“Can you teach us to memorize something?” It was a question I never expected. My questioners were two fourteen-year-old boys who earlier that morning had been jumping off large rocks with sharp sticks in their hands and antagonizing a bees’ nest. This was my summer field ed placement, a camp in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, leading backpacking trips. The boys had been acting exactly as one would expect fourteen-year-olds to act, but the next minute they were asking questions about the Trinity and the Incarnation and then to memorize Scripture. Perplexed but elated I spent the next three miles of the day’s hike doing a call-and-response memorization of the prologue of John. And they loved every bit of it.
It was a teaching moment I could never have predicted, could never even have imagined in my wildest dreams—especially in upstate New York, where the Bible is not particularly taught, known, or appreciated. But it was also a learning moment. The paradox that these boys embodied—that of both jumping off rocks and crying out to the Rock—struck me then and now as nothing short of beautiful. Is this what it means to be truly human? To engage our physicality and also our noetic capacities? To be abundantly silly and deeply serious? To play in utter exuberance and joy in this life God has created, stretching our muscles and expanding our lungs in exuberant, jovial shouts as well as to embrace the One who created our muscles and lungs and the whole of us?
It seems to me that this is the kind of life, the kind of humanity, that we were created for. More importantly, this is the kind of life Jesus has redeemed us for. Many of the church fathers spoke of salvation as being recreated and restored to our original glory as humans made in the image of God, and I imagine that original glory meant a wholeness I glimpsed in these two boys. Jesus’ taking care of all the most significant movements of history frees us to play and revel in what he has given us. His command to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind calls us to engage our minds as well as the rest of us. It strikes me, then, that when we aren’t living this kind of life, we aren’t really living. If we’re neglecting the jumping and playing, or the asking of big questions, or the silliness, or the wonder and praise of God, then we’re not being fully human. If we’re not taking time to enjoy one another’s company over a cup of conversation while we also spend good time reading the church fathers, or if we fail to work hard and write good papers while we also take time to stretch our legs and play, or if we forget to laugh deeply while we live deeply, we’re not living into our salvation.
It also strikes me that these boys could do all of these things at once. They didn’t have to jump for a while and then ask questions or memorize Scripture; I watched them run and jump while asking questions about the Incarnation and salvation and hike and play hacky sack while reciting John’s prologue. To them, there wasn’t such a thing as a “secular” part of life and a “spiritual” part of life. To them, it was all just life. What if we understood that more often? Could spiritual formation be something that happens in our classes, and not merely something we attend an hour a week for our first year of divinity school? Can we worship while playing basketball or Frisbee? Can we laugh and be silly while studying atonement theories and looking up words like “extracalvinisticum”? I am inclined to think that we can, and indeed, that we should.
As I reflect on the paradox of my campers, I think of something Fredrick Buechner wrote: “We are moved also by those precious moments when something holy seems to break through into our lives both to heal us and to summon us to pilgrimage” (Longing for Home). That morning on the trail through the Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area in the Adirondacks I saw something holy break into my life in the most unexpected place, and it called me to pilgrimage. God called me to follow the way of these crazy fourteen-year-old boys, which is in fact the way of his Son, who himself was once a fourteen-year-old boy. Christ has made it possible for us to live this way, desires for us to live this way. So let us find some rocks, call out to the Rock, and begin to live.