In her entertaining new book, Are You Normal, All Souls member Bernice Kanner has polled thousands of Americans to determine, among other things, how many of us have called in sick to get a day off (58.4%); have flossed our teeth with hair (7%); re-use tinfoil (44%); recycle unwanted gifts by re-wrapping and presenting them to someone else (54%); snoop in their host's medicine cabinets (39%), 60% of men spit in public, and 3.9% of women don't wear underwear. Not to worry. None of these statistics has the slightest thing to do with this morning's sermon.
More to the point, Bernice also discovered that 25% of us skip to the end of books we are reading to find out how they will turn out. Perhaps the suspense is just too great. Or perhaps we get bored with the details and want to cut to the chase. All I know is, this doesn't work with the stories of our lives. We can't skip to the end to find out how they will turn out. We can't even skip to the end of a chapter. Not only that, but so many things can happen to us and happen so quickly that simply trying to guess how the story or a chapter within it will turn out is a very chancy business.
Last week I read in the papers the story of a sixteen-year-old boy, a hero, who saved his best friend from almost certain death. His friend had been stung by a dozen hornets and, in an allergic reaction, his respiratory system shut down. The young hero carried his friend on his shoulders ten blocks to the emergency room of their local hospital, where paramedics saved the boy's life. Two weeks ago, the mayor of their hometown hosted a ceremony to honor him. One week later the friends went out squirrel hunting together. In a freak accident, the young hero shot the boy he had saved in the head, killing him instantly.
This is a true story. As with many true stories, including certain chapters of our own lives, it has no apparent moral. Only, perhaps, this. The plots our lives take can turn without warning. To make overmuch either of our successes or our failures is therefore an imprudent thing to do. For most of us, of course, during any given week, saving lives and killing people are not on the tee. Given how complicated life tends to be anyway, this is not a bad thing. Still, this story dashes most of our working assumptions: that today and tomorrow will look alike, or that tomorrow will look better. It may, and, goodness knows, we can help things along a bit. But if life were a golf course, there would be traps not only around the green but right in the middle of the fareway, invisible traps poised to thwart the most brilliant drive. Not only that, but on second shots, the flag would move even while our ball was in the air, sometimes confuting our finest efforts, sometimes rewarding the most egregious hook or slice.
This said, I didn't spend my summer playing golf. Golf is not a solo sport and I have too much pride, or too little ability, to risk playing it with others. No, I spent my summer reading seventeen Patrick O'Brian novels. Among the reasons I am glad summer is over is that I don't play golf, and there are no more Patrick O'Brian novels to read.
If you are not acquainted with O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, imagine the most skillful blend imaginable of Jane Austin, Anthony Trollop, Joseph Conrad and the Hardy Boys. David Black, a novelist and screenwriter who is a member of All Souls, turned me on to them last Spring, and I didn't let go until the 5,000th page ran out. Right in the middle of the story.
I can't tell you how frustrating this was: to enter another world, in this case the British naval world during the Napoleonic wars, to feel the privilege of sharing these two men's fascinating, difficult, often illuminating lives, their conversation, their dreams, and then to have to wait, prayerfully, in hope that the author will live long enough to write the next chapter of their story.
The final words, something like, "Promise me you'll never go to sea again" may not strike those of you who may not have happened to read seventeen Patrick O'Brian novels this summer as the most poignant sentence in all of literature, but I wept when I read them. Admittedly, I weep a little too easily, but I didn't want to let go. I wanted to open the first page of book eighteen and find out whether or not Stephen Maturin went to sea again, and if he did, how this affected his marriage, and how he felt about that, and how she felt, and what happened to their daughter. I wanted to know how his life continued, even how it ended and what he thought and felt right before he died.
That is one of the advantages novels are supposed to offer. A telling and meaningful close to the story. Denied that, I actually learned something. I learned something about what it means to die. When we die, everyone else's story goes on, and we are not there to find out how they turn out.
