Have you ever met someone for the first time after years and years of knowing of their existence? That was my privilege this past weekend when I attended a Mennonite medical conference in Ohio. I had emailed people like Troy Schrock and Dan Freed for years. It was nice to be able to put a face to the names. Since I kind of new them by email, there were no big surprises in meeting them.
What was a surprise, was hearing one of the speakers talk whom I had never met before. His name has almost become a buzz-word in Mennonite circles, and he is someone who is known or known about by almost everyone in these circles. I was therefore eager to hear him speak to see what the fuss was all about. The speakers up to that point had mostly exceeded expectations, and the ensuing discussions certainly did.
He spent the first 5-10 minutes explaining that he really didn't have anything to say, didn't even know exactly what he was going to say, but that what he was going to say was true. He then spent the next 30 minutes in a rambling discourse, the focus of which was mostly his own present existential experience of what he had just said moments prior. This made for many long pauses, and came across as disjointed and a false attempt at humility. This all of course proved his introductory statement that he didn't have anything to say, making it true, as he had predicted it would be. Then, in a last minute attempt at redemption, he spent the last 5 minutes saying a few things that actually were fairly profound and will be included in my next day of reflection in order to ponder and digest them further.
His speaking style was quite different from what I expected. I think I expected something more down the lines of a talk by John Patrick, MD. Instead it had the aura about it of a contrived attempt at humility. Perhaps the speaker was just having a bad day, and was off his game. Perhaps my expectations had been raised too high due to years of hearing his name mentioned in awe with the certainty in the speaker's voice that he would surely be one of Christ's apostles were Christ selecting them today. Perhaps his content and style were just so far above my feeble mind, that I failed to appreciate them, but now you'll accuse me of false humility.
