I’ve been really grumpy about Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace lately. So grumpy that I chucked all of my Ep I stuff when we moved and have relegated the entire Prequel Trilogy to the category of Apocrypha. Sorry, George.
My reasons are many, but I won’t rehash all of them here. I’ll just soapbox about how disappointing the Darth Maul character is. Even more disappointing than Jar Jar Binks.
Part of this was my fault. Back in college I watched the Ep I trailer every day in my man Matt K’s room. He had a sweet-action bubblelicious iMac, and we’d watch it over and over and over and over and over again. The most mesmerizing part of the whole thing to me was Darth Maul. He looked like such a bad mamma jamma that I was just certain he would inspire the same type of fear and respect that Darth Vader commanded.
Wrong.
Darth Maul was lame. Actually, if there is a word meaning “lamer than lame”, he’s that. He looked mean, but he wasn’t. He was a puppet. He hardly did anything. Shoot, he hardly SAID anything. Not like Vader, man. Vader was the opposite. His words were harsh. His actions were harsher. Kidnapping princesses. Force choking his own officers. Pursuing his enemies with passion. Oh, and he didn’t die at the end of Episode IV. His death was hinted at, but apparently they retrieved him from the depths of space.
Vader is iconic because Vader wasn’t just ruthless, he was the epitome of ruthless.
That’s the mental picture I hold dearly as God has called me to be ruthless. Don’t worry. It’s a very Jesus-y ruthlessness. It’s the kind that Dallas Willard talked about when he told John Ortberg that “you must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life, for hurry is the great enemy spiritual life in our world today”.
Not try not to hurry. Not cut back on hurry. Eliminate it. Ruthlessly. Vader that junk straight out of your life.
Because like Eugene Peterson once noted, “Busyness is the enemy of spirituality. It is essentially laziness. It is doing the easy thing instead of the hard thing. It is filling our time with our own actions instead of paying attention to God’s actions. It is taking charge”.
One of our motivations for moving to a small town and having Stacy split a position with one of her best friends was so that we could better pursue spiritual depth. We were just moving too fast in the city to be able to do that. It was working ok and then we had a kid. And then we had another kid. And eventually the duct tape and bubble gum started to lose it’s sticky and the whole thing just about fell in on itself.
It’s not like there is nothing to do in a small town. There’s plenty to do. But we were really looking for a chance to set things up well for the long term, and this presented us that opportunity. It’s been quite the challenge to keep things from getting away from us again.
Before we made the move we made a pact to not adopt any extra responsibilities or activities for the first six months. We knew it would be an adjustment period as we started new jobs and settled into the community. We knew we’d have to be ruthless in our fight against hurry because there would be approaches from all sides. Many would be profitable activities, but we wanted to be sure we were committing to the activities we were called to and not just the first dozen opportunities we were afforded.
Fortunately for me, my wife is far more ruthless than I am. I was considering helping out with the worship team at church. And teaching the middle school Sunday School class. And getting our daughter enrolled in gymnastics. And wanting to sign up to help with every single one of the parties at her preschool.
What can I say? Old habits die hard.
But my wife’s ruthlessness is keeping me in check. We are signed up to help with one party. We are considering all of the requests people bring to us. But we are putting them on hold until January. It’s not easy being ruthless, but it’s necessary. Because we are still finding our way and getting our spiritual rhythms worked out and discerning the roles God has for us in our new town.
Whatever that calling may be I look forward to embracing with the same level of enthusiasm as the level of ruthlessness with which we’ve eliminated hurry.
Renew and Restore
This one has a nice “Darth Fonz” vibe. Could use a leather jacket.
And then there’s this. Darth Pink Cowgirl. That’s something.
