English Lessons

by Andrea Lucado

  As much as I love the question why?, there comes a time to stop asking it. When why? turns into what if…, I know I’ve been dwelling on the same story for too long and it’s time to let go of the situation, whatever letting go of the situation looks like for that particular situation, and move on, whatever moving on looks like. I have given too much backward attention to these types of conversations. The ones in which I feel like the river gave me an opportunity and I passed it up. I think about them when I am running and when I lie in bed trying to sleep. Sometimes I dream about them and wake up confused. Conversations that occur by the river will make you crazy, if you let them.

  River conversations are river conversations because they have so many options and directions. They twist. There are tributaries. There are shallow parts and deep parts. There are obstacles and people living in houses on the water, people walking beside the water—so many distractions. River conversations could have led this way and that, so it’s no wonder we can’t stop thinking about the options. A simple yes would have taken us there. A simple no? Somewhere completely different. You’ve said no and wished you said yes. You’ve said yes and wished you said no. One thing rivers don’t do is switch directions. They don’t flow backward to a place they’ve already visited. They go one way, so those river conversations in your head, though you wrestle through and wonder about all the options, you will not, in reality, be given another opportunity to select one of those options. There are no truer words than What’s done is done. It is. It really, really is.

  A friend in Nashville once told me that when he hears conflicting and confusing voices in his head, he knows those voices are not from God. God is not a God of confusion, he explained to me. God is clear. When I regret, wonder, and question my past, I feel anxious, guilty, and foggy. But when I release those moments of opportunity offered by various rivers over the years, and I focus on what’s in front of me and all around me, the fog clears, the guilt fades, the anxiety subsides. That’s when I hear God’s voice because I’ve finally quieted the others. That’s when I can see his face. Through the clearing of the fog, he comes into view, and his eyes are kind.

  Maybe today, years later, the Thames would witness a different story. Maybe it wouldn’t be a patch of river that twinges a little with disappointment when it thinks of that conversation between me and Jisu. Or maybe it knows, maybe the river always knows how it is going to end. Maybe it understands better than we that sometimes our spirits say no to other spirits without ever fully understanding why.

  I’m still running, but the pain in my hips snaps my thoughts back to the present. I’ve already run a few miles, and now I am making the turn into Centennial Park, Nashville’s iconic park. In the middle of the park sits a full-scale replica of the Parthenon in Athens. On the lawn in front of the Parthenon, people are usually playing flag football or ultimate Frisbee. I don’t often go to Centennial Park because it beckons the image of this giant, somewhat out of place, pillared beast of a building. I forget about the part behind the building. The beautiful part with a large pond, trees that shade the path, and light that reflects off the water and seeps through the trees in such a way that, even as I run by, I turn my head just to keep watching it. The light. I loop the park for a double take.

  I pass many other runners on the trail, smarter ones who thought to wear gloves on the first cold morning of fall. I blow on my numb fingertips and wonder if the other runners are also breathing in Centennial Park today as I am. Is it just me or did this place suddenly get so lush? Has the light always fallen on the water like that? And I think as I round the path away from the pond that every part of this is truly a gift.

  People have said that to me before. “Life is a gift, Andrea, and everything in it. A gift from God.” I pretend I understand them and nod my head in agreement. What am I going to say? What I’m really thinking? That things are not gifts if they are for everyone. Gifts are supposed to be for individuals. They are tailored to the receiver, picked out depending on preference, and then wrapped for one, one person to unwrap. To say life, or parts and aspects of it, is a gift, well, that didn’t feel special enough or unique enough to me.

  But this morning in Centennial Park, unable to turn away from the light on the water, I feel the gift. It feels only for me, and maybe for the first time. There are others around, and though they aren’t craning their necks in the opposite direction of their feet like I am, they are noticing the light too, and they see that the wind moves the trees in a way that could lull you to sleep. They see that ducks are not sitting on the water; they are floating so delicately it is more of a hover so as not to disturb the pond beneath. They form no ripple. And everything is alive in the screenshot, living breath in each direction. How have I not noticed before? And it is this consciousness that is the gift, not necessarily the light, water, and trees themselves, but the connection they are making with my eyes, my brain, my heart. I feel their life and am aware of their beauty. Unwrapped and somehow only for me.

  Back on our bench, Jisu checked the time on his watch. It was almost time for church. We stood up together, having resolved very little. We walked past the meadow, along the tree-lined path. We kept our eyes forward and space between us. The sun set behind Christ Church, and our shadows stretched long.

  11

  The 0.1-Mile Pilgrimage

  August thawed Oxford. It came in and subdued the cold in a way no other month had been able to do. Bodies emerged from everywhere. Bare arms and legs swinging about, pale and grateful.

  Summer, in general, is my favorite. But summer in Oxford? It is encased in magic dust. Those weeks were light and memorable, more so than the other months in that city. I wrote bits and pieces of my thesis on a rickety wooden table in our backyard and allowed myself to get sunburned at every opportunity. In winter we stayed layered up and indoors, but summer invited us outside; it invited us to smile at strangers, to leave our coats hanging on their hooks and receive what the sun had to offer us as it melted away any remnant of cold.

