John Powell a professor
at Loyola University in Chicago writes about a student in his Theology
of Faith class named Tommy:
Some
twelve years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the
classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the
first day I first saw Tommy. My eyes and my mind both blinked. He was combing
his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders.
It was the first time I had
ever seen a boy with hair that long. I guess it was just coming into fashion
then. I know in my mind that it isn’t what’s on your head but what’s in
it that counts; but on that day I was unprepared and my emotions flipped.
I immediately filed Tommy
under "S" for strange ... very strange. Tommy turned out to be the "atheist
in residence" in my Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to,
smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving
Father-God. We lived with each other in relative peace for one semester,
although I admit he was for me at times a serious pain in the back pew.
When he came up at the end
of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a slightly cynical
tone: "Do you think I’ll ever find God?"
I decided instantly on a
little shock therapy. "No!" I said very emphatically.
"Oh," he responded, "I thought
that was the product you were pushing."
I let him get five steps
from the classroom door and then called out: "Tommy! I don’t think you’ll
ever find him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!" He shrugged
a little and left my class and my life.
I felt slightly disappointed
at the thought that he had missed my clever line: "He will find you!" At
least I thought it was clever. Later I heard that Tommy had graduated and
I was duly grateful.
Then a sad report, I heard
that Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came
to see me. When he walked into my office, his body was very badly wasted,
and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his
eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time, I believe.
"Tommy, I’ve thought about you so often. I hear you are sick!" I blurted
out.
"Oh, yes, very sick. I have
cancer in both lungs. It’s a matter of weeks."
"Can you talk about it, Tom?"
"Sure, what would you like
to know?"
"What’s it like to be only
twenty-four and dying?"
"Well, it could be worse."
"Like what?"
"Well, like being fifty and
having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing
women, and making money are the real ‘biggies’ in life."
I began to look through my
mental file cabinet under "S" where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems
as though everybody I try to reject by classification God sends back into
my life to educate me.)
But what I really came to
see you about," Tom said, " is something you said to me on the last day
of class." (He remembered!) He continued, "I asked you if you thought I
would ever find God and you said, ‘No!’ which surprised me. Then you said,
‘But he will find you.’ I thought about that a lot, even though my search
for God was hardly intense at that time. (My "clever" line. He thought
about that a lot!) But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and
told me that it was malignant, then I got serious about locating God. And
when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging
bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven.
But God did not come out.
In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with
great effort and with no success? You get psychologically glutted, fed
up with trying. And then you quit.
Well, one day I woke up,
and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick
wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that
I didn’t really care ... about God, about an afterlife, or anything like
that. "I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable.
I thought about you and your class and I remembered something else you
had said: ‘The essential sadness is to go through life without loving.
But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world
without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them.’ "So I began
with the hardest one: my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached
him."
"Dad". . .
"Yes, what?" he asked without
lowering the newspaper.
"Dad, I would like to talk
with you."
"Well, talk."
"I mean. .. It’s really important."
The newspaper came down three
slow inches. "What is it?"
"Dad, I love you. I just
wanted you to know that." Tom smiled at me and said with obvious satisfaction,
as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him: "The newspaper
fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I could never remember
him ever doing before. He cried and he hugged me.
And we talked all night,
even though he had to go to work the next morning. It felt so good to be
close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say
that he loved me. "It was easier with my mother and little brother. They
cried with me, too, and we hugged each other, and started saying real nice
things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for
so many years. I was only sorry about one thing: that I had waited so long.
Here I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been
close to.
"Then, one day I turned around
and God was there. He didn’t come to me when I pleaded with him. I guess
I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, ‘C’mon, jump through.’
‘C’mon, I’ll give you three days .. .three weeks.’ Apparently God does
things in his own way and at his own hour. "But the important thing is
that he was there. He found me.
You were right. He found
me even after I stopped looking for him."
"Tommy," I practically gasped,
"I think you are saying something very important and much more universal
than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to
find God is not to make him a private possession, a problem solver, or
an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love.
You know, the Apostle John said that. He said God is love, and anyone who
lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.’ Tom, could
I ask you a favor? You know, when I had you in class you were a real pain.
But (laughingly) you can make it all up to me now. Would you come into
my present Theology of Faith course and tell them what you have just told
me? If I told them the same thing it wouldn’t be half as effective as if
you were to tell them."
"Oooh . . . I was ready for
you, but I don’t know if I’m ready for your class."
"Tom, think about it. If
and when you are ready, give me a call." In a few days Tommy called, said
he was ready for the class, that he wanted to do that for God and for me.
So we scheduled a date. However, he never made it.
He had another appointment,
far more important than the one with me and my class. Of course, his life
was not really ended by his death, only changed.
He made the great step from
faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of man
has ever seen or the ear of man has ever heard or the mind of man has ever
imagined.
Before he died, we talked
one last time. "I’m not going to make it to your class," he said.
"I know, Tom."
"Will you tell them for me?
Will you . . . tell the whole world for me?"
"I will, Tom. I’ll tell them.
I’ll do my best."
So, to all of you who have
been kind enough to hear this simple statement about love, thank you for
listening. And to you, Tommy, somewhere in the sunlit, verdant hills of
heaven: "I told them, Tommy . ... ...as best I could."
