musing...

i am beginning to think that one of the reasons the authors of scripture espoused and exalted an eschatological perspective is because it is quite difficult to keep people looking and moving forward.

i am a perfect example.

although i have yet to crack thirty, i already find myself constantly doubling back on the past. i cannot seem to finish a day without remembering how superior i felt as kerrie sat beside me on the elementary school swings, looking into the cracked mirror that produced ms. simmons' "portraits of monkeys" or smelling the grease at the rex's chicken on 21st and mingo. i also find myself wondering what happened to the more obscure characters in my play. i wonder whether gabe, my handicapped friend from fifth grade is still living with his parents or whether he is in a group home and i wonder whether rhett's intellectual acumen eventually enabled him to escape the poverty and familial dysfunction that always found a way to entangle him. for some reason i find it difficult to remember the characters in the last novel that i read, but i never find it difficult to drudge up memories of hell night at the citadel or how it felt like to hit adam buker in the face.

i'm not unthankful for these memories, but i am afraid of getting trapped.

i need to weave these strands of story together so that they will support me as i scramble up the mountains and dredge through the valleys that lie before me. these stories contain the whispered wisdom and crucial questions that will help me find my way. even more importantly, these stories bind me to those without whom i would be bereft and utterly alone.
but i cannot let these stories, sentimental and important though they might be, keep me from moving forward. these strands of support cannot become ties that bind me to who i was, lest i fail to continue becoming.

Jesus once said that "no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." i think this is kind-of what he was getting at.