pat loughery

On my wife’s recommendation, I took a couple of days away from reading about the Congo slave and rubber trade, the corruption of Empirical power, beheadings, whippings and dismemberment (the FANTASTIC King Leopold’s Ghost) and read about bouncing vegetables who tell silly tales with an eye toward spiritual morality (Me, Myself and Bob).

It was a wise decision.

If you’ve never run into VeggieTales, they’re a series of short children’s movies, cartoons with a goofy sense of humor. Often the stories are Old Testament stories, set as kids stories with a cast of vegetables (my favories are the peas with French accents who giggle all the time). The humor is fun – if you like witty, silly and engaging stuff, you’ll appreciate these.

VeggieTales as a company had a remarkable run over some ten years, but on the heels of their first feature-length film (Jonah) and a lawsuit over distribution rights, the company went bankrupt and was purchased. It continues to exist, but isn’t the same as it was before the bankruptcy.

Me, Myself and Bob is the autobiography of Phil Vischer, the creator of the company. It traces his childhood in the midwest and his deep interest in film and story, intensely focused on his craft. A child of divorced parents who was profoundly impacted by their relationship’s breakup, he had difficulty with friendships and was a very introverted child.

He grew up in an evangelical church and went to Bible college, dropping out in his second year after not attending chapel often enough.

A passionate storyteller, he launched a series of animation ventures to tell children’s stories, and grows a business through hard work and dedication to entertaining kids with his vegetable characters. The part of the story which describes the animation tools and techniques that made VeggieTales what it is was particularly fun for me.

The company grows, explosively, in the last half of its life. That growth was difficult to manage, and Vischer frankly describes their decisions and mistakes. He describes his change in mindset along the way, and his particular challenge in expressing to his employees that his vision really is to do biblically – based stories which teach morality. His lack of clarity regarding which business VeggieTales was truly in crippled the management team, and the company’s collapse was tied up in the management team’s confusion about its goals and vision.

The last four chapters are worth the cost of the book all by themselves. In them, Vischer talks about dreams – the dreams he had, the dreams that he felt were crushed, and his relationship with God through the process of seeing his dream die. His analysis is powerful and thought-provoking; he realizes that, although his dreams and his hopes were God-honoring, they got in the way of his own relationship with God. His productivity became more important than his attitude. It’s a strikingly blunt description.

Vischer goes on to talk about why dreams die. He talks about the story of the Shumannite woman whom Elijah befriended, and whose son (miraculously born after Elijah propesies to the barren woman), tragically dies. Only through Elijah’s heartfelt prayer and the powerful image of the prophet laying face-to-face on the child’s dead body and praying desperately restores the child’s life. He retells the story of Abraham, given a son, Isaac, at an old age, but is commanded to kill Isaac. (I continue to think this is one of the most disturbing stories in the Biblical record; when people think the Bible is bland and boring, I ask them to tell me why that story wasn’t ever stricken from the record…). At the last moment, apparently satisfied with Abraham’s obedience, God halts Abe and points him to a ram stuck in the bushes, welcoming that trade.

Vischer’s take is that we have to be willing to let our dreams die – and, in fact, to sacrifice them ourselves if need be. And that need will come if and when our dream is more important to us than our relationship with God. It is to Vischer’s delight to discover this, and he writes as a man set free from unrealistic expectations and performance anxiety. I find myself very interested to see what Phil’s up to lately with his new company.

For those of us who have seen dreams die and who want to grow through that process, I highly recommend this book. I’ll be buying a copy (mine was a library copy) – for myself, to reread those last few chapters, and as gifts for friends who have experienced struggle with their dreams as well.

I don’t want to give away too much of Phil’s conclusion; it’s truly worth reading.

I connected with this book because I’ve also realized, in the last year, that my path clearly continues onward even though the church that we led doesn’t. I’ve known that my task this past year was to continue to love and be loved by God. I know that the future holds great promise; I’m not out of the game (in fact, I’ve never really doubted this).

Two of the most enduring images from my study of Celtic spirituality help me here. First, the Celts were deeply impacted by the Gospel of John, and they loved the image of John as the guy who, at the last supper they ate together, was reclining against the chest of Jesus. John listened to the heartbeat of God. That sense of intimacy and friendship overwhelmed the Celtcs, and they overwhelm me and give me a model to follow.

The other image is that of the coracle. The coracle was a handmade boat, wooden frame and covered in animal skins. It was the primary mode of transportation other than the foot in the time of the Celtic Christian church. Coracles allowed Celts to travel (and sate their wanderlust). Curiously, often coracles were led only – or at least largely – by the tides; sometimes with rows or sails. Story after story is told of Celtic monks getting into a coracle, praying that God delivers them to their destination, and trusting nature under God’s guidance to deposit them where they were needed. They put themselves literally into the hand of God and set out on their journey, not knowing where they would land.

Both images remind me that the fundamental challenge of the disciple of Jesus is simply to be with him – NOT to do something FOR him, or honor him with success and wealth and great accomplishments – but simply to be with him, listening for his heartbeat, resting against his chest.

Phil Vischer blogs here.