“Deconstruction is great for the intellect, but it hurts the heart terribly.”
-Eric Maisel
In my Sophomore year of college, I took a class called Critic Approaches to Literature. You see, English majors spend a huge portion of their academic career learning how to be a critic of literature. One type of critical analysis we can place on literature is call Deconstruction. This method focused heavily on the relationship between the text and its deeper meaning. Without going on a long rant about my opinion of this approach, I’ll just say that I spent a lot of my college years trying to figure out what it meant to deconstruct a text to better understand its meaning.
As I mentioned in a previous blog, this month for ministry my team has been moving a lot of bricks. Most of the bricks will go towards an activity center one day. On Tuesday, Ricardo (our host) asked us to moved some bigger blocks into a pyramid formation out in front of the foundation so that kids passing by could play on them. My Innate protective nature immediately questioned the safety of this idea. But Ricardo was so thrilled by the idea, I put on my tattered work gloves and made my way with a few others of our group to move the blocks into a pyramid. Now, it is important for you to know that these are not little blocks we are working with, in fact, they are probably the largest blocks I have ever attempted to move in my life. We guessed their weight to be somewhere between 175 – 200 lbs each. (To those of you who are laughing at the idea of me moving these blocks, trust me I still can’t believe it either.) Anyway, we spent about two hours, made several sketchy moves (sorry Safety Seth)… and lifted nearly 50 of those blocks up off the ground into a pyramid formation so the kids could play on them. It was hard, hard work… but it’s one of the top proudest moments of my life, without a doubt.
Now, fast forward to only two days later. We have a group of New Yorkers here with us at Formavida who came to help construct a new road outside the front of the foundation. I was excited to have a different project to be working on for a bit and was certainly not mad about the extra help. However, I soon felt nothing but dread and sadness when we were informed that we had to take down the pyramid so we could use the blocks for the road construction. WHAT?! It wasn’t just annoyance that all our work had to be undone, but that I had been so proud of it! Just the night before we had seen the kids playing on it and I felt such a warming in my heart to see that our work was already bearing fruit of joy and laughter for the kids in the community. But the road is certainly more practical and more necessary than a jungle gym. So I again grabbed my tattered work gloves and headed up to the pyramid. We brought the blocks down one by one and the shape was soon gone.
How does this connect to my years of studying the critical approach of Deconstruction? Well, besides the fact that we physically deconstructed my pride and joy… we took apart the blocks so they could used for a deeper purpose. This road we are building is going to be a much bigger blessing to this foundation than our pyramid ever could. When reading literature, I appreciate being able to simply enjoy the text. But in order to take the words to their full potential, we have to deconstruct. The blocks were so fun as a pyramid, but their purpose was to create a stable road for this sweet foundation, and that is something pretty cool to be a part of.
With love,
Lina
