246: A Prescription for a Healthier, Happier Life by Matthew Sleeth

Author:Matthew Sleeth
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian
Published: 2012-10-17T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

A Sense of Place

Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground.

Exodus 3:5

I USED TO LOVE watching films in the darkened classrooms of our elementary school. A movie was a welcome break from reading, writing, and spending yet another day failing to master the basics. My attention span was shorter than an eyelash, but films about volcanoes, Eskimos, or “our friend the atom” held me entranced.

Year after year, my teachers struggled, but things like the long and short of division didn’t seem to fit into my brain. All the tools of modern education were employed—everything from extinction techniques to operant learning—but they failed. When the standard techniques weren’t successful, they switched to theoretical and experimental teaching methods. They tried positively reinforcing me with stickers and negatively conditioning me with lost privileges, but I was the most frustrating pupil in the room.

There was only one time when I excelled. My moment came when the lights were dimmed, the curtain was drawn, and the film projector was turned on. Mrs. Hawkins’s nicotine-stained hand rotated the projector’s switch toward play, and if the picture shook or if the narrator’s voice came out like a chorus of gargling frogs—that was my moment! I might never conquer the multiplication tables, but I understood how to thread a film projector.

Mrs. Hawkins would turn off the projector and fiddle with it for a time. One of the other students might giggle or whisper, but for once our teacher knew it wasn’t my fault. With a mixture of frustration and resignation, she would turn toward me and bark, “Well, Matthew, you might as well get over here and fix this thing.”

One film—The Face of Lincoln—has retained a place in my memory. This twenty-minute, black-and-white documentary features an art professor from UCLA. He looks like a corporate man—bald and wearing a starched shirt and tie, and also a long smock. Made without the aid of color, computers, or a single special effect, the film features no props or flashy scenery. Its cast consists solely of the straitlaced professor and ten pounds of clay.

Using his fingers, a few basic tools, and a massive amount of talent, he molds a lump of clay into a lifelike bust of Abraham Lincoln. While his hands shape the likeness, his voice molds the minds of his young viewers.

Over half a century has passed since the film was first produced (and won an Academy Award for best short film), yet revisiting the film online recently, I found the message as engaging as ever. It helped me visualize a part of the Bible that has never quite made sense to me.

Genesis describes God forming Adam out of the earth: “The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7, KJV). Until recently, this description did not bring any plausible imagery to my mind. Watching Professor Gage form the bust of Lincoln lifted the veil and illuminated the shortcomings of my imagination: God is not only a potter; he is a sculptor.

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