Why the name LifeBridge?
A Bridge Story
The bridge metaphor or image extends to nearly every major human institution: politics, religion, family, and nation.
For example, Bill Clinton once claimed his policies to be a bridge to the new millennium.
The church has seen the bridge as a metaphor or transition from heaven to earth. In medieval times, for example, monks were enjoined to build bridges and streets and thus prepare one's way to heaven.
The Bridges of Madison County, lovely and covered, evoke the nostalgia of romance.
In Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, the bridge in danger, about to be blown up in an act of war, is a shattering symbol of civil war, of the essential human split.
Part of the versatility of the bridge as a metaphor is in its chameleon-like ability to evoke feelings of danger, romance, or nostalgia--sometimes at the same time.
In movies, bridges establish a tone, a location, even a way of life with a single opening scene. Think of the movies you have seen featuring San Francisco or New York, which did not use the Golden Gate or Brooklyn bridges?
Although diverse, the bridge as a metaphor shares a common theme: human connection. And any bridge, either real or imagined, is useless unless one person moves toward another person. 1
There is a complex relationship between a great bridge and the city in which it resides. Research, understanding, and reflection must precede the work of construction. The engineers' greatest pursuit is not so much in making a bridge stand as in making it "a fit"; that is, making it an integral, complementing, and deepening reality within the community it serves. Bridges, as works of art, do not simply function; they are sensitive, well conceived, and well-thought-out catalysts of change unique to each community.1
[1]Lewis, Robert. The Church of Irresistible Influence (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001), p.130-131, 188.
