Private Ryan: Tell me about your wife and the rose bushes?
~Saving Private Ryan teaching scene
The Captain: No. No, that one I save just for me.
There are a number of deeply thought-provoking scenes in the film Saving Private Ryan. In one of them, the Captain and Private Ryan are together in intimate conversation which the young soldier initiates. He asks the Captain, “Are you alright sir?” And when the Captain gives him a protective lie that he’s fine, and just “keeping the rhythm,” the young soldier then asks, “Is it true that you were a teacher back home?”
This leads into a personal conversation where the Captain switches from a war/military mindset to a teacher mindset. He pulls up a chair and sits with Ryan, and in the background we hear a haunting musical soundtrack. I can’t recall if in the film, the allies are playing a phonograph as they await the German tanks, or whether this element is simply part of the soundtrack that contributes to our deep emotional response to this scene. This link has some commentary on the film’s soundtrack, for anyone interested.
The song playing in the scene is 9. C’ÉTAIT UNE HISTOIRE D’AMOUR 4:27 (from Anthologie de la chanson française : 1942).
In the scene (linked below) the Captain senses Ryan needs to talk, and he then engages the young private by inviting him to even deeper conversation. After Ryan says he could never be a teacher (not after the way he and his brothers treated their teachers), the Captain steps it up by saying, “I knew a thousand kids like you.”
This move then opened the doorway for Ryan to confide that he “couldn’t see the faces of his brothers.” Then begins the Captain exercising his gift of teaching and communication when he tells Ryan that he needs to think of a context, in order to see their faces in his mind’s eye.
The young Ryan is frightened–as all soldiers are in the face of potential imminent death–and he is also trying to process the loss and grief of knowing that his every brother has been killed in action, and that he alone remains alive. As Ryan lets down his guard and allows his mind and memories to travel the neural pathways, he begins to tell the Captain of the last time he saw his brothers.
After this storytelling and the Captain’s response, Ryan then turns and wants to reciprocate, inquiring of the Captain’s neural pathways that involve his wife wearing his gardening gloves trimming rose bushes. The weight that the Captain is carrying for the men entrusted him as well as his own life is so great, and we get a glimpse (if we are contemplating) of the level of suffering the Captain is bearing when he shuts down, refusing to share whatever intimate thoughts and griefs are associated with that image of his wife in his mind’s eye.
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This morning upon awakening, my own neural pathways were coming into the day before me while still coming out of the dream world that humans traverse during the nighttime in their mind and spirit, while their body is asleep. While I can’t recall exactly what I was dreaming, I know it involved indoor pools in dim lighting (a repeated theme in my dreams during times of difficulty) as well as a somewhat peculiar and distinct set of neural images/thoughts involving drawing pencils.
Yes, as I awoke, of the many things my mind might have been thinking I was thinking about a single, graded drawing pencil that was apart from its set, and how the other drawing pencils were all missing. In my dream-mind, I think I was telling someone all the different gradations of hard/soft lead that a complete set should have.
As I continued to awake, I began to think about someone who is in the process of cleaning out their childhood home, with one parent now deceased and another in a nursing home. I then thought about aging and downsizing, verses continuing to expand in one’s life and pursuits. All these thoughts seemed to take but moments…traveling along the neural pathways that are so deeply personal reflecting our humanness, brokenness, and reflecting that we are made in God’s image.
Before too many moments had passed, I was experiencing emotions of fear, loss and grief and in particular, still thinking about my set of professional, graded drawing pencils being lost and broken up in the shuffle of many things in the past 5-10 years, and thinking that maybe that little detail didn’t matter since maybe I would never again have someone request a fully shaded pencil drawing.
Essentially, I was having thoughts of loss and grief and that I was no longer on my “way upward” in life but on my “way downward…”
I thought about all kinds of losses and my life, and the day before me. And as I’ve tried to do in more recent times, I spoke aloud “Jesus I trust You.” And as a got myself up, and walked down the stairs, I said aloud, “This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it.”
Did I somehow feel trusting or joyful? Or, did I say these things against some backdrop of suffering that would be hard to communicate to anyone who didn’t have access to all my neural pathways…
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As an exhausted me prepared for church and drove, I thought a lot about suffering.
What constitutes suffering, and how do sufferings compare? Because it seems we humans want to categorize and measure things, don’t we?
As I drove, I was drinking hot coffee and eating ginger snaps, dunked in the coffee. The roof of my mouth seems to have soreness right now, possibly from stress or other irritation. I noticed the discomfort I felt when I was chewing these breakfast cookies.
Was this suffering? No, not really. I would categorize this as the physical discomforts we find in the human condition.
