A Man Has Dreams Of Walking With Giants

"A man has dreams of walking with giants, to carve his niche in the ediface of time."



-- Mr. Banks in Mary Poppins



I couldn't have said it better. It's a phrase that has somehow haunted me all these years.


My dad, in his eighties, still dreams of walking with giants, I think. He's trying to get as many people as he can to read his book, Challenger: A Study in Professional Ethics (available at Amazon.com) wherein he offers-- as a former NASA engineer-- a theory on the space shuttle Challenger's structural problems that caused it to explode in 1986-- a theory that never got a chance to be tested because the investigation was so poorly handled. It's not easy to find anyone who cares about such things.


It's how he always was. He would come home from work at Martin-Marietta and announce, "Well, we made history today." Of course, he could never divulge how that was so.


He was the originator of the Thurston-Newton Method. Or it might have been the Newton-Thurston method. It had something to do with calculus, I think-- somehow adapting an Isaac Newton principle, Newton being the giant of choice, in this case, to walk with.


I remember taking a hike with him near Estes Park when I was little. I pointed out an official path we could take. He retorted that anyone can take a path that's already there. We did without pre-made paths and found our own way to the top of the mountain.


I'm pretty much the same way-- that having-to-find-your-own-way thing. It's the pioneer spirit. It's the thing women (and some traitorous men) make fun of when it takes the form of a reluctance to ask for directions.


I remember wanting to walk with giants for as long as I can remember. When I turned five or six, I felt I was falling behind, because, unlike Mozart, I still hadn't composed any music. But the giant I really believed I could walk with was Leonardo Da Vinci. I saw a documentary about him when I was twelve, and it gave me a better grasp of my own stirrings that had always been there.

But back to the case of Mr. Banks. In Mary Poppins he's a buffoon of a father, as are most fathers in movies and television. And yet when he reaches his nadir, he's a sympathetic character, especially when he says the words quoted at the opening of this post, and goes on to say,

"... before the mortar of his zeal has a chance to congeal, the cup is dashed from his lips, the flame is snuffed a-borning, he's brought to wrack and ruin in his prime."

I have to admit I felt a palpable twinge of sadness merely transcribing those words just now. I know what he's talking about, even if "wrack and ruin" aren't quite the words I've ever applied to myself. There certainly is a lot that works against walking with giants. In Don Quixote there were no giants to walk with-- or fight with. In some ways that's true of the culture we live in-- though the desire (God-given, I would contend) is never completely snuffed out.

Was Mr. Banks foolish to want to walk with giants in the first place? Mary Poppins side-steps the question, for the most part. As soon as he's said the above words, instead of squarely facing the truth of what he's saying, he resorts to words of victimhood at the hands of Mary Poppins. And then he learns the movie's lesson: his children should be his priority. A perfectly good lesson, but where does that leave the desire to carve one's niche in the ediface of time? A sheepish shrug is where it's left for most men, I think. More thoughts on that aspect of the thing in future posts.

But what about the Christian worldview regarding walking with giants?

I think here of the remark a friend of a friend made when they were out with some young women to see Raiders of the Lost Ark when it came to the theaters. (Apologies for the constant movie references, but they are the parables of our times.) After the young women had expressed spirited approbation of Indiana Jones, the young man said, "If you like him so much, you probably wouldn't like Jesus at all."

Perhaps not. And I'm not saying Indiana Jones is a giant to emulate. But the gospel of Christ does give one pause, if one dreams of walking with giants. It certainly complicates things. The Bible's message is that the way up is down.

Still, there are two things to notice about that. First is that in order to go down, one has to start from up. Worms aren't capable of humbling themselves. They're already down. Secondly, the outcome, and therefore the goal of the downward path is still upwardness. Jesus didn't reprimand James and John for wanting to sit on his right and left in his kingdom. He just instructed them on the requirements for whoever does end up there.

Humility is what we're talking about-- and I want to talk about it more in other posts, because I think it's highly misunderstood.

And as I write, my dreams of walking with giants won't be far from my mind. You see-- and I write this with a straight face-- I've long wanted to be the next C. S. Lewis-- only better-- with more of an evangelical worldview. I want to have his way of making profound truths clear while keeping heart and head in complete harmony. Quixotic sainthood in action.