We all need teammates...

It is July and that, generally speaking, has one main meaning for me... the start of the Tour de France.  I love it, I love cycling.  I used to race... a lot... and I loved it, and I just devoured anything I could find about bike racing.

And I said earlier that I love bike racing.  I should probably say I loved bike racing... past tense.  And it was the drugs that did it.  I ended up racing with some guys who raced against the big names (think, Lance).  And there was a massive gap between myself and these guys that was all due to natural talent.  But then I watched those same guys barely hold onto the main group against the European pro's and it was obvious that something wasn't right.

And so I got disillusioned and I stopped racing...

But the other day I was watching the tour again and explaining the tactics being employed by the teams on a mountain stage.  And my mother-in-law turned and said, 'wow, you really need a team to win this.'  And that sentiment often comes as a surprise to people who only see the individual glory of the winner.  They don't understand that there's a whole group of people blocking the wind for the leader, bringing the leader food, giving up a wheel or their bike to the leader if that's what's needed, sacrificing themselves so that somebody else can win.

So I actually got excited about the fundamentals of bike racing and I realized that it's a great analogy for how we are called to live as Christians.

We need a team.  Our lives are going to be more enjoyable, more fulfilling, more an expression of love and caring when we have a community around us to share in our lives.

When we go it alone, we generally don't succeed.  Watch any flat stage of a grand tour and you'll always see one guy or a couple of guys go off the front and try and launch a solo charge for the win.  With few exceptions, these always fail.  We are not called to live in isolation, but to live in relationships with others.

Sometimes we need to put others before ourselves.  We can't all be the leader.  Very often, we willing sacrifice our own wants and desires so that somebody else can achieve theirs.  That's what true love and caring entails, putting others ahead of ourselves.

Sometimes our leaders are servants.  Sometimes you will see a team leader give of himself to help a teammate win (this often is when the teammate is the stronger rider on the day, so the analogy kinda breaks apart here, but go with it..).  Christ is our leader who gave himself for our sake.  And that servant leadership is what we should aspire to.

So this whole post may be a 'Jesus Juke', but it was interesting to watch the Tour and think about how the interaction of the cyclists and the tactics being employed demonstrated so many real concepts about how I understand how we should act in our daily lives.

So did I got a step to far with this one?  Or did I leave something out?  Or do you really not care about cycling but would much rather hear my theories about football is popular because it reflects the way the world works?

The Power of Social Media

With all of the recent goings on in Egypt (See a good overview of articles from the BBC here), I was thinking about the role that social media played in organizing the initial uprisings last year and of how social media devices were used in Iran and elsewhere.

The power of these tools to help organize like minded people and to help them develop a sense of solidarity was/is amazing.  These are people who had/have been held down under rather totalitarian regimes for years (and yes, I recognize the massive differences between the situation in Egypt and the situation in Iran and I am not trying suggest that the experiences of the people in each country are same) and they would have very major challenges to organize and form the mass groups that actually succeeded in overthrowing the government in Egypt (thought I think the fact that the military largely stood by as a third party and let it happen probably had a lot to do with it too.  (and if you think that the military isn't the real power in Egypt, I invite you to look at the recent ouster of the democratically elected government and the replacement, on a 'temporary' basis, of ousted democratically elected politicians.

Digital media has let us see what was happening in these countries and spread the word so that when the governments attempted to crack down on protestors and turn off the internet, users in other countries came together in solidarity to figure out ways to keep the voices of the protest movement heard throughout the world.  In the case of twitter, users could phone in their tweets and they would be transcribe them and repost them for the world to see.  (This is also a great study of how large groups of people can convene temporarily to solve a problem and then disperse to do other things, new models of learning at work!)

So I think about how powerful a toold we have for engaging in world changing activities and I see people tweeting about where a star NBA player will sign, or complaining about the rain canceled their fourth of July fireworks, and it makes me wonder if people do realize what a massive powerful tool is literally at our fingertips.

I don't think people realize it.  It's been marketed as entertainment, but it's truly a tool of revolution.  It can be used to call out oppression, to organize for change, to help usher in a more fair and just world.

Or we can talk more about Kim and Kanye's baby.

What you do you think?  Tool or toy?