“Nothing is really lost, it’s just hidden
under the other paperwork…”
– Anonymous
You know how it is. They come to mind when least expected. It’s not that they are unwelcome, it’s just that they are unpredictable. These would be the people and experiences attached to them, that escape from our memory banks appearing in our conscious thoughts. The irony is that so many times it would be impossible to bring them deliberately to mind.
You’re driving somewhere, out for a walk, reading a book, watching a film and suddenly an event or person from your past suddenly shows up. It might be an old friend, a colleague, a relative or incident that has been swimming around in the pools of unconscious thought. Then without warning, they pop to the surface like one of those fishing bobbers suddenly released from a big one that got away.
A lot of past experiences or people come with feelings attached to them, almost as if the past moment were happening ‘in the now.’
This is one of the wondrous things with which we are gifted as human beings. It is said our greatest blessing is our intelligence and the greatest curse – our intelligence. It's all part and parcel of our humanity.
The stimulus...
I am in community theatre at the moment. My character is a doctor in a small country town. In one scene, waiting for my wife to come home from choir practice, I'm reading. I needed an old book as a prop for the scene. I have a small collection of them from my father's library. I randomly pulled one for the play. It was a 1909 copy of Henry Wordsworth Longfellow’s poems – reflective of the period and perfect for the show.
In rehearsal, the other night, flipping through the pages as if reading, I came across a small marker with handwritten notes. I caught a brief glimpse of my father's name. Getting through the scene and off stage, I read the entry. It was to my father from one of his university professors, congratulating him on a paper he had written. In a millisecond, my father's presence was overwhelming…the feel of his arms around me, his unshaven face kissing my cheek, even the smell of the shaving lather and cologne he used. It was as real as if he were standing beside me.
He was a busy man – a utility minister, meaning there wasn’t much required of him that he couldn’t do. He was an empathetic pastor, always available for counseling, an illness, or softening the blow of a family death. A thoughtful and passionate preacher, he could move a congregation at will with his solid grounding in the scripture, clothed in empathetic social conscience. He was good in the clinches of intellectual discussion with colleagues schooled in theology and philosophy. He enjoyed little more than those free-wheeling dialogues.
Through all of it, dad was a man of passion and a willingness fight for the gospel and for those left behind, unable or unwilling to withstand the gravity of the social system under which many of us have been blessed to live and thrive. Sometimes the passion overwhelmed him and led to behavior he regretted.
As I drove home after practice, still in the afterglow of his starkly real visit, the most lasting image of my father came to my mind. It was strange because it is of a photo that sits on my desk – one I covet. It is a picture of him ending the day on his knees praying to God. If his passions had overcome him, he prayed for forgiveness and the strength to carry the load for yet another day. If he had succeeded in not being overcome, he thanked God for His protection. And always and in all ways, expressed gratitude for the woman with whom he had been blessed in marriage and the children she had brought to his life.
I look at the picture every day but, I suppose, it had become so routine I don't give it much thought.
That old book pulled randomly off the shelf for a scene in a play…the quick glance…the unexpected flood of thought and mental video clips of his life...provided vestiges of the man who made possible the life I have lived.
Yeah, you know how it is…those unexpected visitations...the ones that bless…
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