Walking in a Land Without Memory

Small towns are sometimes scorned, because if you get crosswise with a powerful family you can find yourself on the fringe rather quickly, and you may stay there a long time. Navigating small town society can be gritty. For better or for worse, small towns are built on relationship, and relationship is built on memory, and memory is built over time. In large cities, they talk about relationship, but they mean alliance. Alliances are built on mutually desired outcomes, and desired outcomes change with convenience. It’s the land of contracts and other devices to force some degree of temporary permanence. Once a goal has been achieved the contract is fulfilled and the alliance disappears. I am forming alliances with people who will help fund the purchase of our new home in Riverside. Despite the heat and energy of discussing fine print and the hustle to beat deadlines, none of those people will make it onto my Christmas letter list. Even marriages can be on alliance with no deeper memories being made.

Here in College Place I am in relationship with people who for a dozen years have shared projects and problems with me. Many alliances have been formed and reformed within the larger context of our relationship. We will remember each other, not for those alliances but for the larger part we played in a continually unfolding story. We will not think back on each other as projects or problems, but as people. And as we share rare times together in the future, we will pack those valuable minutes with stories, “catching up,” and just being together again. It will all be continued tinkering on the relationship we started in the year 2000.

In a land of relationship, my walk is impossible to hide. With the gift of time people notice the length of my stride, the firmness of my step, the direction of my life. In my new city, crowded with millions I will never meet, it would be possible for me to walk before a variety of audiences in whatever way they would approve. A city can be a land with limited memory, but with God’s help I will use my own memory and walk a straight line.