Yesterday When We Were Young

Seems the love I've known has always been
The most destructive kind
Yes, that's why now I feel so old
Before my time.

Yesterday when I was young
The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue.
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game,
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame.
The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned
I'd always built to last on weak and shifting sand.
I lived by night and shunned the naked light of the day
And only now I see how the years ran away.

Yesterday when I was young
So many happy songs were waiting to be sung,
So many wild pleasures lay in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see.
I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out,
I never stopped to think what life was all about
And every conversation I can now recall
Concerned itself with me and nothing else at all.

Yesterday the moon was blue
And every crazy day brought something new to do.
I used my magic age as if it were a wand
And never saw the waste and emptiness beyond.
The game of love I played with arrogance and pride
And every flame I lit too quickly, quickly died.
The friends I made all seemed somehow to drift away
And only I am left on stage to end the play.

There are so many songs in me that won't be sung,
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue.
The time has come for me to pay for
Yesterday when I was young...

~~~~~~~

They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” 

 Exodus 14:11-12

**********

Dear Kate,

I am going to write very fast this morning...15 mins maybe?  The summer breeze is calling me.  I am sure you will tell me my typos.

I know a man, one of my best friends, if he were to be there at our church barbeque last night, he would have fitted right in.

He was churched too, once, decades ago, taught Sunday School too he told me, but now could only recall those "good old times" the same way we did last night at church after some dietary heavy-lifting washed down with something sweet.

What would we, the still-churched-after-all-these-years, call a man like this?  A lost sheep?  A "brother" who "wandered from the truth" and that "someone should bring him back"?

The thing is, he would know more about us then we care to admit.  Yesterday he too was young, very similarly to how we were.

The song above I knew before I knew him, but once in one of our many conversations he brought it in to make it our language of common re-traditioning.  He talked about his regrets though there really weren't anything truly wicked he has done; he was decent, his life neat, just like ours, the still-churched folks.

Yet in his growing, in his search for the Way, the Truth, the Life, he became aware of none of them being available in Jesus, or so he thought, because of none being possible in church.  Church, friendship and living together with folks of a common faith, were once to him a promised land, but the promise as he grew has proven to be false.  He did blame false prophets.  But soon enough after we met, he would admit the falseness was mostly in himself, his expectations, his willingness to suspend his disbelief to make youth last.  He was in it, but not in Christ.  And when I pointed that simple truth to him, he would admit.

The guy is honest; that's why we are friends.

Now my questions, to you, the still-churched:

Why?  Why are you still sticking around?  Is it because what was promised is fulfilled for you?

If you need to situate our church in the Biblical story, where would you find us?  Are we still in the land of Pharaoh, waiting for our Exodus?  Are we wandering in the wilderness?

How about this: seems to me we've been doing a lot of "looking back" to our "good old days," trying to identify what "has been working for us"; could it be that we think we were in the Promised Land, and now somehow wandered away from it?  Do you see any difficulty in this way of seeing (other than it being patently false)?

What we are now is the legacy, the payoff, the upshot, the burden, of how we have once been, our yesterdays, when we were young.  If we find ourselves now wandering and wondering in the wilderness, then we must admit our present reality is speaking about what has been wrong, not done right, in fact, regrettable in our past.  We are reaping what we sowed.  Should we be looking back to our sowing days and plant the same seeds once more....for the next generations?

Am I saying there's nothing good in our past?  I hope you are not so stupid to ask that.  The thing is, if we are given the chance to live yesterday all over again, given who we are, we would choose to live it the exact same way, as our lamentation of yesteryears attests.  It has been good as we felt it, and there is nothing wrong with that.  Everything is wrong with that.

Could it be that we don't know what is truly promised to us, or don't want it?  Seriously, why lead us into a wilderness, Moses?  Why can't we store our food for tomorrow?  Why an invisible God providential only haphazardly?  We are in the middle of nowhere, stepping on our own shit, and "back home" in the land of Pharaoh we had at least our own shit can.  "It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"

When we can see only the goods in our past, do you know what else is true?  That we can only see the bads in the life of those we disapprove.  The statue of our founding father, Sir John A. Macdonald, was, once again, toppled yesterday.  A person who sees no trouble in this sees no trouble in his own troubling past.  All the troubles are in that of "the other side."  His own was the promised land, "back to the Garden" is what he dreams about everyday.  Though, frequently, dishonestly, he wonders why the hell he is so sad, so fruitless, so filled with regrets, today.

Yours, Alex