There are many theories concerning the presence of the past in our lives.  Who hasn't thought they could separate themselves from a difficult experience of the past only to find it reemerging when we least expect it?  One friend suggested that 'cut-offs', be they relational or with some chapter of our past, create some of the deepest inner anxiety we know, anxiety to which we are not even conscious.

Last Friday evening I stood with a room full of guys whose ages ranged from late 50's to early 30's.  We gathered at 5 pm and finally dragged ourselves out at midnight.  We all shared the experience of wrestling for Chuck Hansen.  I mentioned last week how important he was to so many of us. 

Yet there was more.  In the room was the collective past of adolescent boys molded, shaped and sometimes cajoled by Chuck.  In the room was each of our pasts, our decisions noble and not so, our families (not physically but emotionally) and all that was going on at that time.  Present were encounters with each other, mostly good and some conflicted.  We were committed to each other and yet did not all love each other all the time.  We mostly acted like a team, yet there were occasions where we did not.  And now, several decades later, we had the perspective of time, of what was important enough to survive time, what was universal enough to transcend adolescent realities.  There was the opportunity of seeing this chapter of our lives through the perspective of now.

There was no pretending about anything, and there was an acceptance.  Things about which we might have grimaced even a decade or so ago were now grist for acknowledgment and sometimes deep laughter.  There was a sense that all of it, the good, bad and ugly, the joyous and painful, was welcome, acceptable, part of a whole that now was 'well'.

I find myself still pondering what that evening was all about and the many gifts it offered to us.  I find myself pondering the power of periods of life, and the power of bringing those periods into the light of now.  The past is not prologue, it is present.  What does it take to find, to make peace with the past that is always present?

Peace,

Todd Donatelli