On the Road Again

I’d like to begin today by sharing with you a few lines from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.”  I came upon the excerpt recently as it was quoted by James Carroll, in his book “Constantine’s Sword.”  First the excerpt from Eliot, and then Carroll’s eloquent commentary:

Who is the third man who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantal, hooded

I do not now whether a man or a woman

- But who is that on the other side of you?

 

And Carroll writes:

 

In his notes to ‘The Waste Land,’ T.S. Eliot associates these lines with the story of the journey to Emmaus, which in Luke comes immediately after the discovery that Jesus’ tomb is empty.  “That very day two of them were talking with each other about all these things that had happened.  While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.  But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”  Eliot explains that his lines about the mysterious third companion were [and here Carroll quotes Eliot’s notes] “stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions . . . :  it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.”  [Carroll continues] “We are talking here about the extremity of human experience, yet to Christian piety, the story of the death and Resurrection of Jesus has long since been stripped of anything like extremity.  For most worshippers on Easter morn, it is a pageant, a domesticated soap opera, and only by a stretch of the imagination can we put ourselves in the places of those men and women who Jesus knew personally, who loved him, and who, after the horrible events of that Passover in Jerusalem, must have been in a state of what we can only call extremity.  They did with their grief what we do with ours.[1]

 

When I think of those I know who have experienced a state of what we can only call extremity, I usually think about a very close friend of mine and a former roommate, Adam.   Aside from being a fanatical downhill skier, a wilderness EMT, an ace rock climber, a world traveler and a mean engineer, this guy happens to be a highly trained and highly experienced white water kayaker.  He has guided rafting trips on the most challenging rapids in the world.  I thought of Adam yesterday as Nancy and I took a break, strapped our kayaks to the car, and “put in” to the Charles River for a late morning of paddling. I can recall him explaining to me the kind of “put in” he was used to on these world-class rivers.  He talked about that moment when raft crews and their guides first push the boats in the river and feel its cold power sweeping under their feet as they climb aboard.  Once in the boat, the shore begins to move and for the foreseeable future of hours, or days or sometimes weeks, the course of boats, bodies and lives, is given to the river.  Following whatever final preparations – be it the strapping in of needed supplies or a last minute settling of a petty quarrel amidst crew members - there is that sense of heightened excitement and that feeling that we’re in it now, together, come what may.  No turning back!

 

I have to imagine that Shackleton’s team, or whoever it was that inspired Eliot’s lines, had a similar sense of “putting in” as they embarked on their own extreme journey.  And with more of a stretch, perhaps we can imagine that the disciples may have had a similar feeling upon recognizing Jesus, crucified but three days before, now somehow sitting at their table, his presence as real as the bread he was breaking.  Think of it… the shores of all they had once known and believed about life and death were now moving.  They found themselves caught up in a river of… we might call it… a new life or a new hope, and in the very face of their extreme grief over their Savior crucified.  What could they do but follow the course back to Jerusalem and share this good news with friends and stranger alike.  After what they had seen in Emmaus, their risen Savior, after they felt that ‘burning’ in their hearts, how could they turn back now?  How could they give up or lose hope now?  Christ’s love for them, God’s love for them, was stronger than death, and now it was theirs, to enter its flow and share it with the world.

 

“Putting in” is a catchy metaphor… putting in and entering the ever flowing rivers of God’s presence and love.  And yet… it doesn’t do much for the confusion I sometimes feel during this post Easter season.  Christian piety tells us that this is a joyful season, a time for pageants and lilies.  Hope begins afresh!  Springtime comes!  Christ is risen!  Indeed.  Though once our Easter morning buzz has worn off, what are we to make of the persistence of suffering and pain in our world?  When we are honest with ourselves, we ask with Eliot, “just who is this third man who appears and presumably walks by our side in those moments of life’s extremities?  Is he real?  If so, where is he now and what has he done for us lately, for our world?  Without him sitting here before our eyes, how many of us can truly claim to recognize Christ walking by our sides?  How can we live this resurrected life that this story proclaims and promises?

 

I mentioned before that my friend Adam knew about extremity.  There’s more to it than his chosen hobbies, adventurous as they are.  Turns out that a few years back, he lost a close friend when they were kayaking together on one of the more challenging rivers in Chile.  Knowing that he continued to kayak long after the tragedy, I once asked him how it was for him the first time he “put in” after his friend died.  I’ll never forget his answer.

