waking the dead -iii. the heart of all things

You are never a great man if you have more mind than heart.

-Beauchene

On her journey down the yellow brick road -a journey, may I remind you, that grows more dangerous every step she takes- Dorothy meets a number of strange sights. She befriends the Scarecrow, and later the two of them come upon a lumberjack made of tin, standing utterly still in the forest, his ax frozen in midair. At first, he seems unable to speak. Coming closer, they discover that he is trying to say something after all. Oil...can. After a bit more misunderstanding and misinterpretation, they get the oil can to the joints of his mouth, only to find that he can speak as well as any man, but that he was rusted. Once he is freed from his prison, he begins to tell his story.

Now the movie left out a crucial point, which the author gave in his original fairy tale. The Tin Woodman had once been a real man, who had been in love with a beautiful maiden. It was his dream to marry her, once he could earn enough money to build them a cottage in the woods. The Wicked Witch hated his love, and she cast spells upon the man that caused him injury, so that one by one his limbs needed to be replaced with artifical ones, made of tin. At first it seemed an advantage, for his metal frame allowed him to work nearly as powerfully as a machine. With a heart of love and arms that never tired, he seemed sure to win.

"I thought I had beated the Wicked Witch then, and I worked harder than ever; but I little knew how cruel my enemy could be. She thought of a new way to kill my love for the beautiful Munchkin maiden, and made my axe slip again, so that it cut right through my body, splitting it into two halves. Once more the tinner came to my help and made me a body of tin. Fastening my tin arms and legs and head to it, by means of joints, so that I could move around as well as ever. But alas! I now had no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl, and did not care whether I married her or not...

"My body shone so brightly in the sun that I felt very proud of it and it did not matter now if my axe slipped, for it could not cut me. There was only one danger -that my joints would rust; but I kept an oil-can in the cottage and took care to oil myself whenever I needed it. However, there came a day when I forgot to do this, and, being caught in a rainstorm, before I had thought of the danger my joints had rusted, and I was left to stand in the woods until you came to help me.

"It was a terrible thing to undergo, but during the year I stood there I had time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart. While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth; but no one can love who has not a heart, and so I am resolved to ask Oz to give me one. If he does, I will go back to the Munchkin maiden and marry her."

Both Dorothy and the Scarecrow had been greatly interested in the story of the Tin Woodman, and now they knew why he was so anxious to get a new heart. "All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one." "I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world." (L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)

Notice, there was a man who was once real and alive and in love. But after a series of blows, his humanity was reduced to efficiency. He became a sort of machine -a hollow man. At first, he did not even notice, for his condition made him an excellent woodman, as any person can become productive like a machine when he forgoes his heart. Notice also that it was the Wicked Witch who brought the disaster upon him. Baum's mythic tale reminds us that the Enemy knows how vital the heart is, even if we do not, and all his forces are fixed upon its destruction. For if he can disable or deaden your heart, then he has effectively foiled the plan of God, which was to create a world where love reigns. By taking out your heart, the Enemy takes out you, and you are essential to the Story.

You'll notice he's been rather effective.

I find it almost hard to believe a case must be made that this heart is...well, at the heart of it all. Of life. Of each person. Of God. And of Christianity. But our Enemy has come against us, and now we are all in some way like the Tin Woodman. We, too, have suffered a series of blows over time. And we, too, have seized upon efficiency, busyness, and productivity as the life we will live instead. Now we are lost. Dazed. Alert and oriented times zero. Sleepwalking through life. In order to find our way ouf ot these woods, we must return to the heart.

THE HEART IS CENTRAL

"Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."

Prov. 4:23