Last week, in the Chapel at my school, the boys who will graduate in May gave their commencement speeches.
Though 8 months too early, they were wonderful, in a curious sort of way.
The assignment was one from their English class. They had to think ahead to their graduating self and imagine what that boy might tell the parents, alumni, teachers, and fellow students about their time here with us. They spoke of late night roomate chats, rowdy bus rides, sports victories, and brotherhood, all, as of this moment in time, theoretical.
I feel I have lost that ability to wonder at the future.
Over in 8th grade English, a class I monitor and support, the boys were reading Deep Survival. In one of the chapters, Laurence Gonzalez speaks of our capacity to look ahead and dream. He writes :
The human brain is particularly well suited to making complex plans that have an emotional component to drive motivation and behavior. Plans are stored in memory just as past events are. To the brain, the future is as real as the past. The difficulty begins when reality doesn’t match the plan (84).
I hear ya, Laurence.
The other day, a strong urge to test my injured/recovering knee on an actual mountain overwhelms me, and I find myself, dizzy, as I plan: dust off pack, select snacks, check the weather.
It all feels so familiar, this “memory of the future;” I can smell the duff, hear the brook, see the vault above.
Tecumseh, the shortest 4,000-foot mountain in New Hampshire, is less than an hour’s drive; I sing the miles there, as leaves show off in golden light.
The forest, too, is golden and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude to be blanketed in such splendor.
My body remembers what it is like to feel rock under heel, wind on skin, muscle straining under bone. It remembers and it loves.
This has always been the way to drive away the sad, to feel close to my Creator, to think or to not, the decision wholly mine.
I haven’t hit 4,000 feet since this past June; it’s bothered me, greatly, this hobbling prison.
O Jealous One, don’t you remember that this is our place? Have I neglected YOU, loved IT too much?
And just as Gonzalez predicts, reality and plan begin to fracture on the way down.
The short taste of cloud and wood begins to foul with what my body hates to remember: pain in tendon forcing me to limp the final stretch back to the car, wondering when I might ever design a return.
Will the memory of future mountains always include this groaning knee? Will walking ever be just walking again?
Will I feel forever crushed by my Father’s heavy hand?
Can’t he just leave me alone? I don’t think I can take another moment’s more of his attention.
Then, recoiling: a godless me? A horror, unspeakable.
Driving home, I recall the timeless One who, by remembering not only his eternal past – glory-filled fellowship with Father and Spirit – but also the joy set before him – was able to endure countless horrors so that we, one future day, could join him there.
Jesus knew what was on the other side of his suffering.
I must remind myself: so do I.
Perhaps it’s time to learn how to die.
Not by giving up, but by giving in – surrender, stop fighting, accept where I am. Stop pushing aside the outstretched hand.
Pray thy will be done and mean it.
What again may be – some future memory – that is solely his to decide.
This fight has broken me.
I can’t be sure, but perhaps that is the point.
Broken open, a dying seed satisfies its telos.
An acorn toppling from lofty branch never questions the oak it will one day become.
What I do know is that there is an other side: and what could this present possibly look like from there?
A nod, a single tear, the flash of light in the sky and then gone.
Fix your eyes ahead, and remember.
