Thinking Christian

I could have died the night before my first day of classes in college classes. I mean that literally.

I had gone to college a week or so early as a freshman for marching band camp. It was an extremely physical experience, in fact, I’ve been told it’s about as close to military basic training as you’re likely to get in the civilian world. I made it through successfully, earned my qualification to wear the Spartan band jacket (which I still have) and the band uniform, and moved over to my new permanent dorm room for the school year. I was alone in ways I had never been in my life: on my own, away from home—and yet entering into the great new adventure I’d been waiting for a long time, studying music at Michigan State University. It was great. I was happy as I could be.

Suddenly that night I got a pain in my gut like I had never felt before or since: sharp and searing, and yet mercifully short-lived; it went away after two or three minutes. I was, as I say, on my own. My mom was a registered nurse, and if I’d been at home (I know now in retrospect) she would have hustled me right off to the hospital. But the pain went away, I was young and surely invulnerable, and I had more important things to worry about. I was starting college! The next day I felt fine, and I was okay for a while after that, too. I’ll never forget the thrill of kick-stepping onto the field the first time at Spartan Stadium. Actually, I was scared half to death. But when I packed up my trombone after our pre-game, halftime, and post-game shows were over (I guess there was probably a football game there too that day), I knew it had been a day I would never forget.

I was developing a nagging fever, though. The doctor at the university medical center gave me antibiotics and told me to drink lots of fluids. It got a little better for while, but it never quite went away. The third time I went to the doctor, he told me, “I suspect appendicitis.” Oh, great, I thought. When I was seven years old I’d seen someone rushed off to surgery with a ruptured appendix, and I’d been afraid of appendicitis ever since then. I got a note to take to our marching band director, Mr. Bloomquist, explaining I would see a surgeon at 5:00 that evening for an appendectomy. He said, “Fine, you’ll be done with marching band practice half an hour before then. You’re not planning to miss it, are you?” (True story.)

Well, yes, I was planning to miss marching band practice. My decision was justified: my appendix turned out to be not just inflamed but ruptured. The doctor said it had likely happened that painful night before the semester started, but it was encapsulated so I could survive that way for a while. I was pretty sick after surgery, or so they tell me; I hardly remember the first couple of days. I missed a week of school.

My first day back I went to Symphonic Band rehearsal, where our director, the same Mr. Bloomquist who directed the marching band, pointedly observed how nice it was to have everyone there that day for a change. Music schools can be very, very touchy about attendance. No one was ever tardy; no one ever missed a rehearsal without a doctor’s excuse. I myself never missed another rehearsal, which is nothing short of amazing; for during my appendectomy the surgeon discovered I had Crohn’s disease.

Crohn’s is a chronic and inflammation of the small intestine, often rather disabling, especially so back in the 1970s (treatments have improved since then). It wasn’t bothering me a bit when it was first discovered; my appendectomy had led me quite uniquely to being diagnosed before I had any symptoms. But I already knew more about it than I wanted to know: the disease runs in our family, and had very nearly killed my older sister some years earlier. (It got plenty nasty with me later on, during my sophomore and senior years.)

So there I was, living out a dream I’d had for years. I was away from home. I was free like never before. Not just free, but off to a great start. To be in the Symphonic Band was unique for a freshman—it was MSU’s top undergraduate wind ensemble. Marching Band was great fun when I was healthy enough again to take part. I was making good friends. And yet on the other hand I had just made it through a brush with death, and was entering into a new experience with chronic disease.

Thus my first real lesson in college was that life is truly great, and life is truly awful. It was a lot for an eighteen-year-old to sort out. At the same time I was working through what it meant to be on my own and to be free. No one was looking over my shoulder telling me what to do (outside of class work and rehearsals, of course). No one was telling me to go to church—so Sunday mornings were really free. No one in authority was watching to see if I got blasted at a kegger or spent a night with a girl. As far as I knew, that really meant no one—including any God (or god). I was really free in that sense, too.

Yet something about it didn’t make sense. Each moment’s experience was good and/or bad in its way, but was there anything that tied it all together? Well, yes: there was me. I was (quite sensibly) right there for every one of my experiences. But so what? Some experiences I liked better than others, sure; but I had a sense that life had to be about more than just liking one experience and not liking another. There had to be something beyond just surviving an operation, moving on to the next rehearsal, going in for a gut x-ray, playing trombone in Spartan Stadium, having a stomach-ache, acing my music theory tests, almost failing my aural harmony classes, and on and on, one thing after another. Maybe I really was just living through a stream-of-experience flow as a student, but if so, then why? So I could go on to a stream-of-experience flow as a graduate someday? Was that it?

If so, then the best I could hope for would be to manipulate my experiences for the most pleasant outcome. I didn’t have to follow my parents’ morality any longer, since they weren’t there watching, but I did have a sense that acting good (for the most part) would be good for me in the long run. It would help keep me from embarrassing myself, ruining my reputation, or (horrors!) getting cut off from parental funding, if they found anything out. Other than that, I couldn’t think of anything else to justify doing the “right” thing. Or rather, it seemed like the right thing was whatever worked best for me: to manage my world for my own best self-centered outcome. I tried, but I couldn’t think of any reason not to go that way.

Yet I kept on wondering. It seemed to me that morality of that sort made no more sense than considering my life nothing but stream-of-experience. I knew I wasn’t made just for that. I knew life itself wasn’t made just for maximizing one’s stream-of-experience happiness. I knew it couldn’t be true that the only sensible ethic was just to manage life for my own pleasure and convenience.

There had to be some way to tie my experiences and ethics to something bigger, more lasting, more ultimately real than that. There had to be something actually better about being a caring, giving person, than being a self-oriented jerk; and that something had to be more than manipulating my life toward a more pleasant stream-of-experience (which is just another way of being self-oriented, isn’t it?).

But if something was going to make this all make sense, it would have to take very seriously both the good and bad that I was experiencing so intensely. It would have to account especially for my own personal goodness and badness, which was also a big part of my own experience. Some things I thought I got very right, and other things I knew I got very wrong. Why was that, and what could I do about it?

You can guess where this is heading. You might also wonder, was I really this philosophical as an eighteen-year-old? I suppose some of these thoughts may be accretions I’ve injected back into the experience of the time since then; but in truth, many of them I remember very vividly from those days. The experiences that fed them were very real.

I’ve said enough for this time. I’ll be back soon with more.

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