Suffering was what I saw and heard about on my TV last night. Suffering was a report of FEMA showing up at a home where residents had been affected by the hurricane Helene and were cut off from basic needs being met. Suffering was the family being asked what they needed and telling FEMA they needed water and baby formula, and then for over 3 days to go by without anyone coming back to help them.
This is a form of immediate, existential suffering…not simply a form of existential suffering (as were the pain and grief and feelings of personal loss associated with my dream about drawing pencils…existential suffering triggered and represented by the drawing pencils, but far beyond and far deeper than dreaming about a drawing pencil that is part of a whole set that is “lost”).
As I was driving and engaged in various mental categorizations of suffering—concluding that suffering encompasses all forms of human pain and grief in body, mind and spirit (emotions)–I recognized the impossibility of such assessments.
On my drive home I thought of eight specific people in my mind who are going through what I’d name as suffering. And surely, I could keep broadening the list with awareness of situations with people I know to varying degrees (knowing to some extent of their struggles) to that of complete strangers removed from me halfway around this world.
If one were to closely examine the sufferings of just these eight people I was bringing to mind upon my own neural pathways, I am sure that each of these people’s sufferings exist in such a unique and complex set of their own neural pathways.
In this light, my thoughts about drawing pencils and a number of spiraling associations upon my neural pathways might sound ridiculous to articulate, yet to me they represent a kind of suffering that has very, very little to do with a set of drawing pencils but is just an entryway in to the labyrinth of life memories and mounting losses that only myself and God are intimately acquainted with.
Interestingly the message of today’s sermon was, in part, about joy.
Everyone has a perspective that comes in part from their own life experiences and understandings, about topics of happiness and joy. Ten different people could compose ten different communications about joy (and conversely, sorrow and suffering) and all be drawing upon scripture in some way.
The image I came up with for this piece contains the theatre mask of tragedy-comedy set against a backdrop of neural pathways. I imagined, chose and created this image because I want to communicate that joy is not simply a mask we put on. I don’t believe we can will ourselves to a state of “joy” by working at it, having a positive attitude or trying harder.
Indeed, the joy scripture speaks of is of God. It is a supernatural joy–a fruit of the Holy Spirit–rather than something we can achieve by our own strength and works.
And I don’t think “joy” is a static state, meaning, when we are in times of either acute or chronic sufferings, our experience of joy still meanders all trails of neural pathways. Are we ever 100% joyful or 100% sorrowful and suffering? Maybe. Surely there are moments we might categorize in such a manner.
But often, we humans are one step away–one thought or one opening of our mouth to communicate something to someone away–from swinging further either way on the continuum of happiness, joy and suffering…
I think of the scripture that says Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him.
And on my drive home I thought about Jesus showing up at the tomb of Lazarus, and weeping.
Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those that weep.
Though sorrow may last for a night, joy comes in the morning.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick.
I thought about the saying “Fake it til you make it” and other trivializing, human-based, works-based statements, and the current cultural trends toward forms of self-help, “manifesting” through “confessionalism” and toxic positivity. Just last night I started watching the following commentary (but never finished it), that relates in part to the topic of Christian practice, beliefs and attitude.
How Affirmations (And Declarations) Are Ruining Your Prayer Life.
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Is it possible for Christians to look away from suffering–their own or that of others–because it just feels too heavy, too negative, too hopeless?
Absolutely. I did it last night in front of my TV. And I’ve done forms of it as I contemplate the sufferings of those eight people I named. We can get so overwhelmed by our own forms of suffering–to whatever degree these exist–that we just shut down emotionally. We self-preserve, as though there is not enough of us left to contemplate too deeply…
Until…until…God breaks us. He breaks through our “shut down” hearts, and enables us to care more deeply and even…even…sometimes, to literally weep…for others…
When we witness the sufferings of others, sometimes we feel that anything we can offer–a phone call, a prayer or a word, for example–is but a drop in the bucket in terms of fixing/changing the situation that is bringing the suffering.
As I thought about this, and many things, on my drive home this Sunday afternoon, I thought about how we are all just waiting for Jesus to show up in the dark, neural pathways of our sufferings. Because we are made in God’s image and human, the condition of suffering often most deeply exists in our soul and spirit, even when highly connected to our body or our material condition.
I am not saying that suffering can be split away into such categories, and clearly Jesus went before us suffering in body, mind and spirit.
And while we may intellectually confess this truth, there remain the times and moments where we are lost in the Psalms, so-to-speak…lost in our own neural pathways…waiting upon Jesus (our Teacher) to pull up a chair and sit with us….
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