The Big Tent of Now
“Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday, and forever.”
Hebrews 13.8
When I was 30-something and my grandfather Morgan, Pawpaw, was 80-something, we had a conversation in the den of the parsonage of the Wesley Memorial UMC. In passing he said, “I feel the same inside as I always have.” My brain brakes locked in ‘screeech!’ position.
“Whoa, Pawpaw! Really? The same?” With a twinkle and chuckle, he said, “Yeah, and you still want to do all the things you used to do, even though you may or may not can.”
At the time, I wasn’t sure that was good or bad news. But 30+ years later, my experience and observation affirm Pawpaw’s truth.
In Anne Lamott’s new ALMOST EVERYTHING: NOTES ON HOPE, she quips: “You will rarely feel as old as you are, except when you have just returned from traveling overseas or are in line at the DMV… Your inside person does not have an age. It is all the ages you have ever been and the age you are at this very moment.”
Last Sunday, Dianne and I had the get-to of spending some time (not enough!) at Wesley Memorial UMC in Decatur where we served 1983 to 1989. Where Andrew finished elementary school; Alyce and Bailey, high school.
That’s also where I turned 40: my hardest ‘0’ birthday so far. (That will be tested next month.) Back then, for several Sundays, I touched on my ‘now that I am 40 lament’ in my sermons. Having enough, out in the narthex, after a service, a triad of ushers conducted a semi-serious, funny intervention. Somewhere between my age then and now, they cajoled: ‘Get over it, 40 is nothing, stop whining.’
At Wesley last week, similar to wonderful encounters I had with friends at Tuscaloosa 1st UMC in October, we had the get-to of seeing and talking with treasured people, most of whom we have not seen for many years.
Of course, spoken or not, I am sure all mutually noticed the 'interesting' sculpting of our aging. (A friend says he appreciates more and more how the mirror fogs when he gets out of the shower.) Sighs and chuckles abounded.
Tender, tender: the absence of beloved spouses, parents, children, and friends who have finished their earth lives was undeniable. Yet through the oddness of Godness and mystery of the Communion of Saints, their abiding presence in our lives was also undeniable.
Our back then’s entered into our now’s. Far beyond all that could be said, there was unspoken 'aha and ahh' recognition of the life experiences, we both directly and indirectly shared, that infuse who we are in the present
Here’s the deal. God’s gift of memory is not so much a reverse gear. Somehow in the transmission of time and by the engine of memory, the people, places, and points along the way come to our now’s. Remembering brings forward life layers to enrich, deepen, expand the bittersweet blessings of our lives now. Enriched by memory and encouraged by hope to be sure, THE life we really have is the one we have skin in ‘now’. Yet...
Theologian Paul Tillich spoke of ‘the eternal now’ – how God brings all that ever was and ever will be into our ‘live it or lose’ it now’s. Recall that ‘eternal life’ in the Bible refers as much or more to a quality as to a quantity of life. Jesus called it ‘abundant life’…the image of an overflowing cup. In King James Version English: life cups that ‘runneth over.’
Our uniquely beautiful crinkly...gravity gravitas bodies are sacraments. Outward signs of the prices we have paid to love and go on ageless in soul and spirit. As God’s time goes on, we are more not less than we ever were.
Thanks, Pawpaw.