DAVID ADAMS reads Dr Ross W James’ memoir, ‘Ascent, Crest, Perspective: The Making of a Bamboo Camel’…
Ross W James
Ascent, Crest, Perspective: The Making of a Bamboo Camel
Ark House Press, Australia, 2021
ISBN-13: 978-0645227772
A long-term Australian missionary and scholar – James describes himself as a ‘pracademic’ – who has worked and studied in various parts of Asia and Africa, Dr Ross W James’ memoir is an entertaining and insightful look at the journey God’s calling has taken him on.
“We follow James as he starts off working in the family’s funeral parlour business before moving on to work in the media in various roles (and the lessons he learned in them) and through that into working with a number mission organisations, again in various roles before eventually founding non-profit Health Communications Resources…We also see how, for James, learning and teaching others has truly been a life-long passion.”
James, who throughout his memoir refers to God as ‘Providence’ (written with a capital P, the term describes God as the One who will “uphold, guide and care” for us through works of ‘providence’, written with a lower-case p), drew extensively on journals he kept over the years of his mission journey in putting the memoir together (having been inspired by Mary Durack’s book, Kings in Grass Castles, to start recording his thoughts and events).
We follow James as he starts off working in the family’s funeral parlour business before moving on to work in the media in various roles (and the lessons he learned in them) and through that into working with a number mission organisations, again in various roles before eventually founding non-profit Health Communications Resources, an organisation which aims to equip health and community development practitioners and communities to improve health and wellbeing through community-centred media. We also see how, for James, learning and teaching others has truly been a life-long passion.
As the title suggests, the book is divided into three broad sections: ‘Ascent’, which charts the highs – and lows – of his 20 year journey into mission work, ‘Crest’, which covers the next 20 years and looks at how his experiences – and the certainty and purpose he gained through them – led to the creation of HCR, and ‘Perspective’ which contains insights into the “repetitive themes” that have occurred during that journey and shows how Providence turned James years of preparation into purpose.
James writes in an engaging style as he recounts his story and how it at times his expat life intersected with events that made headlines around the world – such as the overthrow of the Marcos regime in the Philippines and the day a munitions store exploded in Islamabad, Pakistan (which led him to write an earlier book, The Day It Rained Rockets, as a fundraiser for a local church rehabilitation scheme).
Along with accounts of the challenges he, his wife Jill (to whom the book is dedicated) and their two daughters faced, there’s plenty of humour sprinkled through the book with some little anecdotal gems such as the time he was trying to ask an electrical assistant in Pakistan ‘Where is your companion?’ in Urdu, only to later realise he was in fact asking ‘Where is your elephant?’ (haven’t we all made that mistake?).
It’s in the third section – as he reflects on his experiences and lessons learned from them – that we find him at his most insightful. Here, he recounts his personal struggles with ‘the Black Dog’, the important role the “anchors” in his life – these include Scripture and people such as Jill – have played, and the real cost of being being an overseas missionary and spending so much time away from family (as well as the toll on his physical health). These are useful insights for anyone involved in – or considering being involved in – mission.
Oh, and why the reference to a ‘bamboo camel’? It’s only at the end of the book that James explains the meaning. But I’m not going to spoil the reason why – you’ll have to read it to find out.
