"SILENCE... Test In Session"

"Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my Faith forever.  Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.  Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.  Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.  Never."

(NIGHT by Elie Wiesel)

Before I begin, a not so quick joke;  There were four young college students on their spring break.  They had collected their goods, their tools, tricks and treats, anxious to get to a good time waiting to be had.  They loaded up in the choicest of the coolest, brightest, fastest, girl and boy magnet of a car they could afford for the week ahead.  Before leaving, they threw out any and all things that caused them any gloom, stress or strife.  Gone were the books, the pencils, the late night study sessions and that midterm - worth 60% of their final grade -  scheduled first thing Monday morning.  They were free!  As the week flew by, the end came much too soon.  With fun and good times still to be had, they conspired with one another to stay an extra night.  So, they devised a plan that required each of them to call in separately and tell the professor that on the way back, the car had a flat tire and they had to wait countless hours for roadside service to come and assist them with the busted tire.  Gracious and understanding, the professor allowed each of them to take the test without penalty, and on the same day.  Flying high from the week's activities and feeling like they had gotten over on the nutty professor, the four students arrived early that morning, all bright and wide-eyed as a baby covered in bubbles splashing around in a tub of water.  The professor greeted them calmly and after some pleasantries and expressions of concern and pleasure that they had arrived safely, save the inconvenience of that flat tire, she engaged them a few moments longer about the unfortunate delay.  

Each of them had something extra to say about the difficulty in changing the tire.  As the professor handed out the test, she laughed and joked about her own mishaps with car repairs and the like.  She had arranged for them to be staggered in various spots throughout the class room, centered squarely on her.  Once done passing out the test, she informed them they had the entire hour to complete the test.  She then sat down, almost motionless - in complete silence - while she watched intently as they scribbled, erased and rewrote their answers to the questions.  She watched as one by one the student's amazement at the simplicity of the questions showed on each of their faces.  They breezed through the test with the ease of a hot knife meeting butter.  Almost simultaneously, they reached the last question - worth 80% of the grade.  It was also the shortest question on the test....  Which tire was it?

"What then do we say about these things?"  Sometimes life and living is hard.  It has very high mountain peaks and deep dark valley lows.  It has twists and turns, curves and clefts.  It has quick starts and hard stops, but the measure of a life is not so much what happened in those moments, rather the details of how we got there.  I have a friend who loves a good story.  But you can't just tell her what happened.  She wants the full scene from beginning to end.  You have to tell her EV-ER-Y-THING!  What day was it?  Was it cold or hot?  How cold or hot was it?  What did you have on?  What and who was in the room?  What were the facial expressions of the individuals involved in the story...  What were you feeling when all of this was going on?  I mean, she wants all of the details so she can feel like she was sitting right there with you.  The truth of the matter is that it IS the details that can make or break any given situation.  Take for instance the not so quick joke at the beginning of this post.  The students thought they had it all together.  They had had an extra good time and made a fool of the professor.  She was so foolish, they thought, that she chimed in and added some of her own life experiences into the overall plot.  But at the end of the day, it didn't matter how long it took them to wait for help, or how long it took for them to make it back to school.  All that mattered was one small detail.  If they had focused on that detail and not rushed on to the end, they would not have found their countenance shift from smug and sheer delight to resembling the fright of a deer about to be caught in the headlights of a speeding car.

Details are exactly what we are going to experience in the next phase of our reading.  As a compliment to our Reading The Bible Again for the First Time, I have included NIGHT, by Elie Wiesel.  It is the story of a young Jewish boy, Elie Wiesel, born in the town of Sighet in Transylvania.  He was a 13-year-old man-child forced to witness the death of his family, of his innocence and even "the death of his God."  It is an extraordinary tale of faith, loss of faith, hope and loss of hope that warns an entire world that nothing like it must never be given chance to happen again.  It is also a story about life's tests and the importance of the details - of tradition that often times fail us - of faith that seems ridiculous when it appears that God, like the professor, has set us up for the test.  A test to see if along with an understanding of our faith, we also got the details of it.  A word to the wise, and something I believe a young Elie Wiesel had to learn much too soon; When the test is in session, the instructor is silent.

© Dorinda G. Henry, 2011

THEOLOGIA HABITUS EST!