True artists

I meet a lot of people who remember the "glory days" of their youth. Now in their mid to late twenties (I know...for those of you over thirty don't even go there...) they remember and dream how their best years passed them by. Now, mired in the routines of jobs and child-raising, stuck near the bottom of our socio-economic scale here in Bismarck, these young men and women often look at me--twenty years their senior--as if I am a visitor from a strange planet.

But as we sit and talk, and I hear their stories--how a young dad took his daughter on her first motorcycle ride (mom lives in another town, but no doubt the story will get back to her...)--how a young musician wishes people wouldn't use DJs at weddings, or I hear a story about how life was so much easier back then, and how they wished they'd have stayed in school...the past coming roaring back for them, and smiles crease the corners of their hardened lives. But they are just memories...

John Dewey once wrote a line I have always loved: "Time and memory are true artists; they remold reality nearer to the heart's desire." When these young folks I meet get to be my age, I wonder how they will look back at this time? No doubt time and memory will still create worlds vastly different from the one we are in today with busted bar stools, a jukebox blaring out Snow Patrol and Keith Urban at regular intervals as two of the guys battle for jukebox predominance. Perhaps there will be no memory at all...just a blur from those days of nothing but work and child-raising.

Regardless of how reality is molded in later years, it will reflect our truer desires...our desire to love, to be loved, to have people care about us, to care about others...and if God finds grace for us to live long, may God also grant us time and memory so our heart might rest in Thee.