Blood Brother

Musings - "Blood Brother"

by Graeme Woodbrook on Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 7:27pm

From the age of about four until approximately seven when it was no longer “cool”, I had a girlfriend named Gabriel. While not quite as angelic as her namesake she was, nonetheless, my little angel and Gabriel and I were inseparable… we went everywhere together, did everything together, and grew into an exciting new world, hand in hand. Gabriel lived just a few houses away from the shop, a hairdressing salon actually, above and behind which was the residence that I knew as home from my birth until I was fifteen. While our house was small, about sixteen feet wide from the front of the ‘salon’ to the postage stamp-size back yard, it never seemed so until I grew older and visited friends who lived in more lavish ‘digs’ than I. Gabriel’s house, of course, held special fascination because they had chickens in their back yard and I vividly recall the day we hid in her little play tent and peeked out as her father took an axe, beheaded one of the feathered beasts, and watched it run headless around the yard before collapsing in a heap not far from our hiding place. My mother, being the one who coiffed the hair of three generations of women from surrounding neighborhoods, was the recipient of every morsel of information concerning the comings and goings of me, and Gabriel. I am always amazed as I look back at how free and easy our lives were back then. I am sure there was crime, although we weren’t bombarded with news of every act of violence twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. There was no television, and in my world radio was comprised of fun and adventure with programs like “The Air Adventures of Hopp Harrigan” and similar enticements to stir the imagination and create mental images that would one day lead me to a small airport and a private pilot’s license of my own. So it was just such an adventure that led Gabriel and me on a mission! Her father had some pamphlets that he needed distributed around the neighborhood and so, armed with a healthy stack each, we set off to fill the mailboxes of Nedlands (our neighborhood in the suburbs of Perth, Western Australia) with the verbal ‘gold’ we were sure our mission carried to a population in need of enlightenment. We, of course, could neither read nor write yet, but we had been carefully apprised of the importance of our task by Gabriel’s dad and, as was the case with all grown-ups at that time of my life, I had taken every word as if uttered by a commanding general to a lowly private. Besides, I had an aunt whose favorite expression was “little boys should be seen and not heard”….so any adult that cared to speak engagingly to someone of my age was to be highly regarded, indeed! So it was with little concern when a few days later my mother asked what Gabriel and I had been doing? “Delivering papers for Mr. Williams”, said I with more than just a measure of pride that our mission had apparently not only been successfully completed, but it must have been of such importance as to be reported back through the salon ‘grapevine’! Well, as would often prove to be the case with many an ‘adventure’, the end result of this particular episode was not quite as expected, although it was notorious! It seems that Mr. Williams was impressed by the political philosophy of the Australian Communist Party, of which he had become a member and, apparently, an active one. Having taken his membership as an obligation to share the good news of “from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs”, he had enlisted the services of yours truly and daughter Gabriel to share the wealth, so to speak! My mother wisely and calmly provided an explanation of our error that must have seemed reasonable and rational to my young ears, but never demanded that Gabriel and I should cease to be friends, despite what upon reflection must have been a source of mild commercial embarrassment to her, not to mention humor that no doubt brought a smile to many a face accompanied by an “Oh that Graeme…” as I would become known over the course of years and numerous ‘adventures’. So it was some time later as Gabriel and I sat on the curb at the road-side watching the world go by, that she turned to me and in her most serious of expressions declared that we should become “blood brother and sister”. Now I cannot say with any degree of certainty that I know where this notion had come from; perhaps a comic book (a growing collection of which I treasured and another story to be told!), or perhaps an episode of Hopalong Cassidy that she might have seen at the local matinee. Regardless, this was clearly a matter of serious import and one, it appeared, that was to take our dear relationship to a new level. As I have earlier alluded to, Gabriel and I were truly ‘joined spirits’ and it seemed reasonable, if not imperative, that some ceremony of note should be undertaken to seal, for all time, the very special nature of our friendship. Indeed our love for one another demanded nothing less! It was as she described the ceremony she had in mind that my ready acquiescence to this plan began to cool. Given that we were the same chronological age, which meant that she was about two years ahead of me in other respects, I respected the wisdom of her insight in this particular matter and inquired as to the means by which she proposed we should accomplish the task at hand. Ever resourceful and never one to fail to seize the moment, Gabriel quickly produced a shard of broken glass from the gutter above which we sat, and proceeded to slash it across my left wrist below my thumb. I am not sure how long I actually sat there, dumbfounded, as in seeming slow motion blood began to stream from the wound and paint a curious pattern in the ground below. Gabriel seemed totally unperturbed by the sight of my life leaking out of me, nonetheless, she did fail to complete the other half of our bond by applying the same technique to her wrist! Inevitably, a searing pain penetrated my stupor and I ran, as fast as my legs would carry me, screaming all the way home and into the salon to be rescued by my mother. The trail of blood on the linoleum floor of the salon would easily erase, but not so the image burned into the memories of the customers present that day, and so another chapter was written around “Oh that Graeme”. While I don’t consider Gabriel and I to have been legitimately “joined in blood” (although I do still carry a very respectable inch-long scar on my left wrist; goodness knows how long it must have been on that much smaller arm at the age I received it!), I have since experienced another joining in blood; that of my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave His life that I might save mine. As was my experience with Gabriel, only one of us had to shed blood; in this case it was Christ, for me. 

