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Reflection for Date August 28, 2005

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When I was a child my thoughts were filled with images of heroes drawn from the movies I saw every Saturday. In my day it was cowboy heroes or swashbucklers or especially Errol Flynn leading the Charge of the Light Brigade to death or glory. The more I viewed these figures, the more I identified with them - imagining myself bravely standing up to some villain at the end of the street, my fingers hovering over my holster ready to draw a split second sooner than he. Of course, all this took place in the privacy of my mind. I didn't actually put on a cowboy suit and stride out, my spurs jingling, into the streets of my neighborhood looking for real trouble.

But that's what Don Quixote did. So beguiled was he by the legends of King Arthur's knights in armor that he felt called to be one and actually did dress up in tarnished steel, acquire a lance and squire and went cantering over the Spanish countryside looking for damsels in distress, injustices to right, castles to assault. In the process he inevitably clashed with prosaic reality. So much had the legends influenced his very vision that one day he saw windmills and thought they were evil giants. "What giants?" said his squire Sancho Panza. "Those with the long arms," said Don Quixote. "Those aren't giants but windmills and what looks like the arms are the sails that are turned by the wind," said Sancho.

"It seems to me that thou art not well versed in this matter of adventure: they are giants; move aside and start to pray whilst I enter with them into fierce and unequal combat," replied Quixote. Well you know what happened. A sail of the windmill caught his lance and lifted both him and his nag high into the air like a Ferris wheel and dropped them into a heap. Sancho couldn't resist saying I told you so. But to no avail for "Yes," said Don Quixote, "they are indeed windmills now but only because some evil magician did a double whammy on the giants to make a fool out of me."

And so Don Quixote persisted in interpreting everything he saw from within the perimeter, the fantasy world of his precious old books. As when, later on, he saw two clouds of dust converging on a road and immediately judged them to be two opposing armies, one Christian and the other Muslim, about to do battle over a princess (not oil). He even heard the sound of drums and trumpets emerging from the clouds. Sancho could only hear the bleating of sheep - but too late to prevent Don Quixote from galloping to assist the Christian army against the Muslim and destroying several sheep in the process - and losing several molars himself under the subsequent blows of their shepherds.

Some people would say that we Christians are like Don Quixote. We too interpret our world from within the covers of ancient books (the Old and New Testaments), which are laden with heroes, and heroines we are encouraged to emulate to extend God's kingdom of justice and love throughout the countryside. But sometimes, like Don Quixote, we make some terrible mistakes in the pursuit of that destiny - as in the case of the Inquisition; mistakes that leave both ourselves and others badly bruised to say the least.

And why? Because we fail - like Don Quixote - to allow our God-given common sense to interfere with our sometimes too literal reading of our ancient books. We fail to let Sancho Panza, that down to earth element of our nature, influence our interpretation of clouds of dust before we go charging into them with lances at the ready. Don Quixote, for all his idealism, can be a menace. The complete Christian is a blend of Don Quixote balanced by the prudence and humanity of a Sancho Panza.

-- Geoff Wood