The Backpage: The Power of Harmony (Olympic Opener)

Like many inhabitants of our planet (about 15% of the whole world), my wife and I watched as China threw a party to beat all parties at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. I was amazed by all the wizardry, costumes, people hanging on wires, and the works. Granted, I would have loved a more telling commentary — one that explained the ups … and *downs* of China’s past and present. (Can any body say, ‘positive spin’ on a history that hasn’t always been known for guarding human rights?) But laying all that aside for a moment, I’ve got to ask: How in the *world* did they do that refrigerator box routine? (Photo at left courtesy Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) You know… the “movable type blocks” scene which everybody just assumed those 897 boxes were run by hydraulics, forming shapes of the wind, Chinese characters, ‘waves’, and more. How does one create that kind of teamwork? (On 3 different occasions, they showed the Chinese character that translates, “Harmony.”) How’d they do it? How do you get 897 guys to spell out the shape of a wave, the wind, or a complex Chinese character in Bronze, Seal, and then Songti kaishu (Modern Chinese Script)? Well the explanation I heard was 8 hours a day, solid, for 4 months. That’s right: 861,120 man-hours. Yikes. No wonder they had teamwork. Never mind that the budget was $300 million dollars. The point is — how does a guy know how high (let alone *when*) to raise his box. (Curious there were no ladies, right? :-) ) Again, let’s try to overlook all the human rights violations for a moment and just focus on the “lessons learned” from that one scene: What’s your opinion? How would you train 897 guys to do that? What kind of technical assistance would you give them? (What were those audio headsets telling them?) Anyone got any inside info?

So if we grant that it took a lot of teamwork and precision, what this illustrates *big-time* is that for a team of 897 to reall pull off a large-scale success like this, he has to recognize he’s part of the body. Likewise (if you can permit me a poetic license for a moment, even about a government that has restricted rights for decades), we’ll function best in the body of Christ if and when we see ourselves in perspective of the larger body. Ephesians 4. Romans 12. I Corinthians 12.

What’s your perspective on that “harmony” movable type routine? How do *you* think they did it with all those refrigerator boxes? (I’m prepared for a couple of commenters to take me to task about ‘why in the world would I watch an opening ceremony from a nation that has limited human rights’… but what I’m really hoping we can carve out is — how does a team learn to act together as one?)