The Culture Beat

I thought about Rodney Oakes as I got ready to jump off the top of a 32-foot pole on Monday.

I was at Doe River Gorge Christian Camp in Hampton, Tenn., during a day out for new Milligan College students, trussed up in climbing gear for the so-called Leap of Faith. The idea: climb to the top of a utility pole and then jump for a trapeze bar suspended up and away about 10 feet.

The goal is to help people overcome their fears, and several possibilities came to mind. Fear of heights, for starters. Fear of falling (even the best equipment can fail). Fear of failure. Fear of failure with everyone on the ground watching.

As it happened, I did it about 95 percent right: climbed, balanced, jumped. But I missed the bar by about an inch. That last five percent is a killer.

But as I was gently lowered to the ground, I thought Rodney would be pleased.

He died last week, four days after his houseboat exploded on Lake Watauga, burning more than half his body. The death of this vibrant man, a Carter County native who acted two decades younger than his 72 years, sent a shock not only through his large extended family but also through the church family we shared at Hopwood Christian Church and beyond. It didn’t seem possible.

Wisely, the family knew a small church building couldn’t contain the memorial service, so they got permission to use Seeger Chapel at nearby Milligan College. I first thought the crowd would be swallowed up in that giant space, but I needn’t have worried: almost 600 people from all over the country attended last Saturday’s service.

And for what? Rodney wasn’t famous, wasn’t powerful in the way most people measure power, wasn’t a celebrity. He won no great awards. His career swung from insurance sales to youth ministry to truck driving.

The answer became obvious as children and grandchildren and cousins and friends and colleagues stood to tell stories about a man with a rare capacity for generosity and friendship for just about anyone he knew – and more than a few people he didn’t know.

His open-handed ways easily mixed with a deep love of the outdoors, and he cheerfully took groups of teens and college students on boat rides, camping retreats and work trips.

And the man was fearless. Our pastor said his introduction to Rodney Oakes came during one of Rodney’s legendary winter camping trips. Hiking in, he watched – first in alarm and then in amazement – as Rodney inched across a snow-covered beam on the remains of an old railroad bridge. One slip and he’d be gone. But he didn’t slip. What’s more, our pastor said he found himself following the man.

There was hardly anything, it seems, Rodney wouldn’t try.

We could learn from a man like that, especially in these fear-filled times. Everything from tissue paper to foreign policy is packaged with fear. Dr. Phil’s TV ratings depend on it. The most common commandment in the Bible may be “Fear not,” but you’d never know it in this supposedly Judeo-Christian society of ours. We’re well schooled in anxiety.

Rodney was a one-man antidote for that. Some people would say it was just his nature, but he would credit his faith in Jesus. Whatever the explanation, Rodney pitched himself headlong into most everything he did.

A person who’s not worried about gaining or losing stuff isn’t afraid to share it. Someone who isn’t afraid to make mistakes – and to hear his family and friends, he made his share of them – is free to turn them into adventures. I think Rodney honestly believed there was no mistake too big or no error too serious that it couldn’t be fixed or forgiven.

His Christian faith taught him not to fear even death, and that trust released him to live as full a life as anyone I’ve known. Here was a man who didn’t let his fears ground him.

My safely tethered jump from a 32-foot pole was nothing. Still, I took it as a reminder to live a little more fearlessly, a little more like Rodney in that way.

We could use more people like him.

First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 25 August 2007.
Image: Watauga Lake and Pond Mountain, Tennessee. Photo by Johnny Molloy.