An unexpected hero

I was "that girl" in the airport yesterday.  I blame it on my pastor.  He had lent me a copy of "Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure," a short movie about the explorer Ernest Shackleton and his (to say the least) harrowing 2 year journey to survive disaster after disaster in his failed Trans-Antarctic journey.  Shackleton is a personal hero of my pastor's, and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about him.  Also, I thought, wouldn't that be a great movie to pass the time with while sitting in the San Diego airport?

Wrong.

You see, I wasn't expecting to be as moved as I was.  I also wasn't expecting Shackleton's journey to be as intense as it was.  Nor did I expect it to move me to tears.  Thus, I was that girl sitting in the airport, alternately gasping and sniffling as I watched the short 40 minute film.

My pastor had expressed admiration for Shackleton as a leader, and I have to say Shackleton's leadership is what moved me most profoundly.  As I mentioned before, Shackleton's journey was a failed one--due to various unforeseen disasters, he and his 28 person crew did not succeed in their goal of being the first to  cross the Antarctic continent by foot.  What I found inspiring, though, was Shackleton's willingness as their leader to sacrifice his dream for the sake of human life.  When the situation went horribly awry for reasons beyond their control, Shackleton did not push his crew further into danger for the sake of his dream--he changed his dream to be that of preserving the lives of his crew.  

He also made it fun.  According to the movie, many of the crew reported situations of fun and downright levity initiated by Shackleton in even the most harrowing of circumstances.  Shackleton had a way, apparently, of looking at what seemed and felt like failure in the face and turning that into an opportunity for hope.

I mentioned to someone the other day that I think God is a poet, and our lives are His poetry.  I see reflections of that in my own life, but I also see it in Shackleton's.  I think only a poetic God, a God of supreme artistry, could turn a journey like Shackleton's into what it was.  Shackleton embarked on his journey so that he could set a record--to be the first to cross the uncharted Antarctic continent.  He failed at that goal, but in the end accomplished so much more--after 2 years of being lost in the Antarctic, he and his crew survived.  How's that for a record?

It's fitting that the name of Shackleton's ship was Endurance.  I'm on the brink of becoming a leader myself, and I think one of the calls of that leadership is to endure with people.  It's to value human life in it's infinite artistry and worth more than loftier, abstract goals.  It's to look the disasters of life squarely in the face, and try to make meaning of them without dismissing their significance.  That, for me, is how to hope.