Why Is It So?

When I was in my late teens and living in Perth (Western Australia) I became an avid fan of a television (we had recently acquired our first television - black and white, of course!) series which, if I remember correctly, was sponsored by the University of Sydney and titled “The Summer Science Lectures”. The central figure was a very animated man with Einstein-esq hair named Professor Julius Sumner-Miller (looked very much like him....think TV series “Ben Casey” or, the movie “Ben Hur”...younger readers can simply Google him), who sprinkled every phase of his on-screen experiments with the exclamation: “why is it so?...why is it so?” If you will permit me to digress for a minute and allow me to ‘roll the tape’ forward a few years, I was for nearly a year commuting every other week between New York and Tokyo where I was in the midst of constructing a joint venture between my then employer, Citicorp, and a number of the major Japanese banks. As you might imagine, thirteen hours in a Pan Am 747, even in first class where I was privileged to be seated, became rather tiresome for passengers and cabin crew alike. One can only watch so many movies and consume so much food before other diversions (in the absence of sleep!) become necessary. So it was on one such return flight that I ventured back towards the rear of the first-class cabin to refresh my coffee when, from behind a curtain I hear “why is it so...why is it so?” Peeking around the curtain I took in that long familiar vision of frizzy hair, lecturing a gentleman whose look of bewilderment indicated that he had no idea ‘why it was so’, despite the two pages of formulae etched in black marker pen across two pages of a Wall Street Journal! “Professor Sumner Miller, I enquired?” “Yes, young man” he responded and thus, to the apparent relief of his reluctant ‘student’ who seized the opportunity to return to his seat, began for me perhaps one of the most delightful and memorable flights of my rather well-traveled life (77 countries and counting!).

I am not sure how much or how often your average person thinks about “why”. Perhaps because of the good professor or, simply as a product of a childhood that demanded inquisitiveness if one were to be entertained (no computers, iPods, WIIs, DVDs, etc. were available to us and I claim that as a good thing!), ‘why’ became a much used word in my personal lexicon and thought process. As I continue to think about it, ‘why’ has been and remains a universal expression of curiosity...French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc., all provide a facility for a people to question everything from the mundane “why is it so”, to the sublime “why am I here?” It is in the context of the latter that one might ask “is ‘why’ the center of where my spirit resides?” In his truly excellent treatise ‘Start With Why”, Simon Sinek (www.startwithwhy.com) anthropologist and now marketing consultant known for his development of the “Golden Circle” - a model based on human decision making, reveals some astounding facts about how our brain works and processes or, doesn’t process information. What he reveals is that the real center of decision-making is in our ‘Limbic’ brain – which has no capacity for language! Thus, it relies on our senses and emotional responses to guide us towards things like choice, likes and dislikes; and is largely unresponsive to facts and figures…the tools and devices with which advertisers tend to bombard us. As I have watched Simon’s video over and over, I keep coming back to the notion that this is, perhaps, how God has tried to speak to Mankind over the ages. Surely, as one looks across the landscape of Man’s spiritual experience, it seems clear that all have shared in those universal ‘why’ questions. Just as surely, we see the shadows of our attempts to unravel the unfathomable in Mayan ruins, aboriginal ceremonies, Hindu art and writings over seven millennia, and the well documented recalcitrance of the nation of Israel up to and through the time of Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago. One can only imagine that a loving God must have endless patience, for we still fail to get the simplicity of the message He finally came down as a man to give to us, and so relieve us of our burden of law that had been our guide across so many different and ancient civilizations.

