IVP - Strangely Dim

Who Needs a Superhero?

By David A. Zimmerman

There’s a group at my place of business who share my fascination with the comic book superhero. This art form captured (and in some cases still captures) our attention; the characters have grown to mean something to each of us. We admired them, we wrapped them in plastic, we played as them in our back yards. No big deal, I suppose, except that we're much more likely to stand around gushing over what superpower we'd most like to have than talk about who in our own, actual reality inspires us.

Why do we more quickly identify with fantasy heroes than with heroes of real life? I think there’s a control issue involved. We know what Batman will do—he will batter the bad guys without pulling a trigger; he will make things right no matter how much of his own blood, sweat, toil and tears he has to sacrifice. In contrast, we never know what to expect from our favorite sports figures, political figures, celebrities and pastors—and we can never with full confidence declare that their exploits will bring about truth, justice and whatever American way might currently inspire us--or, for that matter, that they are really fighting bad guys and not simply victimizing people who don't agree with them.

But perhaps the reason no real-life heroes loom large in our cultural view is because the job description is too difficult to live up to. Winston Churchill’s task was simply stated: Save Europe; protect Western civilization. Buzz Aldrin’s: Walk on the moon. Superheroes have life-sized problems beyond saving the universe--their boss lays them off, perhaps, or their girlfriend is flirting with their cousin. But they still manage to get the job done: they keep the universe for one more day from slipping into oblivion and entertain us in the process. A little shock, a little awe, a little butt-kicking, and we’re safe, secure and satisfied. There’s little circumspection to block the spectacle.

But in our current context, and in real life, questions interrupt our adulation. The “coalition of the willing” (a great super-team name if I’ve ever heard one) that toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq meets the old qualifications for hero—they took a brutal dictator out of play—but were they liberating Iraq or its oil? Should they have conducted these rescues militarily or diplomatically? And what about the prisoner abuse that took place in the process?

And I suspect that most would-be heroes decide that the title is more trouble than its worth. Just when one villain gets vanquished, another springs up, or the cops don’t know what to make of this vigilante justice, or the hero is late for lunch. I could help to change or even save the world, but ultimately, what’s in it for me?

Perhaps such navel-gazing obscures our view of what greatness in today’s world would look like. Frank Miller, in his benchmark The Dark Knight Returns, shows Commissioner James Gordon justifying his deference to Batman by recalling a larger-than-life American hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

“A lot of people with a lot of evidence said that Roosevelt knew Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked . . . and that he let it happen. . . . A lot of innocent men died. But we won the war. . . . It bounced back and forth in my head until I realized I couldn’t judge it. It was too big. He was too big.”

When it’s all said and done, it’s pretty easy for someone in tights, a mask and a cape to elicit that sort of awe. It’s much tougher for everyday folk with nothing but flesh and blood. Those of us whose commitment to a righteous cause supersedes their self-absorption can justifiably be called heroes. The rest of us will just have to fantasize about it.

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As of tomorrow, my book, Comic Book Character, is up, up and away at the printer. Look for it in six weeks--same bat-time, same bat-website.

Get Yer Own Apocalypse!

By David A. Zimmerman

OK, really. What’s the big deal with hurricanes? Oh, I suppose I can accept that it’s a big deal to people in Florida and on the Gulf coast, but hurricanes dominate the news from Cincinnati to Seattle as soon as the winds pick up.

My wife and I went on a cruise a couple of weeks ago to celebrate our tenth anniversary, and our itinerary took us from New Orleans through Jamaica and Grand Cayman and back, with a side trip to Cozumel, Mexico. Our travels kept us two days ahead of Hurricane Ivan, a category 5 storm in the middle of the worst hurricane season in recent memory. Ivan decimated Jamaica and Grand Cayman, and it threatened New Orleans as well—enough so that my aunt had to relocate to Mississippi.

I will, therefore, gladly grant that hurricanes are a big deal. But come on now: even the sports coverage on my local Chicago newscasts gets drenched with hurricane reporting.

The net result of Chicago’s grand obsession with Ivan was that my friends and family thought I was a goner for sure; I’m pretty certain there were claims staked on my office. My three-year-old niece--who’s not normally one for talking--left a message of concern on my answering machine: “Hurricanes sure are scary; see you later, alligator!” or something like that.

Nothing so apocalyptic ever hits the Chicagoland area—even though we are, as a coworker gleefully warned me, sitting right on top of the longest fault line in North America. Just because there’s been no earthquake in Chicago since before Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner," the argument goes, doesn’t mean that we couldn’t be hit with devastation at any given moment. Until the earth shifts beneath our feet, we have to content ourselves with mediocre weather systems like tornadoes and occasional flash flooding. And believe you me, those second-rate storms will get more than their share of press.

I’m not surprised, considering the fascination with natural disasters, that apocalyptic fiction has become such a literary force. No sooner is the Left Behind series wrapped up (I hate to ruin it for you, but the good guys win) than one of its principal authors begins yet another apocalyptic series. Meanwhile, knockoff series litter the landscape like unraptured accoutrements, all titillating their audiences with how bad it might get and how noble the survivors will be. It’s like watching the Milwaukee news during a hurricane: you get to fantasize about how you would bear devastation from the comfort of your own home.

I’ve read portions of one apocalyptic novel—I read it sitting in a bean bag, actually, probably while guzzling a diet soda and chomping on corn chips. Ah, the irony: the closest I get to preparedness is highly processed food chocked full of preservatives, and I’m reading a call to be prepared to meet my Maker, to stare down the Antichrist, to usher in the end of history. I didn’t finish the book, but I’m pretty confident that I finished the corn chips.

