Aunt Martha was over last night, and we somehow ended up reading old blogs aloud. I enjoyed the brief season when the kids were doing all the writing for me, but I think that it might be over. And, alas, they want to know why I don't post stories about them anymore.
"Because I don't get home until 11 at night, and then I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning to start prepping the heat-fixed slides for your Biology homework!" is the snide answer. But really, I should be taking some time to write down memories. I wouldn't remember any of the hilarious things that Owen said when he was 3 years old if I hadn't blogged about them.
So, we try again. I am digging for blog prompts, and J gave me a great one the other day. She's having her class (she is teaching a spiritual formation class for work) do an exercise this week, and I was the guinea pig. The assignment was to write two stories. One is in the "A Stranger Comes to Town" genre, and the other in the "A Man Sets Out on a Journey" genre. One was supposed to be closed and other open-ended, but I didn't remember that until after I'd written them. But anyway, here I am, attempting to write regularly again.
A STRANGER COMES TO TOWN
The announcement came over the loudspeaker into my classroom: “An admissions counselor from Houghton College will be in the Guidance Office from 9 AM to noon today to speak with seniors who might be interested in attending Houghton College next year.”
I was several weeks into my Sophomore year of High School and desperately unhappy. I hadn’t even made it through the first week of school before I began skipping classes again, an offense that had led to worried parent-teacher conferences and empty disciplinary threats the year before. I wasn’t getting into trouble—I was sneaking out of Gym class and out of Introduction to Agriculture to practice in the band room. When my lips were too tired for any more practicing, I’d go to the library and read.
Most of my teachers turned a blind eye. I wasn’t a disruptive student, I had no trouble with the classwork, and I was usually discreet. But I was miserably bored and unhappy, and I couldn’t imagine facing another three years of high school under the current conditions.
So I lied. I pretended that I needed to pick something up at the Main Office, walked down to the Guidance Office, and introduced myself to the Houghton admissions ambassador. I don’t remember anything about them now, but they were probably just a recently graduated college kid. What I do remember was that I made a series of completely improvised bluffs.
“I already have nearly all the credits I would need to graduate,” I explained, “but I’m technically…TECHNICALLY…just a sophomore. I’d be very, VERY interested in attending Houghton next year. Can you tell me whether Houghton has any policies about a minimum age to enroll?” (I had just turned 15.)
The admissions counselor, whether they believed me or not, played along. And that playing along led to a formal application and an audition that buoyed my spirits beyond measure. I suddenly felt hope and had a tangible goal in my future. I didn’t end up going to Houghton, but I did leave High School at the end of my sophomore year after putting in a furious year’s hard work to pass all the necessary college entrance and high school Regents exams without having taken half of the coursework.
I have no idea who that admissions counselor was or what happened to them, but they unknowingly changed the trajectory of my life just by showing up on a Monday morning in Albion. They gave me an opportunity to work towards a meaningful goal and to be transformed from a bored, irresponsible, slacking teenager into a hard-working student who was seizing life with both hands.
A MAN LEAVES ON A JOURNEY
I had no interest in Bible Quizzing. Among other reasons, I was convinced at the the tender age of 10 years old that I was going to be an important scientist, and I considered memorizing quotations from the Bible to be a waste of my valuable scientific time.
My parents brought me to our church (Albion Free Methodist) early on a Saturday morning, and I piled into a 15-passenger van with a crowd of much-older teenagers. Our youth group leader and quizzing program head had spent several weeks of Sunday School time attempting to prepare us for the upcoming quiz meet, and I’d barely remained conscious, let alone attentive, throughout the preparations.
Once we arrived at the church which was hosting the meet I started to feel some butterflies in my stomach. This felt suspiciously like an examination, and I HATED looking foolish in exams. I began to rapidly read and re-read the pocket sized portion of scripture that I was supposed to have studied and memorized 4 chapters of.
I quickly found (to my intense relief) that most of the other quizzers were not any better prepared than I was. And I also was surprised to learn that either by osmosis or by Sunday School literacy I was able to answer questions on a good bit of the material just from prior knowledge. I ended up taking 3rd place in the Individual Competition, and was handed a small trophy. I was hooked from that moment on.
It was unadulterated selfish ego—pure competitive teen insecurity—that made me stay up late, pacing back and forth in the hallway as I memorized the New Testament. And I’m so glad that I did. I only wish that I’d memorized the Psalms with the same intense effort (back when my brain was younger) that I devoted to the gospels and the letters of Paul. I’ve been collecting interest on that selfishly undertaken work for years now, and for whatever reasons I did it I am grateful for having such a large chunk of scripture carved into my memory. My relationship with scripture is far from finished, and the work that was started at that first quiz meet—wrestling with my own ignorance of the Bible, recognizing the power of knowing its stories, and seeing within myself a mixed bag of motivations for engaging with it—has continued for the thirty years after and still goes on.
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