Chapter Two - Lost
Chapter Two
Lost
“I know no way of discounting the doctrine that when you take something you want and damn the consequences, then you had better be ready to accept whatever consequences ensue.”
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose[i]
At the end of our eight-year church planting adventure in Kaiserslautern, Germany, the good folks of the fellowship there gave Jan and me a lovely goodbye gift. It was a weekend in an upscale hotel deep in the Palatine Forest in southwestern Germany, all expenses paid. How wonderful, we thought.
Indeed, it was a very nice hotel with a good German restaurant. What to do? We discovered that the reception desk had maps of trails of various lengths that one could traverse. All were well marked and indicated topography and length. We both like to hike, and this seemed like a fine way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
The beauty of the trees, the quietness of the forest, and the smell of fresh air were invigorating. As we walked and talked, we joked. I said to Jan, “I forgot to take breadcrumbs to leave along the path to find our way back.” We laughed. But, very much like Hansel and Gretel, we got lost along the way. Was it the black and white poorly photocopied map, or was it a marker missed on a tree? We did not know. What we did know was that we were lost. At first, we made fun of the whole affair, conjuring up specious headlines in local newspapers: “Found After Three Days – Pastor and Wife Survive on Mushrooms and Roots.”
But after several hours of twists and turns, feet getting weary and hearts heavy, fear began to creep up between us. “What if darkness sets upon us?” “Did you hear that? I think I heard a truck.” We were truly at the end of our rope when we rounded a bend and saw, to our great relief, a group of men in the forest cutting down trees. They were able to show us where we were and how to get from where we were back to the hotel. We were saved. What a relief!
With Pride as our guide, we enter the forest via friskiness, but once in, we discover we are in over our heads. Pride is a guide without a sense of direction. In fact, should we follow him, we will ultimately lose our way, much as Jay Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Myrtle did.
Yet here we are on our journey in the land of self-absorption, with countless routes leading to personal self-fulfillment. We ourselves, guided by ourselves, are purely intending to find ourselves. All that matters in life is to be self-fulfilled. Which means what? We are not exactly sure, but we will die trying. On our map of the land of self-absorption, our markers all have eros – the love of self – over them. We have thus agreed on our destination: personal self-fulfillment, and now we are faced with many roads that will take us there.
But before we begin our journey toward greater self-fulfillment, we need to accumulate the right gear to help us get there. We will need good therapists, those well-trained folks who are warm, empathic, and genuine, whose job it is to shore up our fragile egos. They are the priests we go to when we want to better our lot in life. In their work to strengthen us, they have their own resources that they make available to us, such as self-help books, soothing music on the radio, and popular culture, which tells us, “We are here for you. Be the best of who you are. Your parents did it to you. Get rid of those who make you unhappy. You only go around once in life – grab for all the gusto you can. Get off my lawn!”
Not always being in the right mood on our journey to self-fulfillment, our doctors will provide us with the right kind of medication that will ensure that we will have the strength to carry on. Anti-depressants are standard food. We will stock up on things that make us feel good, all new; clothes, boats, shoes, and for husbands, anything found at Home Depot.
Fig. 5 The Path to Self-Fulfillment
Our journey will be circular in nature. We will begin with ourselves, with the goal of finding ourselves. In the end, we will come back to where we started. There is no other destination. Let us begin.
[i][i] Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose, (New York: Vintage Books, 2014), 490.