It is obvious, but have you ever thought about that? You are gone. Everyone else is here. We know what it is like when others leave. Our parents. Our friends. Our heroes. But what about us? Perhaps strangely, but very powerfully, when I closed the last page of O'Brian's saga, I experienced what it must be like. For an odd, even eerie, moment, I was gone and they went on. The story continued, as all stories continue, "Yes, I will," "No I won't," children and then grandchildren, successes, failures, this war and then the next war, "No, believe me!," "Yes, I'm sorry." The story continued, but I didn't. They lived, I died. I stopped and the eighteenth novel opened without me. They were here and I was gone.
That's another reason I am glad summer is over. When you start thinking in this way, you definitely need a change of pace.
But, think about it for a minute. That's the way it is. All our lives stop in the middle. They don't end, they stop. So the middle of the story is all there is. As much as I would love to read another Aubrey/Maturin chapter, there is something very real about my possibly not being able to. These seventeen books may make up one seamless novel, but in a strange way it is a more realistic novel without an ending, without all the loose ends tied, than if it had one.
"Promise me you will never go to sea again," she says. And moments later he has a heart attack. Or she does, or I do, and everything is over. The promise, the hero, the reader, right there, in the middle of the story.
And not only do the stories of our lives end before they are over, at least over in any meaningful sense, but things happen to us, chapter after chapter, that we will never begin to understand. This could be bad news, but I think it actually simplifies things.
For instance, we are quick to make judgments about the lives of others. Time often proves our judgments premature. Perhaps we should take note of this when tempted to rush to judgment in the midst of a difficult chapter in our own lives. When events outside our control, or the way our stories seem to be turning out, lead us to despair -- either of life's meaning or of ourselves -- we might do better to close our own book for a moment and poke our nose into someone else's.
We don't need novels for this. There is a world out there. Look at it: an absolutely amazing and endlessly surprising world full of people and stories. Not high drama, deep drama, a world full of people doing their earthly best to make at least a little sense of what it means to be alive and then to die.
Are you hurting? You are not alone. Are you up and running? Don't leave the rest of us behind. It won't work, and it won't help. Run with us. Run for us. We need you. You need us. That's the way it works in the middle of the story: everyone all mixed together, hoping for this, trying to avoid that, and learning, when we learn anything, that we can do more for others than we can for ourselves. Not by forgetting ourselves. Not at all. By remembering how we feel (which is how others feel). By remembering how we fit, and why we matter. By remembering how many more people than we are actively aware of count on us, or could count on us if we let them. If we let ourselves into their story, not as a necessity, but as a bonus, a plot lift, perhaps even a protagonist.
Protagonist, a good word. Someone who stands before or between another and agony. That is not a perfect etymology, but it is a perfect prescription for the beginning of a good chapter in the middle of anyone's life story.
Let me tell you where we lose our way, even the best of us. It may seem wrong at first blush, but we most often lose our way when we are more concerned about what others will think about us than we are about what we think about ourselves. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is only good advice if we feel good enough about ourselves to repay the same kindness to our neighbor.
You know what I have noticed? And I notice it more and more. People who do not like themselves, not deeply, take it out on others. Somehow we manage to take one another down to our own level. I call this unprofessional wrestling. It makes professional wrestling look good, even fair. We become antagonists, people who follow agony and feed on it.
I've tried this. We all have. Believe me, it's not worth it. Just remember, the middle of the story may be the end of the story. Any moment. Any time. What happens tomorrow may be the last thing that happens, the last thing for them, the last thing for you.
Think about the person you are angriest with right now. I'll give you a moment. Who is the killer in your life? Who is causing you real, honest to God, pain.
All right. Now imagine this. Tomorrow, he or she goes out for a newspaper. As the person is crossing the street, a drunk driver runs the light and strikes your nemesis down. A passerby rushes over, cradles her, cradles him, in her arms, but he was killed, she was killed, instantly. Two hours later, you get the call. Period. End of Story.
For us, of course, once again, middle of story. Another unexpected twist. The end of a chapter. Or the opening of a new one, perhaps one we might have opened a little earlier or somewhat differently, maybe even before it was too late.
For that's one thing about these stories we are in. Whenever we wish, we can add a line or two, not erase what has been written, but recast it, reform it, sometimes even surprise ourselves and others with a little character development. So long as the Book of Life is open and in our hands, it is our book, to do with what we will.
Copyright, All Souls Church, 1995