Thursday, August 1, 2013

The Moment

I just got an invitation to the 15-year reunion of my college class. That means HOLY *&^%$#@! I’M GETTING OLD. It also means that, for the first time since I arrived at Wheaton College 19 years ago, I could go to the place and not still owe Sallie Mae money for the time I spent there.

I won’t be going, though.

There’s lots of reasons, many of them with dollar signs in front of them. This is a time when we need to work as much as possible, and squirrel away as much money as possible for the future (we finally paid off our student loans a few months ago and actually have the ability to start saving now). Spending a couple grand on a weekend trip doesn’t fit into that plan.

There’s also the fact that any classmates with whom I wanted to re-establish contact, are already Facebook friends. It’d be nice to see them in person again, but it’s not like we’re cut off from each other currently, and we can even banter as a group on each other’s pages. I can talk to these people for free, why pay for plane tickets?

Although, it’d certainly be fun to go off-campus and drink together, now that we’re all of legal age and no longer under the Pledge.*

*For those who didn’t attend Wheaton College, it’s a conservative evangelical Christian school. As such, everyone who attends signs a commitment that while they attend they will avoid, among other things: drinking, illegal drugs, premarital sex (yes, we used terms like that), smoking, and “most forms of social dancing” (pretty much anything where people’s naughty bits might touch was considered outside the Pledge, but square dancing was okay). Believe it or not, most of us actually stuck to that while we attended Wheaton.

But even if money and time weren’t an obstacle, and even with the prospect of drinking with people who are pretty damn funny even when sober, even with getting a chance to hug people whose hugs I’ve missed for 15 years (my friends, I haven’t forgotten those hugs)… Even with all that, I don’t think I’d be ready at this point.

 I’m not ready for The Moment.

I’ve had The Moment before. It was when I went back to my old church youth group for the last time, at the age of 21. None of the people I’d known from high school were there. Not even the youth pastor I’d grown up with was there anymore. The songs were the same, the place was the same, the preaching was the same, the stuff that was happening was the same, but it felt different. I went outside afterwards and sat on the bleachers by myself and thought:

I don’t belong here anymore.

That was The Moment.

And I’m not ready to have that experience at Wheaton yet.

It must happen to everyone at some point, when they go back to visit a place that used to be the most important place in the world to them. The place is the same place, even if buildings change. But we aren’t the same people anymore. The people who used to be there with us aren’t there anymore. And even if they were, they aren’t the same people anymore either.

I wasn’t even particularly sad when The Moment happened at youth group, which surprised me. Just a little wistful – like when I was 8 years old and realized that my favorite Spider-Man shirt from when I was 5 wouldn’t fit me anymore, not even tightly. The shirt was a good shirt, and it was right for me for a while, would be right for someone else who was ready for it… but it wasn’t right for me anymore. I remembered the days when I fit that shirt, the good times I’d had being 5 and playing Spidey while wearing that shirt. Then I shrugged, passed it on to… I don’t even know, maybe little brother, maybe a cousin, maybe Goodwill. Someone out there might be able to tell me. And I moved on to clothes that fit the person I’d become.

The Moment happens when you realize that a place you used to belong is like a shirt that doesn’t fit anymore.  And when you know that there’s nothing to do but shrug and pass the place on, with your blessing, to someone who will fit.

Wheaton was a GOOD fit, while I was there. It was the right place for me to be while I wrestled with hard questions about my faith, about who and what I wanted to be when I grew up, about how to deal with the fact that I would HAVE to grow up (and also to meet every Tuesday evening at 9:58 p.m. with a group of friends who would read children’s stories like Winnie-the-Pooh together, because it’s important to hang on to some things about childhood.) It was the right place for me to figure out the kind of people I wanted to spend time with, and the kind of things I wanted to do. It was the right place to start practicing the rudiments of being a grown-up, with the safety net of not having a mortgage that could be foreclosed on when I was overdrawn (because 18-year-old John sure as hell wasn’t mature enough yet for a full-time job and paying his own bills). It was where I met my future wife, who is still the one person on earth with whom I fit perfectly, and it was the right place for us to get to know each other. (And such a rare and wonderful gift, to be dating in a place where the accepted norm was to NOT have sex. For all the emotional baggage and guilt around sexuality that happens in the evangelical sub-culture, they’ve got at least one thing exactly right: It’s easier to live by the value that sex belongs within a committed loving relationship, if you’re part of a culture that shares and supports that value.)

Wheaton was home.

But it’s not home anymore. I don’t believe the same things about God. I don’t believe the same things about what is and isn’t sinful. I don’t believe the same things about how I should act towards people when I don’t agree with their choices. (For instance, I still believe that sex outside a committed loving relationship is missing the point of sex, and is a set-up for heartbreak; but I no longer believe that it’s a ticket to Hell, or deserves censure from me or anyone else. Any punishment that results from a poor choice about sex happens in THIS life, from what I’ve seen, and the people enduring it do not need me to tell them that it was a bad choice.) I don’t believe the same things about the world. I don’t believe the same things about human nature. I don’t believe the same things about myself. And – this is important – I’m no longer a 20-year-old who gets to drift along with no bills, or real responsibilities, or real-world consequences for my decisions. The John who fit Wheaton perfectly 15 years ago is not who I am today.  If the two Johns could somehow meet in the same room, I don’t think we’d even enjoy talking about big issues. He’d want to try and argue theology with me, and I’d want to beat some self-discipline into him, and he’d be horrified to know how soon he would go bald, and I’d be horrified to see how naïve and arrogant I was… and neither of us would listen much. The only thing we’d really enjoy doing together, I think, would be reading children’s stories at Pooh Corner. And Young John would, no doubt, be able to do Tigger’s voice better than I can. But I’d be better at telling the story, and (slightly) better at giving other people a chance to tell their part of the story.

Other people’s life journeys will take them down different paths; maybe even, in the faith journey, down the same path in the opposite direction. I became more liberal as I matured, but that doesn’t mean that becoming more liberal (or conservative) equals maturity. It doesn’t mean that my old shirt was a bad shirt. It just means that the shirt that fits me now is different than the shirt that fit me 15 years ago.

I know all that, without having to get on a plane, walk around campus and see that the kids there are young enough to be my kids. I know it without going to listen to a lecture and think how little the lectures at school prepare you for the actual experiences of trying to apply the information at work. I know it without going to the chapel and thinking how utterly different my current beliefs are from the beliefs that would be expounded from that pulpit. I know it without sitting in the corner of Fischer Lobby where we used to read together on Tuesday night (where, I’m told, a group still meets every Tuesday night to read children’s stories. But: they’re kids, and I’m not anymore.)

I know all that, but I’m not ready to actually go there and experience all that. I’m not ready to physically try on the shirt and feel that it doesn’t fit. It was SUCH a good shirt when it fit. I’ll just put it back in the drawer for now, and enjoy fond memories of how I used to play grown-up while I wore it.


The Moment will wait.


In the meantime, young Wheaties: Enjoy the shirt. It won’t fit you forever, but it’s a GOOD shirt.


© John M. Munzer