Traveling Together

Are there seasons of life during which we are more susceptible to bonding with other people in deep, lasting ways? Are there specific ages when what happens in our relationships sticks in our memory, our heart, our identity more readily?

I can’t name many people that I went to first grade with. I faintly remember the things that happened to me in the John F. Kennedy Elementary School right across the street from my 220 South Myrtle house in McComb, Miss. I just don’t remember a lot. And I’d have to say the same about junior high and senior high. I remember a few more classmates and a few standout incidents and a handful of friends that I have quasi-kept-up-with across the years. But I haven’t been back to any class reunions—though I tried one time—and I’m interested in the McComb High Class of ’70 Facebook page. The friendships were good ones, but they haven’t stayed near enough and dear enough to my heart to draw me home.

But the college years are a different story. Four years—actually 12 quarters or about 32 months on this hilltop—have formed me for life … or maybe warped me for life. My college years found me open and susceptible to formative friendships that are alive in me to this day.

Was it Trevecca or was it just that time of life? Was it moving away from home and being thrown into the den of lions called a dormitory? Was it the sense of independence from parents that opened us? Was it that most of us were the first-generation college students in our families, and we felt like these “brave explorers of brand new worlds”? Why did our college years imprint on us in ways that bring us back here again and again?

My dad is 94. Most of the time when he calls, he tells me about someone who died. He’s called me over the past years about all his friends who died – and he doesn’t do that anymore because, well, all his friend didn’t live to 94. Now he’s calling me about people he thinks I may remember from McComb who are closer to my age than his. He reads the paper to see who died. Then he calls me. And I barely remember them.

But when news of a Trevecca friend comes my way, a network of Facebook memories begins that reminds me of people and events and days that lie closest to the center of my heart.

The same is true for a lot of you. Charles Davis told me the news about Dave Edwards yesterday. In the late ’60s, there was a group of guys who lived in C-Suite of Wise Hall: Charles and Dennis Moore and Jim Quiggins and Jordy Conger and David Dodge and Dale Killingsworth and Dave Edwards. They’re getting together for dinner tomorrow night here on campus. Dave Edwards won’t be with them. He’s in day one recovery from major surgery in an attempt to beat bladder cancer.

The news was not good.

But Dave sent the message before his surgery. At the dinner, the men of C-Suite were to circle up, arms on shoulders, bowed heads touching in the middle, wives holding hands in a circle behind them. And they were to pray, not for his healing, but that God would give him grace and strength to face whatever came his way. As Charles told me the story and then read the email from Dave, he was choking back tears.

Explain that.

Fifty years ago these guys were together in a dorm—and with half a century of water under the bridge, 50 years of life experiences, thousands of other people having tromped through their lives—these relationships are the ones they draw on in a moment of need.

I could tell the same stories about Glen English and Charles Torain and Bill Green. About Morris Stocks and Corlis McGee and Bob Brower. About the Streits, the Knights, the Formans, the Shropes, and the Welches. About women’s trios and men’s quartets and basketball teams and intramural football. About religion majors who have traveled through life together serving God and church. About Circle K and K-ettes and Civinettes. About Kings Kids and Solomon’s Porch and dramatic productions. About student pranks and academic profiles.

And it’s all about one thing: friends.

Show me any other 32 months of life that have greater capacity for lifelong bonding, deep friendships. Is it Trevecca, or is it just that time of life? In the wise words of Forrest Gump, “Maybe it’s both.”

Maybe it’s that time, those college years, and maybe it’s something deeply embedded in the culture of Trevecca.

And it’s still happening. I see the signs of it every day. But the students who are here now don’t know it. We didn’t know it in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and 2000s. You have to live awhile before it dawns on you what those 32 months did to you. I wish I could explain to prospective students that if they’ll enroll here, they will be grateful ’til their dying days.

Maybe what sticks to our souls so deep that we can’t shake it is that here, during our college years, we learned that we matter to other people. They matter to us – we matter to them. In a world where we are customers and clients, patients and patrons, buyers and bosses; in a world where we have economic rules to play by and pecking orders to perform; maybe we are two quarts low on believing that we really matter to someone. And then we touch our college friends, and it all comes spilling out like it was yesterday.

And if we feel like we matter to them, then they matter to us. I love the word chesed in the Bible. It’s the Hebrew covenant word that says that when you’re in a covenant with someone, you have the right to expect certain behaviors of them—and they have the same right to expect certain behaviors of you. So we go into the world trying to live up to the expectations of our covenant friends. We want our lives to be a blessing.

I’ve been humming a tune this week. You know the song, the old hymn “Make Me a Blessing” with that familiar refrain that out of our lives “may Jesus shine.”

This is what friends do for each other. We make them feel like they matter. We place hopeful expectations on them, and we live faithfully to fulfill their expectations of us. And we bless them. We act in ways that are life-giving.

Trevecca has given us a unique opportunity in a specific chapter of our lives to form lifelong friendships. I pray that future generations will experience the same. In their world, where darkness is rife, they will need the covenanted friends that can be found here.

The last verse of the “Trevecca Hymn” says, “God Who set Thy hand upon her, who has long supplied her need, wilt Thou keep our Alma Mater Thine in service as in creed. Give her guidance, give her wisdom, from Thee never let her roam. All the way to heaven’s portal, bring her sons and daughters home.”

I’m thinking of the C-suite guys praying for Dave Edwards as he faces a life-threatening disease. Our finish line is not a diploma, but heaven’s portal.

And so we travel that direction together.