E-Letters

One Fast Indian

By Jeff Andrechyn
Jul 22, 2009

I have a friend Lance Thollander who wrote a book about recovering our Christian vocabulary. Profound words like Mystery, Church, and Kingdom have become so commonplace and pigeon holed over the years that they have lost their original God breathed meaning, and with it the power to change our lives.

For example, where does your heart go when you hear the word "elder."

To be honest, when I hear that word my heart sinks. I think of suit and tie, no fun, committee meetings, obligation, and service with a heavy emphasis on moral correctness. My heart does not aspire to those words.

I realize my opinions and thoughts on what it means to be a elder are not God's thoughts. The word elder has been culturally maligned for me.

Wayne Jacobsen said to me, "An elder is a man who has lived enough of his own life and passions and is now willing to help another man find his place on the journey."

Wow that's different! When I heard that I thought, "OK maybe I would like to be an elder."

Gail Sheehy writes in her book Mens Passages that, "No matter what rung of achievement men have reached, a man of 40 often feels stale, restless, overburdened, and under appreciated."

She later says when she interviewed these men that they had no mentor (elder) to talk to about these feelings.

Everyone should see the movie The World's Fastest Indian. Based on a true story, Anthony Hopkins plays the role of Burt Munro who is an aging man who lives with a passion to continue to ride his motorcycle (an Indian) faster and faster.

A neighborhood boy enters his shop where Burt is pouring hot metal into a mold to form pistons for his motorcycle. At one point, the boy looks upon a shelf at what appears to be scrap metal and asks, "What are they?" Burt points out that they are pistons that have failed in his attempts to go faster.

The shop is a metaphor of Burt's life. The blown pistons are a metaphor of his failures and the boy's presence is a metaphor of Burt's invitation to speak openly about his life, the good along with the failures. Burt not only keeps the blown pistons but is willing to talk about them and learn from them.

So often when we blow a piston in life we take it hard because as men we seem to be competing against something. A dense fog can settle on a man's life as the enemy tries to envelope his whole life in that failure.

It takes an elder to listen and give perspective, encouragement, and hope. An elder shows another man how God can redeem the blown piston buy encouraging him to build a better one because God wants you to go faster than you have ever gone before.

An elder is given the privilege to lend his strength to another man's shaken confidence, helping him take a blown piston and put it back on the shelf as a trophy - reminding him of when he met a larger God who wanted him to move out of 4th gear and into 5th.

Truth is, I am an elder.

Chances are many of the men reading this are elders. You don't have to be "officially" ordained to call a man who God has put on your heart and start talking. Has not God made us all priests?

At 68 years old, Burt Monroe set a motorcycle speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. He was riding his Indian Scout. The bike was 47 years old. His record still stands today.

That's one fast Indian.

Jeff