Another way I think of ‘why’ is akin to the person who habitually walks around with their eyes cast downward; one misses so much if we fail to look up! Similarly, if we never learn to ask ‘why’ how will we ever develop and ‘groom’ a healthy curiosity that will distinguish us from others? Do parents unwittingly drive curiosity from their children when, out of frustration, tiredness or simply poor parenting skills they cut off their children’s ‘why’ questions with an annoyed “just because”? Would the Wright Brothers, as Sinek talks about in his video, have every had the passion to investigate and conquer powered manned flight, or anything else for that matter, if they hadn’t asked ‘why’?
In his excellent book “The Ascent of Man” (published by the British Broadcasting Corporation, 1973), Jacob Bronowski talks about the unfolding of Man’s progress and the confluence of “an act of will by man….with that of a strange and secret act of nature”. Whether we are talking about how we adapted and used the new vegetation that emerged at the end of the Ice Age, or the adaptation of fire, lightening, or our sense of gravity; all interventions by Man arise from the curiosity that is preceded by the question ‘why’. As Bronowskishaper of the landscape. That is not a sentiment that necessarily resonates positively with some modern day groups, but it is, nonetheless descriptive of an historical reality, and will likely define our future if we are to survive as a species. Happenstance would neither have enabled our progress to date, nor will it define our future; Man will always have to shape his destiny, the question is, ‘guided by what?’ One of my favorite quotes is “spirituality is God’s attempt to relate to Man; Religion is Man’s attempt to relate to God! It strikes me that neither party has been highly successful so far in realizing the bounty available from such a connection. As far as religion is concerned, we seem to be moving further away from the model that was handed to us some two thousand years ago: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself!” Such seeming simplicity, yet clearly so hard to achieve! As we look around an increasingly hostile and violent world it strikes me that one needs to be deaf, dumb and blind to not realize that relying solely on man’s laws is a slippery slope from which recovery seems an increasingly impossible task. If there is no higher authority to claim then eventually everything becomes acceptable to some, and gradually, to all but a few. Chaos and anarchy may become the status quo and survival of the fittest the mantra of the day. Perhaps that is the message of Revelation, but with fewer and fewer studying scripture and thinking that the Bible is simply a “good book” without relevance in our ‘modern’ world and greatly more ‘informed’ state of awareness, rather than sixty six historical texts with sources spanning three thousand years! Which brings us back to the question “why is it so?” Perhaps we have to look within ourselves to start to see a glimmer of an answer. Much as we find ourselves increasingly not thinking about ‘why’, we seem to increasingly live within our physical being and from that conclude that all that is valuable is defined by taste, touch, smell, sight and sound, and there is no doubt an unending array of stimuli to appeal to our physical senses. So ‘why’, if these are the true sources of contentment are we so discontented? Clearly, on some level, we understand that there has to be more to our existence than that which can be sated through our physical being. To even start to answer that requires considerable effort, study and, a willingness to first accept that there is something greater than all of our wisdom, knowledge and insight, and that something is connected to us, and through us, and intends for us to achieve a ‘higher state’ in the midst of all this mess we call ‘life’. As Katherine Hepburn so aptly states to Humphrey Bogart in “The African Queen”: “Nature, Mr. Alnutt is what we are put in this world to rise above!”

