People keep asking me if my son is crawling yet. But why crawl when you can roll or scoot wherever you want to go?
A Trip Down Memory Lane
For several months I’ve been postponing an inevitability: reorganizing my study. It’s mostly a wreck.
It’s both disorienting and uncharacteristic for things to be this way. I’ve long been obsessed with tidiness and order. From my junior year in college when I had no roommate to recent years, I’ve always been able to maintain a domain of order. Naturally this changes as you marry, have children, and go through hectic seasons. Yet as my book collection has outgrown my shelf space, and as I’ve succumbed to my inner packrat, my church office has become a sad state of affairs.
I’ve often thought, “What will people who come in here for counsel think when they behold this place?” Of course, usually if you’re going to the pastor’s study, you’re much more concerned with messes in your own life.
It’s probably not nearly as bad as I’m making it ought to be, but the situation has been troubling enough that I’ve kept meaning to attack the problem—one stack at a time.
Last week I began with my old desk calendars. These had been stacked together in a corner, leaning against the wall. I’ve always used a personal notebook-style planner (Thank you Eddie Moody), but when I began pastoring here in 2011, my secretary felt that we both needed desk calendars.
Initially that calendar was just for keeping up with birthdays and anniversaries of church members, church meetings, worship services and guest preachers, and related events. Gradually I began using it to document those whom I had called or visited each day and vacation time. Eventually I was documenting my hours in the office each week. As you can imagine, the quantity of ink grows quite significantly as one moves from 2011 into more recent years.
It was painful knowing that I couldn’t hold onto these calendars anymore. As a matter of historical record, I was obliged to scan each month of each year to ensure I wasn’t letting crucial information slip into oblivion: Homecoming Services, Revivals, Vacation Bible Schools, Association Meetings, etc.
This trip down memory lane became quite personal, however. I started noticing the names of now-deceased folks whom I’d visited. I noticed the revival speakers who had visited during a difficult ministry season and encouraged me as much or more than the rest of the congregation. I noticed the few dates when notable people informed me that they had decided to leave the church. My calendars started to speak.
People have a tendency toward one of two unhealthy extremes: either they cling to the past, thinking it to be far better (or worse) than it really was, or they press forward into the future, forgetful of the past that is (or should be) informing how they proceed into tomorrow. I suppose both errors can exist within a person at the same time.
As an aside, it might be instructive to take some time to consider which of these directions you tend toward, and why that might be the case.
Before I beat myself up too badly for clinging to dusty old calendars, there’s a word to be said. These calendars were the written expression of deeply internalized memories and experiences. However, as personal as they may be, they aren’t merely individual experiences that I walked through alone. They’re part of my household’s story, which includes my wife’s joys and disappointments. They’re part of our leadership team’s successes and failures. They’re part of our entire congregation’s sanctification.
Are we sure that record-keeping (in some form or another) and reminiscing aren’t integral to our discipleship? How can you be grateful for what you’ve forgotten? How can you repent of what you’ve swept under the rug long ago?
Not all forgetting is an act of rebellion or pride. But it happens, nonetheless. Given how the years fly by, perhaps we need to do more to slow things down. Part of doing that is changing our metaphors. Is time really “flying by?” Or is the issue that we’re “flying ahead,” moving too hastily through our days without taking proper time to meditate, journal, reflect, celebrate, lament, and pray?
Over 4,000 days went into the trash can last week. Well, a little less. I kept the 2011 calendar. I’m sure I’ll toss it eventually, just not yet.
Another Trip Down Memory Lane
As I continued to move through my study, I turned my attention to a stack of items on the other side of the room. This stack, I predicted, wouldn’t be as difficult.
I knew it was a combination of church-related materials, graduate school documents, and personal effects. However, as I began to cull it, I quickly ran into a distinct set of items: research material from my dissertation.
I completed my doctoral dissertation in 2018. In terms of an ordinary busy life, that’s quite a while ago. I hadn’t taken all of the typical post-graduation steps that some take, primarily because I wasn’t transitioning into an academic career. But I had forgotten just how much research material I had in file folders.
I began perusing the documents and was transported elsewhere—to a dusty old campus office from which I did some of my research and writing, to a coffee shop where I documented a few helpful nuggets from a book, to a doctor’s office waiting room where I stuck a tab on a page I needed to look at more closely.
Like most doctoral students, there was a big gap between the completion of my coursework and the completion of my dissertation. There was a lot of time to pursue one direction or another, a helpful detour here, but then a dead-end there. Sources that you thought were going to be significant at one stage ending up being insignificant at another.
As I looked at all the underlining and margin notes, I was reminded of all these intellectual twists and turns. I had to shake my head at some of the things I had wasted time on, but then feel grateful that I managed to get through. I was especially grateful for finding two valuable books even once I began writing, and for the cloud of witnesses who encouraged me to finish the race.
It’s been said that there are two kinds of dissertations: good ones and those that get done. I’ve always thought mine belonged in the latter category. Of course, I’m not an unbiased evaluator in this.
The real trouble now is knowing what to do with all these photocopies and handwritten notes. Do I toss them, or find space to hang onto them a bit longer? Last I checked, the Internal Revenue Service advises people to keep their tax documents going back 5 or 7 years. What’s the statute of limitations on dissertation material?
There is something odd about the way physical artifacts trigger memories that have intellectual insights embedded in them. This is the main reason I have trouble parting with these documents. On the other hand, if my argument was correct, well-researched, and significant, aren’t the documents that matter already inside me somewhere? And do they really need old scribbles to draw them out?
Hopefully I’m right in thinking that it’s probably time to take out the trash. But make no mistake: we’re people of memory. And we do need to find practical ways to remember what counts. Hopefully dissertation arguments, encouraging visits, solid Homecoming preachers, and turning points in ministry are the kinds of things that count.
Currently Reading:
Fred Sanders, Fountain of Salvation: Trinity and Soteriology.
Quote of the Week:
The doctrine of the Trinity, presented without reference to soteriology, begins to seem altogether irrelevant, floating away into a conceptual stratosphere as something that may be true but cannot be significant. The doctrine of salvation meanwhile, treated in isolation from the doctrine of the immanent Trinity, sinks down to the level of mere history and experience, losing its transcendent reference. Therefore these doctrinal complexes must be connected. On the other hand, if they are drawn together too tightly, human salvation begins to seem inherent to the divine reality itself, as if God had no other business but to save, no other being than being savior. The godness of God is in danger, in this case, of being eclipsed by the dynamics of salvation.