  One strikingly warm day in August, Erik and I sat in a sunny spot by the river near town. Erik was one of my nonchurch friends. I played volleyball with him a few times on a rec league through Oxford Oxford. After I learned that half the team was made up of six-foot-four Scandinavians and I was never going to successfully get the ball over my side of the net during practice, I quit. But I remained friends with some of the people, including Erik, one of the Scandinavians. He turned out to be much less intimidating when he wasn’t ferociously blocking me.

  Erik was in Oxford pursuing a degree in economics. He split his time equally between studying and pining over his girlfriend, Kari, back home in Norway, who was as blond and almost as tall as he was. Erik had crazy blue eyes that jumped around with every new thought that came to mind, and he compulsively pushed his hair back with his hand every five minutes until it was a mess of strands pointing various directions. His neck craned forward in a mad-scientist kind of way. He was one of those brilliant, lively, strange yet endearing characters one rarely meets in real life. I think part of the reason I liked hanging out with Erik was sheer entertainment of the caricature that he was.

  Erik’s father was a successful businessman. Whatever he did—it was never clear to me—he made enough money to send Erik to boarding schools, fancy camps in the summer, and a fully funded gap year that Erik seems to remember little of. I got the sense that he was away from home a lot in his growing-up years. Other than that, I didn’t know Erik well.

  I had suggested we bring a baguette and cheese to the riverbank one day in late summer as a belated birthday celebration for both of us. We shared June birthdays. The river was crowded with punting boats—shallow wooden boats, a little larger than canoes—that were available to rent by the hour. The boats don’t have paddles; instead, someone stands in the stern and guides the boat with a large pole that drags along the riverbed, similar to guiding a gondola. When several punters are out at once, the river becomes a stage for their choreography. T
he lifting and lowering of the poles. One boat gliding this way, the other that way. Entering and exiting stage right and then stage left. The sound of water moving slowly. It’s hypnotizing. The boats crisscrossed on the water in front of us, and I told Erik about my recent trip home and the job offer in Nashville.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “Must be nice to know what you’ll be doing when you get home.”

  “Yeah, it really is. Thanks.”

  Erik—the wild-eyed, crazy-haired Erik that I knew—seemed subdued.

  “What about you?” I asked. “What are your plans for when you finish your degree?”

  “I’ll be moving home.”

  “You will? I didn’t know that. Are you excited?”

  “No,” he laughed.

  “Why not?”

  “Home right now is…let’s just say I’d rather stay here.” He smiled sadly.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Stuff back home is complicated with my family. My father is retired now. I cannot imagine that man not working. I cannot imagine both of my parents at home with each other all day.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’ve never had to face any of it. I’ve always been at school or traveling or somewhere else. Now, I don’t have an excuse. I want to be where Kari is and Kari is, unfortunately, where my parents are.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what it is exactly. Every time I think of going home, I get tense. What is that? And my grandmother’s living with them right now. That’s an entirely different subject. I’ll come home and show her my master of philosophy in economics from Oxford University and the first thing she’ll say is, ‘So when will you receive your doctorate?’ ”

  I began to feel uncomfortable as Erik spoke. I shifted around in the grass. Nodded my head kindly. I tried to listen, but I didn’t like it. The real talk, the openness. Erik and I had not done this before. Our friendship to this point had remained on the surface. It was light, fun, and sporadic. But as Erik revealed a more serious part of himself, caricature Erik began to look more like human Erik.

  I wanted it to stop. I wanted Erik to remain a caricature because knowing he was real and getting a look into who he really was meant I would care about him more. And caring about him more meant I needed to have real conversations with him. And real conversations with him meant I needed to be my real self, my real, Jesus-loving, Christian self.

  I don’t want nonbelievers to go through difficult seasons or to have bad feelings or problems. I know that sounds strange, but I don’t want them to have issues because I don’t know how to help them with that. I don’t know how they could ever cope outside the context of my own belief system. I don’t know what sort of advice to give. I have no solutions for them aside from the hope that comes from the gospel. For this reason, I like to pretend they don’t have feelings. It’s easier for me this way. I don’t feel as responsible or as needed in their lives if I pretend their thoughts and emotions never make it to the deep end. But here was Erik, exposing his real self to me and forcing me to empathize and to care. The nerve.

  Typically, when friends are sharing something real with me, I dive in. I attack them with questions and try to help figure out a way they can work through things or at least how we can pray about it together. I say phrases like, “God will carry you through this. He has before, and he will again,” “God is with you,” “Trust him.” But I was more reserved around my nonchurch friends in Oxford. Instead of jumping in, I made circles on the surface of the water with my big toe, thinking a lot but saying little. I listened, but I harnessed my evangelical responses. I stayed far away from the language of my church upbringing. I wasn’t home. I was here, in Oxford, sitting with this person who was like a tiny island, off the coast of nowhere, near the edge of the universe.

  Should I have been so careful? Would it have been so bad to be me in that moment? Would it have offended him to use words like “journey” and “hope” and “peace” and “season”? Did I have to tiptoe on eggshells as lightly as I did?

