2023-08-15 A Meditation on Stronger Mettle

“20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:20–24 ESV)

The soldier is a peculiar brand of strong, abundant in risk-taking, even finding themself on a cusp, more—not less—participatory in things that wound and make survivors of us: the psycho-social horizon, the group activities, the fruits of our success in self-preparation, insofar as we make our mettle only partly the brawn, part of it is a sense of availability, presence, communal participation. And these things can be a big open-ended question. Am I belonging? Who am I, exactly? When is it my turn to suit up and show the way?

The soldier therefore discovers newly minted accessibility in their own soul, souls healed somehow and in some way by the training and the coaching: we have been coached to a place of genuine usefulness to our cohort and drill sergeant, to our higher-ups, to our overall army. And to analyze, to be Effective and Working even amidst the down-time, is to know that barbs we once let brush off of us, today may linger. We may be newly available—yes—and therein, newly vulnerable.

We are a peculiar brand of Working. We are that urgent visage of a man or a woman with Much on their Mind. We are daring to Hope, finding a private Prayer Life, living into some Hours on our Own Recognisance. In those hours, we see and anticipate, a world “out there” from which we learn much from our material world “in here”. We all need to be found to be invaluable, lovable, beautiful, by someone. Yet too we are those who, as soldiers, may weep over the cross carried by another, but also acknowledge that our own make and gestative time is stronger, is less in need of the caretaking, but rather is true to the soldier’s creed, not to count our own lives as anything but as body and matter for the patrol, for the march, for the winsome engagement. Yes, it is those who have loved us who have perhaps made us thus. Yet also it is a gift, a birth-rite, a Calling, a Proof of Concept: healthy-minded souls dwell very near to a Cross that only they can take up; they cannot delegate, we cannot delegate. And so many a fine specimen of the army of the Lord has gone to their Cross willingly and with gumption.