Eighteen Years in the Army

January 13, 1987 a young, immature Joe Phillips boarded a plane to Atlanta, Georgia, then a bus from there to Fort Benning, home of the Infantry. The level of tension in my life over the next three months has never been duplicated since. From 4 AM to 11 PM non-stop furious activity, much of which was more than I thought I was capable of doing. I was wrong. I learned that the mind can take the body much further than the body thinks it can go.

It was a very strange time. I'll never forget the living oxymoron of drill sergeants marching us to chapel on Sunday mornings, making us chant cadences like "Somebody, anybody start up a war. I want to go to El Salvador." "Shoot somebody, Kill somebody!" or even worse. I never thought I would stay in the Army more than my initial tour of 3 years. It grated on me, but I learned the spirit can endure a lot more than we think it can.

There wasn't a lot about that initial three years that could have motivated me to consider staying in. There was a lot of crassness, uncouth behavior, and more mud, rain, snow, and bugs than I ever want to see again up close and personal. There were positive moments as well, but sometimes few and far between. Toward the end of my tour, I heard about the Defense Language Institute and decided to try for that. I got in and stayed in the army with hopes of learning another language.

I was afraid at first. I didn't know if I had what it takes to learn something so complex at the rigorous pace demanded by the institute. Many people, I heard, simply couldn't take it, and went back to their previous jobs quickly. I learned, however, that the mind can do a lot more than we might think.

Eighteen years later I contemplate the changes time has wrought in me. I am a completely different person and, for the most part, I am grateful. That which I thought I would only be able to tolerate for a short time, which I thought to be diametrically opposed to my view of the world, has done me much good. It would appear that the telescopic view from the beginning doesn't represent the end very well and that regardless of the strange turns life takes, we can always learn from them.

Midnight Reflections

We humans love to categorize people and things using the filter of our preconceptions. It's not necessarily a bad thing. At least, it is normal. It becomes a serious problem, however, when we become convinced that our pet idea is transcendant; that it is established and immutable, divine decree, universally known truth, or painfully clear fact.

The reason I've become so sceptical in my life of this kind of certainty is two-fold:

1) Often, when I've known something for years, I discover that I was wrong.
2) Being that sure of something makes one nearly unteachable.

Now, particularly in matters of the heart, man is foolish to get all fired up about just how certain he is of objective reality. The nature of God, the state of grace of a fellow human, the motives of others, what exactly was meant by an elderly christian leader nearly 2000 years ago in an obscure quote from a letter written to a group of christians in Asia Minor ... These are all areas where we have a tendency sometimes to decide we know that we know when knowing isn't really possible at all. We hope, ponder, muse, extrapolate, deduce, assume, infer and even guess and the best we come up with is our version of someone elses version of something.

I am not in the least opposed to strong opinions. I have many of them. Like Plato, however, who recorded his musings many moons ago, I'm learning that the more I study and learn, the less I feel I know. I no longer fear the cool fingers of uncertainty. They prod me on, motivate me to learn more, to see what great minds have said of these things.

Often the process is more rewarding than the product. Any reader knows that the last page of a great book is a bittersweet moment. So it is with exploring the philosophical unknown. I want to know more about God; what He is; how we have shaped Him in our minds and how others have done so in times past; how that differs from observable phenomena; what is meant by salvation; how it works and why; what people think it does; why they try to box it up; why people do the things they do and under what forces of nature or spirit; what the ancients said about questions that still nag us today...the list goes on. If I were able to fully answer all these questions to my satisfaction, life would be drained of the wonder of the adventure.

There are more than enough answer vendors in the world, certain about everything and probably right about much less. I take the road less traveled by and believe that it makes a great difference.