I had lots of good vivid memories from childhood, especially from the two weeks each summer when I would get to go to Camp Sunrise (!) and AWANA camp (I’m surprised no one from AWANA camp has found me on here yet….lol).
One of the funniest memories I had was this game we called “prison break”, where everyone of one gender would be inside of a circle and the members of the other team would try to go whatever they could to get people out of the circle. To this day, I have this picture of Lisa Henderson almost squeezing the living daylights out of Jamie Peavy (and Amanda Darley I think) trying to keep all three of them from getting pulled outside the circle. The team that was able to keep at least 1 person inside the circle for the longest period of time was the winner.
Well, we played a variation of this game at AWANA camp 1-2 years later, and I remember very vividly how it all played out. They called it something like “cows and cowgirls” with all the boys from one team inside the circle and all the girls (about 20 of them) trying to get the boys out of it. The rule was that the boys had to be on their hands and knees or lying on the ground (struggling and thrashing around was ok).
The first team of boys simply each did their own thing and were quickly removed from the circle. With each guy as an island, the team of girls, working in wolven-like packs of 5-7, made quick work of them. The 2nd team of four wasn’t much better. The third team had a little bit better strategy and at least some of the large boys kind of linked together and the chain was somewhat more impervious to the pride of lionesses.
My team realized that the only way we were gonna win was to literally make a dog pile in the middle (we were all kind of small) with everyone grabbing as many arms legs and necks as they could. As a matter of fact, we probably looked like a pile of extension cords that had been sitting by themselves for a while (in case you didn’t know, the longer extension cords sit together, the more congealed and intertwined they become =)). It was one big mass of 5th and 6th graders. And boy did we hold on for dear life!! Our mass of manhood was pretty impregnable to the roving band of lionesses and we lasted more than double the other three teams.
I was recently reminded of this story while watching Our Planet Earth, the extraordinary British Television series. In one of the episodes, a polar bear is trying to eat and comes upon a herd of walruses “chilling” on a huge piece of ice. You’d think it’d be easy pickings, right? Oh no! You see, the walruses all formed a tight circle with their huge butts forming an impervious wall. The polar bear’s claws and teeth were no match for the thick skin of the walrus. (Plus, one of the big walruses then turned around and started impaling the polar bear with his huge tusks….talk about a bad day in polar bear land.) After several minutes, the polar bear leaves the herd both hurt and hungry.
What made any of this strike a cord with me? I guess it’s just that we’re all confronted by evil every single day. At small group last week, we each drew one other person’s name from the bin and promised to pray for that person at least 1x a day. That one person prayed for me every single day! And I could tell! He was being the walrus next to me helping to form the impregnable shield against the vicious polar bears that circled when we least expected it. He was part of my dogpile keeping me in the circle while the lionesses tried to pick me off. And to continue the dog pile metaphor, someone else in the group was praying for him and “grabbing his leg” and not letting go either. Our small group became an intertwined sea of humanity that rebuffed evil as a team. It was wonderful.
May God give you "walruses with thick skin" to stand on either side of you too.
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