Sunday Morning Meds--Remembrances

“. . .you thought I was altogether like you.” Psalm 50:21

Years ago, when I was a teenager, my uncle—a most distinguished uncle—came to visit.  I was in high school, and he took me golfing. I’d fooled around with golf clubs since I was ten; but my family was not part of the country club set, and actually going to a course would have been, well, out of the question—somewhat frivolous, I suppose.

After nine holes, he wanted to ride out in the countryside around town, the town of Oostburg, Wisconsin, where I was then growing up and he had, maybe 35 years before.  His career had led him afar from his geographic roots, and I could tell it was a joy for him to reminiscence while touring the haunts he’d never forgotten.

“Now go out west of town,” he told me, and I did.  He wanted to follow the river, the Onion River, because he said he and his friends used to have so much fun out there.  “There,” he said.  “See that path through the field?—if you follow that road, you’ll come to a swimming hole.”  He was overflowing with memory.  “Ever been there?  Great place—we used to have so much fun.”  And then he seemed to leave the car altogether, lost in memory.

Right then I may have been at the very same age he was remembering himself being, and I remember thinking it strange that he could be so emotionally attached to a bend in the river I’d never even seen, even though I’d walked parts of that river, trapping and duck hunting. Years before, there’d been spectacular fun at at spot I’d never seen, but no one I knew ever frequented that swimming hole. He knew the world in which I was growing up, knew it well, knew it intimately; but the place he remembered was a different country.

Some time ago a friend of mine who also grew up in Oostburg, Wisconsin, came back here to his home on the edge of the Great Plains mildly depressed because his elderly parents had decided to move across the lake to Michigan and he was afraid that this Oostburg visit might well be his last.

I know that rite of passage. When my parents left the house in which I grew up, some species of emptiness descended on me, even though they were simply moving across town. But years ago already my distinguished uncle had prepared me for that leave-taking when I witnessed his reverence for a spot on the Onion River I’d never visited. 

           

The Oostburg my uncle knew wasn’t the place I was then growing up, nor is it the place my friend doesn’t want to forget.  We’re all part of the diaspora, which means none of those Oostburgs is the one that exists today. The gulf which divides reality and perception is sometimes immense and immensely unfathomable.

The truth is, we fashion a whole host of worlds within our own perceptions. Similarly, I suppose—and this is scary--the God we fashion isn’t necessarily the one who exists through time and eternity. In Psalm 50, a psalm that’s really shocking in places, here’s another line to make us both sweat and quake:  “you thought I was altogether like you.”

The God of Psalm 50 is no teddy bear.

Why do I find that idea disconcerting?  Probably because I’ve created an image of God in my own mind, a genial gentleman, a fine man who is really into forgiveness, a kind of sweet grandfatherly figure.

           

“You thought I was altogether like you,” that God says. 

I think I have.  I just hope I’m right.