frame walk. The leg was lifted when one person on the side pulled on the rope, while the opposite person gave slack. Then the appropriate rope at the front pulled the lifted leg forward. The rider on the frame mostly provided weight which, in conjunction with the rope straight out the back, provided stability (although by shifting the weight, the rider could make the movement easier).

Everyone had a specific and essential role to play in cooperation with the others in order make the structure move. And once we understood what those roles were, there really was no one who needed to act as "the leader".

Curiously, however, while we were figuring the system out, several individuals tried taking the leading role, instructing the others to do this or that. Usually those instructions were wrong, and it was by actively disagreeing with the temporarily self-appointed "leader" that we learned what actually was going on.

The exercise left me wondering whether there are many more things in life, particularly in the life of the body of Christ, where "leadership" is really only an immature learning phase which needs to give way as we learn the true reality of our life together.

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I Am Because You Are

There is, I am told, an old African proverb that says: "I am because you are. If you are not, I cannot be." Several times during our High Adventure Camp I felt the truth of that proverb.

I have discovered that I am profoundly affected (and perhaps to some degree even effected) by those around me. The essential characteristics of others with whom I am interacting— which in our Clifton StrengthFinder lingo we've been calling strengths — draw out secondary characteristics in me. When I am around people who are hard-wired empathics, for example, I am much more conscious of how others may be feeling, or am more apt to consider that carefully in how I behave or interact. I like myself better when I am around such people.

Conversely, when I engage at length with hard-wired competitives — particularly those who seem to adhere to the motto "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing!" — I become easily drawn into a desire to gain advantage over the other by pushing the other down. The end result of such interaction is, regretably, that I like myself less when I enter into those behaviours.

By myself, I am incomplete. By myself, I am less than fully human. For me to be all that God has created and intended me to be, I need community; I need the rest of the body. No matter how much my natural introverted personality craves extended solitude, and is often drained by people, I cannot be me alone.

I suppose this ought not to be surprising. If man is made in the image of a God who exists eternally in intimate community, could she ever be truly herself alone outside of human (and divine?) community?

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