The time machine

“The past is another country. They do things differently there.” — Mary Pipher

Recently, in my dreams, I’ve been returning to the time when I retired and left the university.

As with all dreams, the narrative was a fractal admixture of real and imagined events. The story was a mishmash of scenes that didn’t quite flow together, as if the continuity editor had consumed a psychedelic substance. Some of the characters were people I really had known in my waking life, while others were placeholders, extras who played the role of one archetypal symbol or another. The general theme was that of the strange bouillabaisse of emotions that any transition always brings: fear, anticipation, uncertainty. I’ve had that dream (in varying iterations) a great deal recently, for reasons I can’t entirely fathom.

As I think back on the major transitions of my days — my last day at grade school, graduating from high school, finishing college, and so on — I recall a reluctance to abandon the familiar and to launch out onto the unknown. “No one sails the high seas unless they seek a harbor,” G. K. Chesterton once wrote in crayon on a library book he had borrowed — even the greats can occasionally violate small rules, and in the obligatory pun, that was fine with him. We like the familiar, the secure, the routine, but always sprinkled with a dash of surprise and variety. What would life be like if, upon waking each morning, a person had to learn the entire world over again from scratch?

God is my true security, and I think of how Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier once described life as an uncertain journey, suspended between the safety of the womb and the safety of Heaven. In between, there be dragons, or hodags in the part of the world I inhabit (try Wikipedia), and I am grateful for the “lamp unto my feet and the light unto my path” described in Psalm 119:105. But I also realize that one has to press forward, and to reach out toward a still unrealized future fulfillment, if one is to avoid being imprisoned in the past, as I likely was for the first year or two after Diane died four years ago.

Susan and I both agreed, in a discussion the other night, that taking the risk of loving again and marrying again was a frightening one at first, though a gloriously fulfilling one. Being with her feels like coming home now, and that is a small reflection of what it will be like when, like the famous man of Uz, I “shall see God, my eyes shall behold him, and not as a stranger” (in a variant reading of Job 19:27). Until then, we are learning to settle into a new, shared routine that is already becoming like a comforting blanket, warm and fuzzy. But we are under no illusions: sorrow and trouble come to every life whether soon or late, and we have to be ready for both prosperity and adversity.

I have gleaned lessons from the past that sustain me today, and I cherish the memory of those who have gone before. My great-grandfather taught me faith (indirectly, since he died before I was born). My maternal grandfather taught me about integrity. My father taught me a love of learning and a tolerance for human diversity. My literary gifts, such as they are, came from my mother. My brother taught me how to laugh at life’s absurdities. Diane taught me compassion for all the voiceless ones of the world. But while I am surrounded by memories of my small world long gone, I can’t really reside there. I take little treasures from earlier days and put them in my backpack to fortify me on the next phase of my journey. As Frodo Baggins memorably noted, the road goes ever on.

So, when I dream now, I dream about transition points in life, the hinges of my personal history. Occasionally (perhaps five times in all) I have dreamt about arriving in Heaven, the ultimate transition, the Great Felicity. In between, there is the glory of ordinary days, the routines of eating breakfast and caring for the cats and playing games of Rummikub (invented to foil the needless strictures of a government that outlawed playing cards at one time in history) and going for walks and watching old BBC programs. “All the little things that make you smile and glow,” as the Van Camp’s pork and beans jingle went half a century ago. (I used to pick out the little pieces of pork fat and set them aside, having a prescient concern about cholesterol levels or perhaps just because I didn’t like them.) As my seventieth birthday nears, I have ordered commemorative pens with Psalm 90:10 on them to remind recipients to utilize each day wisely, as they are numbered. I am content now, and godliness with contentment is great gain. But I look back, when I can, that preoccupation of the old, because the past is prologue, and like Isaac Newton (in a much smaller and more obscure way, of course), I stand on the shoulders of giants.