But Not

Near the beginning of Brian Doyle’s wonderful book, Eight Whopping Lies, we find a great line that gives us the title of this inspirational piece.  Before getting to that, however, let me establish the context so that you will appreciate it when it comes.  Doyle’s book is a series of short thirty-eight essays.  They are extremely well-written.  It takes a few reads to begin getting used to his style.  The essay I want to use he simply entitles, “100th St.” 

It opens innocently.  “ By chance I was in New York City seven months after September 11…” (3)  He adds, “…and I saw a moment that I shall turn over and over in my mind like a puzzle, like a koan, like a prism.”  Doyle continues to develop the essay.  He describes attending a conference, which bored him with its people and presentations.  He says he is “weary of it all, weary of being sermonized by pompous authority, weary of the cocksure and the arrogant and the tin-eared…”  So he went for a walk in Manhattan.  And he wound up in a bar! 

It seemed like any other neighborhood bar where folks gather after work for a beer and fellowship with friends.  It is as if we are sitting with Doyle in the bar as he describes what we are witnessing.  There are folks who clearly are still dressed for the jobs from which they just came.  There was a Marine whose father, uncle and others were celebrating and the bartender offered a beer on the house.  Doyle summarizes this scene in a lovely way.  “…I concluded that this would be the gentle tender respectful highlight of a day in which there had been very little respect and tenderness…” (4)  Had Doyle gone no further, I think I would have been satisfied and felt like it had been a good essay. 

However, he did not quit.  He actually continued the sentence I was just quoting.  “…but then the door opened, and two young firemen walked in.”  They did not even have on their uniforms, but they clearly were members of NYFD.  As they continued toward the bar, Doyle writes, “Everyone in the bar stood up, silently…including me.”  Doyle guessed folks would start clapping, but no one did.  As they approached the bar, the Marine smartly saluted the two firemen.  Everyone else followed suit and also saluted.  Silence contributed to the experience of profundity.   

And then comes Doyle’s last paragraph.  “After a few seconds one of the firemen nodded to everyone, and the other fireman made a slight gesture of acknowledgement with his right hand, and the bartender set two beers on the bar, and everyone sat down again, and everything went on as before; but not.” (5)  But not.  That phrase grabbed me and arrested me.   I did not see it coming.  What I thought was going to be a cute, good story became an amazingly touching story.  Suddenly the story became my story and everyone’s story. 

Doyle’s essay describes his life in ways that resonate with my life.  Most of us have our own version of conferences.  Stuff happens that turn out to be boring, off putting and bad enough to tempt us to go mad.  And then we happen along a bar.  For some of us, it might be the gym, the coffees hop and the like.  It is the place of friends, of interesting people and conversation and of welcome.  These are the normal places of our lives that keep us sane.   

These are also the places prepared to recognize and honor the special people and events.  It is the sports hero of the night, the grieving spouse, and others who come into our midst that we salute and welcome into our midst.  These are the kinds of places where we expect routine, normalcy and ordinariness.  We value these places and experiences.  They are foundational to our lives.  We expect that when our lives get messed up somehow---by our work, spats with folks we care about and so on---we know where and how to get back to normal.  We go to the neighborhood bar. 

What Doyle suggests in his little phrase, “but not,” is there are things that happen which are so humongous that routine and normal is forever changed.  Seemingly everything goes on as before, but not.  The event, 9/11, did that to our country and, perhaps, to all of us who were alive and remember.  If you don’t think so, consider the next time you fly.  Security drastically changed after the Twin Towers’ bombing.  TSA were three letters which meant nothing in the twentieth century. 

It also makes me think about the little, personal “9/11s” we all have in lives.  We experience a radical failure, a divorce, the death of a child, etc.  Our lives are profoundly altered; we realize the world around us goes on as before.  For us “but not.”  Some experiences are so drastic, our lives can never go on as before.  In a sense, we have been bombed!  We probably can adjust; we are resilient.  But we can never go on as before.   

Perhaps when that happens to us individually, we become like the firemen in Doyle’s story.  We have experiences that no one else has.  We aren’t necessarily heroes.  But we have survived.  We have experienced the “but not” moment in our lives which throws us into the future anew.  This is the place where it gets spiritual for me.  This is the place where God and God’s people have a special role to play.  We can tell that story on another day.