My wife Sharyn and I recently had the distinct pleasure and privilege to host as guests in our home Bishop P.J. Lawrence and his charming wife, Shanthi. If you are not an active Christian please…don’t abandon this writing just yet (that is to say if my earlier references have not already caused you to do so!), I promise there is worthwhile material here if you will just read a little bit further. My reason for asking this is because studies indicate that over 90% of Americans (92% actually, study revealed in the Washington Post, June 24th, 2008) believe in God [or a universal spirit], so that’s good, right? What’s more nearly 80% think that miracles occur and that angels and demons are active in the world! So ‘why’ are we in so much trouble and increasingly disenchanted with the need for a faith life? Permit me to continue with the story of our guest and explore a little further….

As part of my morning ritual while the Bishop was in residence, I would rise early to make him his morning coffee (strong, just as I like it) and a light breakfast so that we could spend a couple of hours talking while our wives slept. Bishop Lawrence ( http://www.dioceseofnandyal.org/ ) is over a diocese of some 400 congregations in a rural part of southeastern India where, as part of a Hindu nation, they are indeed a persecuted church. In a neighboring state, house and church burnings, beatings and death are frequent realities of a Christian life and, like many of the Muslim countries that were once Christian (read “The Lost History of Christianity” by John Philip Jenkins, HarperCollins), must face real and present danger in practicing their faith….WHY? Good question! ...and one those of us who are still enjoying, but not guaranteed, the privilege of honoring and praising God openly should consider. As I enquired more about his life, faith journey and, in particular, the Church of South India I learned a surprising fact: about thirty years before India attained its independence the various religious denominations realized that as a faith minority it might be wise to consider a more unified approach in order to assure a future. As a colonial stronghold for missions of all denominations – Baptist, Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregational, etc. they were literally many but few – many divided houses of God, but few, relative to the population of the sub-continent, adherents to the Christian faith. So, with thirty years of painstaking work, debate, argument, and the putting aside of personal egos and preferences, they crafted ONE church, ONE expression of the Christian faith, ONE liturgy, ONE Book of Common Prayer! Does it not strike you that when Jesus sent seventy two disciples out by twos to spread the good news, that he had in mind a unifying experience in faith through the Holy spirit, not a ‘house divided against itself? So I thought about this, and I thought about another statistic: while 92% of Americans ‘claim’ God [or a universal spirit], only 48% attend and are a part of a church…Why is it so? Then, based on my own experience, I realized that while 48% ‘go to church’, a much smaller fraction believe they should ‘be the church’…live out the Life in their daily lives and ‘yes’ I do know how hard that is and I fail at it regularly! Thank the Lord we are supposed to earnestly keep trying because attainment is not possible in this life (why?). The more I listened to the Bishop’s story and thought about the current state of affairs here in the United States and, reflected on a common comment I hear from acquaintances that “so many churches, such waste, so much squabbling…I can be spiritual without all of that!”; and I started to understand that perhaps God expects less pettiness and more greatness from us. That perhaps our spiritual leaders need to think more about the “Great Commission” and less about how they interpret their commission, status, and security. Please don’t misunderstand, I love my faith, I love my church and the family of brothers and sisters I have inherited, but I hear a strong call to strive to be more ecumenical, and I believe that if we so do, many who are disenchanted with their physical being will step up to get in touch with the spiritual being, and that is where we have the opportunity to meet God and nurture the role he intended us to play in this brief and transitory part of the journey we call life.
So let me close out this chapter of musing around ‘Why Is It So’ with a question: If you were to take a moment (or longer, please!) to turn your mind from considering yourself as a Physical Being that also has a spirit, to one that is a Spiritual Being that is temporarily occupying a physical body in this time and place, what would you need to change in the way you conduct your life to fully realize the power and benefit of such a state? And, as a further thought, what would this world be like; how would YOUR life be different…if there were no lying, cheating, deception, dishonesty, cruelty, anger…well, that’s enough for starters…in the world. We might call it “Heaven”…as Randy Alcorn so aptly describes in his book of the same name. Why is it NOT so?
May the Peace of the Lord that Passes All Understanding be with you and your families now and for ever more.

GCW