Venturing Into the Uncertain
I grew up in the YMCA, as a camper and then as a camp counsellor. We wore on our shirts and shorts the logo of the Y, the triangle representing body, mind, and spirit. I’m somewhat amazed at how that balance has stuck with me for low these 81 years. I wonder, upon reflection, if I’ve given as much consideration to spirit as I have to body and mind. I thrive on routine, yet I am dulled by too much of the status quo. Perhaps one way spirit has been a compelling aspect of my life has been my urge towards adventure. As I look back at some of my early journal entries, I see signs of a yen for the uncertain.
The following excerpts are from late July and early August 1964 when I was 23, prior to my departure for a year in France:
I finally received my acceptance from [the University of] Grenoble. I have my passport and have gotten my health card. I also have permission from the draft board and have sent everything in on my visa. I cannot conceive of what life will be like in such a foreign land. Has anyone ever gone who was as poor in a country’s language as I am in French?
I am really looking forward to France now. What will it be like? Will I really learn to converse in the language? So much will happen in these next two years (France & grad school), and I can’t even picture how it will turn out. I hope I am accepted at Vanderbilt for graduate school.
In this same summer of 1964, I reflected in my journal on some ideas out of Christian thought that feed into my spirit of adventure. From then Anglican Bishop John A.T. Robinson’s book Honest to God come the following ideas:
God is at a depth of reality reached not on the borders of life but at its center, … in Kierkegaard’s fine phrase, by ‘a deeper immersion in existence.’
It is not some religious act which make a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.
On the day of departing for my year in France, September 7, 1964, I wrote the following:
One must keep his spirit alive and awake so that at the time of death it will be alive. Worse than death is to walk the paths of this earth and have a dead and bored eye, [lacking] a sense of smell, sight, hearing, feeling, and an absence of love. These things I must work to keep sharp and alive. The Lord be [always] with you – and with thy spirit!
It was certainly at about this time in my life that I found a kindred spirit in these words from Teddy Roosevelt’s 1910 speech, The Man in the Arena:
It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
There is a book entitled All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten. So maybe I should entitle this piece All I Really Need to Know I learned as a YMCA Camper and Counselor – Body, Mind, Spirit. And sad is he or she who neglects the spirit part of the triangle.