  No, I don’t think so now. But I did what I had been doing in conversations with friends like Erik for nearly a year. I expressed concern but said nothing about Jesus and real hope. In response to Erik’s outpouring, I tore off a piece of baguette. I held it in my hand and simply said, “I’m sorry.”

  I cycled past the Martyrs’ Memorial countless times that year, but I never stopped to really study it. It was built to memorialize three martyrs of the Protestant Reformation: Thomas Cranmer, former archbishop of Canterbury; Nicholas Ridley, former bishop of London; and Hugh Latimer, former bishop of Worcester. The memorial stands tall on the south end of St. Giles Street, just as city center is coming into view. A cross balances at the very top, capping off a steeple-like structure engraved with an ornate Gothic design that gives the whole thing an air of importance and seriousness. Statues of the three martyrs guard the memorial from pedestals on every side. Cranmer faces north and holds a Bible. Ridley faces south and stares stoically ahead. Latimer faces east. His back slightly hunched, giving the impression he may topple over at any moment.

  All three men were burned at the stake for refusing to renounce their Protestant faith and pledge allegiance to the pope in the mid-1500s under the reign of Mary Tudor, better known as Bloody Mary. The memorial, however, wasn’t built until the nineteenth century, and it is quite something, standing seventy-three feet tall, surrounded by a thick base of stairs—a miniature, 360-degree Spanish Steps, if you will, where people lounge and eat their lunches beneath the shadows of the historic reformers.

  You can’t walk around Oxford proper without noticing the memorial, admiring it, stopping to read what it’s about. It makes its presence known. It is sturdy and strong. It’s been standing for over 170 years, and I’m sure it will be standing for a long time to come.

  Cranmer’s, Ridley’s, and Latimer’s stories are ones of bold words and brave acts. They went up against Bloody Mary, giving their lives to a cause. They held some controversial beliefs at the time: justification through faith instead of works, Scripture’s authority over the pope, and the right to read the Bible in the common tongue. In Oxford everybody knows this is what these men stood for, and their brave deaths are forever commemorated.

  I, like Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, am also a Protestant. And that is the one and only thing we have in common.

  I did not speak boldly in Oxford. I had little resolve. I put an immense amount of pressure on the way I behaved in conversations with my friends who had different beliefs, and I consistently felt like a failure. Let’s just come right out and say it: I did not once share the gospel with a nonbeliever while in Oxford. I thought about it. I planned out conversations in my head. I wondered which verses I should use or what arguments I could make that would stand up to theirs. But when it came down to it, I just never did. And for that, I felt like an incredibly lousy evangelist.

  I felt undeserving to stand under the great fathers of the faith that year, so I cycled by the Martyrs’ Memorial without a glance. If I had ever stopped, I would have parked myself right beneath the men’s statues and whispered an apology.

  “I’m sorry,” I’d say. “I’ve failed you. I’ve failed our faith.”

  Silence from the men above.

  “You professed your beliefs so boldly. Look at you guys. An entire monument was built in your honor. I can’t even speak half the time. I’m about as far from a martyr as they come.”

  Silence.

  “I mean, Cranmer, you must be so ashamed of me. You wrote the Book of Common Prayer and you were burned at the stake. You’re a saint. Wait, you might actually be a saint. Are you a saint?”

  Silence.

  “No. Of course you’re not. The whole Protestant thing. I forgot. See, I don’t even know the doctrines of my own religion anymore…

  “Cranmer, oh great father of the faith, why have I been so quiet this year? Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”

  Erik and I got up
from our spot by the river and made our way to our bikes chained up in an alley a block away. As we walked, I felt overcome by guilt and regret. I regretted being so quiet and not saying anything about Jesus or faith. I regretted this not only with him but with everyone else I crossed paths with in Oxford whom I’d failed to evangelize. Conversations, missed opportunities, silent moments I should have filled. Scripture left unmentioned. I regretted that I had let my Christian life take place only around certain people, and I began to panic because it was August. I was leaving in September. I was running out of time in Oxford. I needed to do something, and I needed to do it fast.

  I had missed my chances with others, but maybe Erik would be my saving grace, as long as he was saved. Maybe this was my redeeming moment that would undo any shame or passivity or fear I had felt in the previous months. All of it would be justified with this life-changing conversation Erik and I were about to have on a street in Oxford.

  Feeling heavy with the weight of the gospel, I stopped walking.

  “Hey!” I said.

  Erik, startled, stopped and looked at me. “What?”

  “There’s something you should know about me.”

  “Okay…”

  “I’m a Christian.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, you do?”

  “Yeah, you always talk about going to do stuff at that church you go to in town.”

  “St. Aldates? Oh yeah. I do stuff there a lot. Well, I guess what I’m really wanting to say is, I’m sorry you have to go home to such a messy situation, and…”

  “And?”

  “I’m going to be praying for you.”

  He smiled. “Thank you, Andrea. I’m sure you mean that.” He turned down the alley and walked toward his bike. I followed.

  “I do. I mean it. I really believe in God and prayer and all of that and that it can help you. I really do.”