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Read what others are saying about my book Comic Book Character--coming soon!

The Chipmunk My Brother

By David A. Zimmerman

This summer I spent a week staffing what was essentially a retreat for college students. I went into it with some trepidation, since I was being called on to go somewhere I’d never gone to do things I’d never done for people I’d never met. But it’s not like that’s the first time that’s ever happened, so I decided to go for it.

Our first full day there included a retreat of silence, which is a period of time during which you retreat from your normal surroundings and try to keep silent. I’m not good at silence, so I kept a journal—a kind of literary noise—of the experience. Read on.

* * *

I have a new best friend. He’s a chipmunk. I suppose I don’t know for sure that he is a he, but getting emotionally attached to a female chipmunk might be considered inappropriate, so I'll continue to presume that my new best friend is a boy.

My new best friend has stopped by often to say hi, and he’s just joined me for lunch, so we’ve had several chances to connect. He isn’t afraid to get close, but he’s not overbearing in how he relates to me. He’s everything you might hope for in a friend, and more than you would expect from a chipmunk.

I guess I could have seen this coming. I’m at Cedar Campus, a retreat center operated by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. My wife came here years ago and made her own new best friend; she was visited regularly by a duck, who would join her for times of quiet and help her to process the day’s unfoldings.

I expected to see my share of animals this week; we were alerted from the outset to their presence (they’re year-round residents). Yet I didn’t expect to share a meal with one of them. I didn’t expect a confessor or a buddy. My brother the chipmunk is a gift of grace this week, a surprisingly delightful host.

I came up here knowing two people. They’re both sensitive to the needs of the people around them, but they also have many responsibilities that necessarily trump the anxieties and relational desperations of an insecure tourist such as myself. I’ve since met several wonderful people—both college students and the people who minister to them—but their attentions and obligations necessarily start with the other members of their fellowship. They’ve been very gracious, but they’re needed elsewhere.

Which is fine now, because I have my brother the chipmunk. If we will be recognized as children of God in the way that we love one another, then I can gladly attest to the faith of my chipmunk brother. This week, I will be his student, and he will teach me to love.

I think I’ll call him Chucky.

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Read an interview about my forthcoming book, Comic Book Character.

On the Near-Death Experience of My Wife

By David A. Zimmerman

My wife and I have a running speculation that one of us is going to die young—she thinks it’s me, and I think it’s her. Neither of us can explain the reason for our speculation; it’s a shared, gut instinct that we both hope we’re wrong about. But it’s there, nonetheless. So, when she comes home late after a meeting, I worry that she’s been in an accident. When I don’t call to tell her I made it to Michigan, she worries that I never made it to Michigan.

This past summer we got our closest yet to seeing this proto-prophecy fulfilled. We took a lazy river tubing trip on the way home from my parents’ house. The river, incidentally, was by no means lazy. The current separated me from my wife, and she went dashing into a thicket of trees, where she was separated from her tube and her life jacket.

I fought my way to the other side of the river, where I could do nothing to help her except shout silly pep talks. She sat silently, grasping on to a large branch both to keep herself from going under and to keep the branch from beating her senseless. Finally a man in a canoe got to her, and she got herself free.

Now, the thing about tubing with the current is that once you commit to the route, you’re committed to the route. We couldn’t get to our car from where we were; we had to get back in the river—barely two miles into our six-mile trek. Four more miles of tubing and fighting the impulse to never enter the water again, and we were back safe at our car for another ten hours of dreaded cross-country driving.

I wonder how much of my panic that day was for Kara’s sake, and how much of it was for me. Imagine driving ten hours alone after witnessing the death of a loved one. Imagine telling your friends and family about the senseless death of someone you and they love. Imagine suddenly recalibrating every detail of your life from two people to one person. That’s what I narrowly avoided that day. But then again, that’s the deal: once you commit to the route laid out for you, you’re committed to the route.

Part of the journey of faith is trusting our Guide through its twists and turns and sudden tragedies. During their exodus from Egypt to Canaan, the fledgling people of Israel had only the food that God provided them, only the water God brought them. They had to walk and keep walking, and every once in a while they had to come to terms with the fact that some of them—from their whiniest gripers to their fearless leader—would not complete the trip. The generation that entered Canaan first had to bury the generation that left Egypt. But they committed, for better or for worse, to the route, and history has proven their route to be worth the trip.

Neither my wife nor I has stared down death since her near-drowning, but we have greater confidence now that at least she could if she had to. And I’ve been working on some new cheers from the sideline, since I’m apparently good for little else in an emergency: “Go, Kara! Hang on tight! God will save you from your plight!”

That’s all I’ve come up with so far, but it’s better than nothing.

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I’m in the Library of Congress!

I’m on Amazon.com!

I'm on InterVarsity Press Online! Oh . . . wait . . . so are you!

Shame on Yourself!

All right; I'm shamelessly self-promotional, but I'm also glad to see that Student Leadership Journal, a wonderful publication of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship that has graciously published a couple of my articles over the years, has launched its new website.

There's a lot in SLJ that's specific to InterVarsity's work on campus, but there's even more that's just really compelling--thoughtful articles for leaders and for young adults trying to find their way in the world, great poems, and incisive quotations.

So I thought I'd do my part and pass along a link to their site--specifically, my page at their site, from which you can surf around and see what you think. Just promise that you'll come back here eventually. Have fun!

Dave