Lessons in humility from high on a camel’s back

I got schooled this weekend. And from an unexpected source. I also got a subtle lesson in God’s will. Let me explain this whole 3 days…

My plans for the weekend were to run to College Town 30 minutes away and pick up a backcountry cookset for the new stove I ordered which arrived Thursday. I planned to get there around 6-6:30, then have lunch with Tyler at 7pm, then head west to my folks (pick up my tent) then out further west to my dad’s family seat and camp on some farm land there, all weekend.

Friday:

I didn’t get to College Town 30 minutes away until like 5 until 7. By then, the two outdoor outfitters had both closed (early, one of them, I might add…). So, I called Tyler, and he tells me he didn’t work today. “Wanna do something? Wanna eat?” “Sure,” he says. “Okay, come downtown. Call me when you are here, and I’ll meet ya”.

We meet on a street corner and play silly cellphone tricks, then head up the street to a South American restaurant. Its a b e a u t i f u l evening, but the crowds had beat us to the outdoor seating. Seating at all was kinda lucky. (Okay, no, a host kept assigning people seats. I’m just saying, it was crowded.)

We talked at our table. We are 12 years apart, but have pretty much the same interests and same life views. This is a cool thing to me.

He came back from a trip out of town earlier this week, and has not (at that time) had a chance to update his OD. So, I update him on my OD, and some stories of interactions with certain diarists and dairies (thats YOU people! Some of you are very real in my daily life. Thanks!).

He comments that he doesn’t give advice, rather he is “simply a conduit for your own logical processes”. Thats very profound, and I wanted to share that for all posterity.

So, I proceed to pipe him stuff. He pipes me stuff. Its neat.

We finagle to-go cups from the management, then fill them again and leave into a great evening. Like most college towns, this one has a strip where everything is happening. We decide to walk it end-to-end while chatting.

(I found “Bloom”, by the way, but they were closed. But we went into “the Dusty Bookshelf” and had a great time browsing. I bought several postcards, some for myself, and some for my best-friend in exile.)

Where upon which, he asked “Whats up with you and Yort? Why don’t you two ever talk?” I have another best-friend (not Trynity) of way old – from grade school – to whom I no longer speak. It is a long story which someday I will chronicle here. In the meantime though, I chronicled it to Tyler as we continued to walk.

The short of the story is: he stopped maturing, he stopped playing an active roll in maintaining our friendship, and he grew resentful of the light I shine in the dark corners of his life. That last fact drove him to withdraw even further.

For myself, I missed his active friendship, and tried several ways to encourage him to grow from a 17 year old adult into the person he could become. This encouraging took place over about 3 years. But he continued to withdraw further into a fantasy world of his own design.

At last, I confronted him in final. “Until you start to carry the weight of our friendship, we are through. I am not going to carry it by myself anymore.” My hope was that this would finally “shock” him into pulling his head from under his kilt.

Three years later, it hasn’t.

Tyler says to me “You should amend your relationship with him”, and he proceeds to explain to me why. Now, understand that Tyler is not (yet *g, wink*) a Christian, but he inherited an inherant sense of righteousness from his mother. Thus, he proceeeds to wield Biblical truth against my rationalizations and fears.

Mind you, I have been thinking along similar lines since the spring/summer of last year. But I have reasons both personal and arbitrary for not quite wanting to do so. He proceeded, first without any knowledge of those concerns, then later as I played devil’s advocate, to reduce them to the falsehood and pretense that they are.

There on the corner of 9th and Mass, on the planter where we sat, I got schooled.

That is tremendous, folks! I am not often schooled by anyone. I am not trying to brag; rather, I know what I do well, and I stay in those areas and improve in them. I am not often in a position to BE schooled, least of all out of the blue as this was.

I am truely humbled by the blessing of friendship that God continues to place in my life. And I am extremely proud of the responsiblity and wisdom of my friend.

Well, we talked late into the evening, then at his roommate’s askance, I went to his apartment to share in his roommate’s joy of having cleaned! It was quite a thing to not step over circuit boards in their living room.

Then, Tyler and I sat and played “name that tune” MP3 style for about 3 hours, before I finally drove home to my apartment and bed.

I still don’t know what a camel has to do with it…. *smiles*