A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

I’m having one of those rare weekends alone. My daughter is making new friends at a camp for happy teenagers, while my husband and son are scout camping at a black sand beach in Northern California. I enjoy these moments almost too much, burrowing into my home and tuning out the world with loud music and escapist fiction.

Email is one channel that breaks through my isolation. After following the stories on Sarah Palin, John McCain’s VP candidate, I was intrigued by a forwarded email: “25 things you might not know about McCain.” Written by the Associated Press, it was published in multiple news outlets August 28ff, 2008. Most of the insights are silly trivia, but one line grabbed me: “10. He talks to fellow prisoners of war, those with whom he shared a cell in Vietnam, almost daily.”

I like to stay in touch with friends and family, but the number of people I deliberately interact with daily is quite small. What would make a man chat with his cellmates at this frequency, so many years after they were all released? I found some clues in McCain’s 1973 description of the POW years and in this interview of McCain’s cellmate, George “Bud” Day.

In an atmosphere of violence, oppression, torture, and fear, McCain valued his buddies. He and Day were in terrible physical shape, and they relied on a third cellmate, Norris Overly, to nurse them back into some semblance of health. McCain and Day even helped each other with rudimentary physical therapy. After his cellmates were transferred, McCain remained alone in his cell for over two years, forbidden to communicate with any other prisoners. But he would rather suffer than forfeit interaction. He said,

As far as this business of solitary confinement goes—the most important thing for survival is communication with someone, even if it’s only a wave or a wink, a tap on the wall, or to have a guy put his thumb up. … Communication with your fellow prisoners was of the utmost value—the difference between being able to resist and not being able to resist. … We would risk getting beat up just to tell a man that one of his friends had gotten a letter from home. But it was also valuable to establish a chain of command in our camps, so our senior officers could give us advice and guidance.

Relationships provide us with structure, sanity, and hope. As much as I appreciate a break from family noise and needs, the truth is that I need them. I go a little crazy without them. My sleep cycle, eating habits, and exercise discipline get off track almost immediately. I’m never as productive as I think I will be when they are gone.

When I draw a larger circle, I’m convinced life would be much more difficult without my church family to help me keep balance and perspective. Like McCain (“17. He doesn’t like to be alone.”), when it comes to my church family, I can’t stand the thought of being without one. Whenever I’ve moved to a new city, one of my first agenda items has been to find a church and get involved.

But within the context of the spiritual violence we live through every day, the painful choices we must make, the consequences of mistakes we and others have to bear — there is really only One without whom we cannot live. He broke out of heaven to land in the constriction of this physical plane — to help us overcome the bleak potential of whatever cell we’re trapped in and take the blame for any mistakes we make along the way. Moreover, if we allow him to guide us, he’ll shape us into persons of courage and conviction who can grasp a more abundant life of freedom now.

The reality, though, is that whether we acknowledge him with a “wave or a wink” or just ignore him altogether, it doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is there.

Tags: bond, McCain, POW, prayer, relationships, solitary confinement

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Church Family, Jesus, Spiritual Disciplines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.