Wooly Boys

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women. 2 Sam 1:26

If you liked Second Hand Lions you will like this movie...I think. It's a little different but same basic premises. Two men can love each other in a purely masculine (not homosexual) way and a boy becomes a man around other men.

Like Second Hand Lions I liked this movie and it moved me for those two reasons.

JONATHAN & DAVID - The two men in the movie had a wonderfully masculine love for each other, much like I would think Jonathan and David in the Bible would have had. They were rude to each other, hit one another, but always always stuck by the other. Stoney (Peter Fonda's character) is dying in the movie and Schuck (Kris Kristofferson) is his ranch hand. They have been together through thick and thin; Stoney's wife's death, sheep shearing every year, and the rise of modern culture (Schuck still carries a six shooter).

I think this is a great picture of 1 Sam 18:1 (NLT) "After David had finished talking with Saul, he met Jonathan, the king's son. There was an immediate bond of love between them, and they became the best of friends." If you are anything like me you had that kind of bond with another male when you were were a boy, but today maybe not so much. With life's busyness, our own selfishness, and maybe a touch of homophobia we don't form bonds like that any more. It's a pity...the Lord is working on that one in me! I'm glad to share a few bonds with men that I hang out with now.

BOY2MAN - This movie along with Second Hand Lions and a great book called Wild at Heart by John Eldredge point out that boys become men around other men. It's a tragic reality of our society that boys like Charles (Joseph Mazzello) are not raised around REAL men because of divorce, death, choice, or scarcity (of REAL men). Therefore they are not taught what it means to be a REAL man. Responsible, selfless, leaders sometime crude, rude, and obnoxious but in the end they are supposed to be heroes. Charlie learns that as his dying Grandpa Stoney and his side kick Schuck kidnap him from the city and take him to the sheep ranch. You can almost see the difference between his first scene and his last...he went from boy to man.

I got to put this into practice a couple of weekends ago. I took my first son camping against all real logic. We have a baby in the house less than 2 months old and we battle for every minute of sleep we can muster. If you know me you know I don't sleep the first night anywhere away from home, especially not on the ground in a tent. But you know what? It was way worth it, my son got to be around me and some other men that weekend. It was a great weekend where I got to tell him that he has what it takes, that I'm proud of him, that I love him. These are major messages boys need to hear...from their fathers. And we shared a HUGE moment when he asked me to baptize him in a river we were trouncing through. Amazing...I'll go more into detail in the CalvarySLO Blog.

FINAL THOUGHT - Right before Stoney died he asked Schuck to take off his sunglasses. Schuck asks why and Stoney responds, "So I can remember your ugly face" or something like that. To translate that manspeak he was saying, "I love you." That's what I learned from this movie, it's ok for us of the male gender to love each other young and old!