 

He had to think for a minute about when that first “put in” took place, after his friend died.  I thought it wouldn’t have been for at least a few weeks after, so he surprised me when he said that, in fact, his first “put in” after was on the same day, and not out of any desire to get back on the river, but out of necessity, to finish the trip and to get his friend home.  He, his friend, and another experienced guide, all of whom had become close after months of leading trips for the same Chilean company, had taken some time off from their guiding and set out on the Futuleufu River, just north of Patagonia.  I had seen his pictures of the area – lush green trees ascended a steep landscape at either side of the river.  In the distance, snow capped mountains reached toward blue skies splotched with large, cotton-white clouds.  They might well have been kayaking through a cover of National Geographic.  Though the rapids were ranked with the “exceedingly” and “utmost” difficult Class V and Class IV designations, all three were widely regarded as experts, had traveled these stretches many times before, and had cultivated a deep respect for the river.  I should say here that Adam gave me permission to share this story with others though as you can imagine, there are some details that only he can tell.  I’ll simply say that the three of them entered a particularly difficult stretch of river called Zeta.  One of them did not make it through.  After several hours of rescue attempts and CPR on half-submerged rocks, Adam had lost his close friend.  As he and his other friend tried to collect themselves at the riverside, an expedition of rafters with guides eventually caught up with them and offered to help get them all to the road at the bottom of the river, still a few hours away.  Cold from the icy water, in shock, not even beginning to process their loss, they made their first “put in.”  He told me he paddled in silence, with the clarity of mind and presence that only death can provoke.  The rafts, one of which now carried his dead friend, followed not far behind.

 

When the river grew calm and knowing they still had a good ways to go before they would find a radio or phone, it came time for a break.   Adam pulled off, and was amazed to notice a poor Chilean farmer standing by the riverside, with an ox.  This was not heavily populated land.   And though he knew the man could not offer any of the practical help they needed, Adam had the presence of mind to give the man a warning that a friend had died up river, and that the boats were on their way down and would be stopping for a break.  The group had rested and collected themselves once more.  Just before their second “put in”, before they were about to go, the farmer uttered an expression to Adam.  He told me he could not imagine a more appropriate or comforting thing to say at that time.  His expression was this:  Adelante, no mas.  The expression is difficult to translate.  Literally, it means “forward, no more” but the phrase “no mas” is not what it seems.  Its hard to translate because the man was not telling him “look forward only, don’t look back.”   I take it to be the farmer’s way of saying that at times like these, forward was the only option.  Adelante, no mas.  Have hope that if nothing else, you will move forward.   Adelante, meaning “forward,” or “ahead,” or even “onward,” at the very least points out a direction, maybe even a goal.  In that moment, where everything was of heightened meaning, Adam took this expression as an encouraging word from a stranger.    He “put in” again, aware that there would be no turning back, no giving up, only moving forward.  Adelante, no mas.

Do you remember the T.S. Eliot poem?  “Who is the third man on the road?”  “Who is the man on the other side?”  God only knows what gave that Chilean farmer the wisdom to say the perfect thing. God and I both know that words alone cannot do justice to what those men encountered on the road to Emmaus no more than they can do justice to what happened that day on the Futeleufu.

Dear friends, I hope that none of us will know an encounter with life and death so extreme.  And yet… I know that many of us already have.  We know times when the events of our lives leave us in shock and we feel ourselves at the limit of being able to cope or more forward.  And yet, we keep “putting in” to the unpredictable waters of life.  One might say that we are “put in” to the river alone, at our birth, and we “come out” alone, at our death.  In a sense, this is true.  Yet, as Christians, mindful of our baptism, we are “put in” to the river in the company of our church community.  We come out of the river surrounded by a cloud of witnesses that have “come out” before us.  And we know in faith, and most especially at those extreme moments of life, that God’s presence abides with us through it all.  “He leadeth me beside still waters.  He restoreth my soul… yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear, for thou art with me.”  Though my friend Adam is not a churchgoer, I know he would catch the drift of these lines from Psalm 23, and perhaps even the Emmaus story.

Adam, whether he knows it or not, has been the third man in my life on more than a few occasions, gently sharing a kind or encouraging word at just the right moment, or even when I would row in the seat behind him on our college crew team.  I wonder, when you have been on the road or rivers of life’s extremities, who has been the third man, or woman, in your life?  When have you been that mysterious third person for someone else?  

            Being present for one another.  Sharing a meal. Having eyes opened to the grief and suffering of a world in which there can be no turning back and no giving up.  Doing the best we can to offer or to follow a caring expression that may come to us in languages of words and of spirit that at once sound foreign, yet somehow familiar.  Perhaps this… this moving forward with one another, through rapids and valleys... this is what it means to live the resurrected life.  Wherever we are on the journey of life or faith, when we break bread together as Christ did in Emmaus, we too might recognize the ‘third man’ that offers the very essence of his life to us, to nourish us, to give us hope, to remind us that we never walk alone.  Or, perhaps it is ours to be the third man, the Church, the body of Christ to the world.  In this weary world, it falls on us to be the voice of moving forward.   It falls on us to be ever reassuring others that the worst thing is never the last thing.  It falls on us to be the mantle of God’s presence and to be that third man or woman in our world that both creates and denies the extremity of suffering and death.  As the Body of Christ that is God’s church, it is ours to tell those who mourn and those who are meek, those who hunger and those who thirst, those who are merciful and pure in heart, those who are peacemakers and those who are persecuted, Adelante, no mas.   With the living Christ always walking by our side, may we find the strength to do so.  Adelante, no mas.  Adelante! Amen.

 

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