For My Grandfather

On a warm Florida summer day, I sat across from my grandfather as he told me the stories that made him. Now I must say that this was not any strange sort of phenomenon, for I can recall many times when grandpa would sit me down and tell me about some interesting recollection from his past, interspersed with poems of the like of Georgy D. Wash. But on this particular occasion, he told me so many of his stories that it was indeed difficult to remember them all. I sat there and listened as he recounted to me his days at General Motors, his seasons with his daughters at the summer house and the later days after his retirement. And of course, it would be silly for me to retell such stories, for grandpa could tell them much better than I. So instead, I choose to write about that which grandpa gave to me: a love of stories.

A story makes a man. A man cannot merely be understood by the company that he represents or the job he works or even the church he attends, for they are merely descriptors. Nor can a man’s life be determined by the list of his work history or his resume, no matter how detailed. They are merely words on a page, meaningless symbols that are devoid of the man himself. They are simply suggestions or hints as to what a man could possibly be, but in all reality never tell us who he really was.

But a man’s story takes these descriptions and makes them walk, and in walking, we see the man. And when we see a man, we see the image of God Himself. And so it may not be too much of a stretch to say that when my grandfather sat me down on that warm Florida summer day, I looked into the face of God Himself, and I heard His story played out in the life of a man who was dedicated to his family and to his work.

For my grandfather is indeed a great man, despite his simple descriptors. He has lived in poverty and wealth, in joy and sorrow, in love and frustration, in nostalgia and hope. He has seen the fear of war and the glory of victory, the sweat of hard work and the success of industry, and the rise and fall of nations. He has walked the world for ninety years, some good and some bad, and we all hope that his years will not end quickly.

But we do know that we all fall asleep and wake up to be with the Lord. And though my grandfather will see the Lord a sight better than most, we are still here left with the noses on our faces staring up into heaven and hoping that we might see some inkling of glory. And we will be left with his story and because of that he will live on beyond my parents and beyond me and my siblings and, Lord willing, beyond my children. They will know that Dwight Duane Dunn was a man who strived on this earth with the best and the worst and told his story to a young kid on a warm Florida summer day.

And I will never forget it.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel for our stories weave into the grand narrative of this life, and we believe ourselves to be part of Your story as long as You wish it.

A Critique of Criticism

I've been meaning to write something like this for a long time, though I felt that I haven't had the words to write it. Perhaps I still do not. Nonetheless, it's two in the morning, my eyelids aren't heavy, and I figured I ought to do something constructive.

Fact: I am a movie addict. Fact: I am a recovering movie critic. For a short while, I believed that I was an enlightened connoisseur of film. I knew the basic rules, of course, like "show, don't tell" and "keep the camera where the interest is" and "don't try to be like Spielberg because even Spielberg isn't like Spielberg." But I was the guy that would be earnest to exclaim that a movie collection was lacking if it did not contain a single movie written by Charlie Kaufman or Michael Mann or at least something in a different language. I've surveyed shelves of DVDs in my dorm and spotted the likes of movies like Eagle Eye or The Transformers, listening to my friends convey to me the pure joy they receive from watching Nicholas Cage with his arms spread, torches in both hands as a F-15 screams overhead, firebombs exploding in the background. And I shake my head in disgust because everyone knows that these films are small potatoes indeed when compared to the subtle overtones of absurdism and role reversal in a Wes Anderson's Rushmore or appreciate the slow and realist dialogue of Kieslowski's The Decalogue. And I wonder why I cannot carry on a meaningful conversation concerning movies without launching into some ill-advised diatribe on how Unbreakable was certainly the superior to 300.

So, despite my overly obsessive manner concerning the finer things on the silver screen, I've learned many film critics can be some of the most destructive people on the planet. Consider this: A film critic may spend one to two hours to develop a good critique of a film, which generally consists of what the critic did and did not like followed by a general and often vague judgment on the film as a whole. Yet there are some people on the crew of said film that worked 24 hours straight to make sure that the film was proper. There were people on the set of the film that worked days and nights without sleep to get everything just right. There were hundreds of people involved in the process, logging thousands of hours before the movie even hit the screen. There was a writer spending hours tweaking a line to get the punch just right and a director losing brain cells by running the same scene over and over again just to get the right look and feel for the rest of the movie. And all of this work was to create something new, an entire project born from a simple idea.

Now, I certainly believe that some criticism of major budget films is warranted. Any time anyone puts a piece of art out into the world that makes millions upon millions of dollars, then a critic might be entitled to scrutinize it publicly. I'll abide it, I suppose, especially since there are truly films that serve absolutely no function except to make money. I can accept criticism on that level. But what I cannot abide is criticism of this nature on the base level in our own personal relationships. I will sit in a preaching class this semester and listen to people "constructively criticize" someone for not preaching in the "correct way." I will read someone's work that is just not good enough, and I will have to tell them why. I will be confronted by someone in my dorm because the way I hold myself and the way I live my life is not "the right way."

And in so doing, we destroy creation. Our boasts about how Million Dollar Baby was a bad attempt at a boxing movie or Michael Clayton was boring, actionless trash - claims that have no ground except on those which are purely opinion - soon translate into statement on how a roommate is an idiot or a fellow worker is complete psychopath or a student is talentless writer with no future. And we destroy in the process.

But there is a place somewhere inside of us that longs to create. It is what we do as human beings and as God's created ones: we make stuff. We build and we plan and we dream and we explore because that's what we do. But some of us who are not particularly good at creating choose instead to criticize. There is certainly a place for this, too, but not in the way we might think. To criticize is to destroy. This is for certain, for in criticizing, we often tell someone that the way they function in life or the things which they create are either wrong or no good. So we give our criticisms either written or verbal, and in the process, eliminate a viable path in their life without creating a new one. We must create a new path, and I believe we do this through love.

I advocate loving people, a skill somewhat scarce these days. When we love, we show how to be helpful and collaborate and how to understand others without critical bias. When we love, we ourselves create in others feelings and notions of belonging or success and we enable them to be better. Through love, we are able to push people past the mundane work and product to a quality of work not yet reached by mankind. In so doing, we also become better versions of ourselves and closer versions of what Christ modeled for us two thousand years ago.

Now when we love, we do also destroy, but only that which is ineffective or harmful. We hope to eradicate sin in others because it opposes our Gospel and the advance of the kingdom of God and the growth of the body of Christ, and so therefore, it is unwelcome.

But understand this: my previous words are by no means the end all and be all God-sanctioned truth. It is merely my perspective on life. And I do believe that there is a corrective perspective, that is the perspective of Christ, but I am certainly not there.

And so if you have read this far, you have some choices. You can either forget that I wrote this at all and do nothing. You can tell me how and why I am wrong and how my perspective is incorrect, and in so doing, destroy in a sense that I would deem unhelpful, further bolstering my argument. Or you can encourage me to continue, and in so doing, create in me the inspiration to continue to push on. But unless we help each other, our perspective will continue to be rather narrow, like a nearsighted stare down a dark classroom hall. There will be no hope of making it to the other side without a illumination and proper focus.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel for the world continues to fall to pieces, and we, standing in the midst of debris, are still trying to build a spiritual house.