Go Out into the World
Day 30
Buechner concludes his chapter ‘Holy Moments’ with one final story of a moment where “something broke through”.
“One of the other moments where something broke through for me - like going to the monastery, like for some reason choosing to be christened at the age of whatever I was - was this incident that took place when I was teaching at Lawrenceville before I had any notion of going to a seminary. I was to have dinner with my mother, and I'd come into New York for that purpose. I hadn't seen her for a while, I think, and she'd sort of gotten things all pulled together. The apartment looked nice, and she had cooked a nice little meal and had the silver candlesticks on the table. We were just about to sit down for supper when the phone rang. It was for me, which was surprising as it was her apartment. And it was a friend of mine with whom I had taught at Lawrenceville, and almost immediately I heard to my horror that he was in tears. It scared me out of my wits, because how do you ever deal with somebody's tears, especially somebody I had no reason to think had cause for tears? He was calling because there'd been a terrible automobile accident on the West Coast in which his mother, his father, and his pregnant sister had all been involved, and he wasn't sure that any of them would live. He was flying out to see what he could do, if there was anything to do. He was at the airport, and he asked could I come and just sit with him until the plane took off.
“Instead of saying yes just like that, which any normal person would've done, thinking of my mother in the other room and this meal that she'd prepared, I said, ‘Just... will you call back in five minutes? I've just got to go talk to my mother.’ So I went back and I told her this story, and her reaction was absolutely ridiculous. ‘He's a grown man. He's behaving like a child. I've got this wonderful dinner prepared, and we haven't seen each other in a long time. He'll be perfectly all right.’ And what was so horrifying about it was not just that she said it, but that I'd already said it to myself. It was a real watershed. I'd said all those things to myself. How absurd. Then this revelation - and again I distrust my own narration . . . did it happen right then, did it happen later, had it been happening for a long time and only sort of triggered then?-that not to go into the world's pain, not to go see my friend, not to somehow offer him what-ever cup of cold water I could, to play it safe, to stay with my mother, to have a nice dinner was not only for the world's sake a disaster, but for my sake a disaster. To play it safe, to stay home where the candles are lit and the meal is prepared was to have your life somehow diminished. To go out into the world, even if the world scares the hell out of you, and bores you to death, and intimidates you, and confuses you - that is the only life. Somehow I saw that, I felt that, knew it through that moment. Again, ironies like the locked church and the silent monastery. When the phone rang again, he said, ‘Don't come down. My plane is leaving in twenty minutes; I'm off. It's just good to talk to you.’ And so the moment passed and no harm was done, I think. But great good was also done.”
Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, pp95-97.
To help you reflect…
What does “playing it safe” mean to you? Has it been a life affirming or a life diminishing experience for you?
And/or…
What missed opportunities have become life-lessons for you?
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