On Being Forgotten

Someone recently asked me why I haven’t sought to be more influential, as a pastor, a writer, a leader. Don’t you want to lead a larger church or write a book or build a following online? There’s a ministry trajectory, I suppose, at least according to some. Pastoring a small church and writing in a relatively small corner of the internet for the better part of two decades isn’t it. I instantly clicked into self-defence mode, reaching for justifications explanations ranging from the biblical (Jesus’ words about mustard seeds, etc) to the dispositional (I’m not a natural leader or social catalyst, don’t crave the mic, etc) with a bunch of other stops in between. The words felt limp coming out of my mouth.

This morning, I read an interview with the poet Christian Wiman. I’ve always loved his prose (My Bright Abyss is among my favourites) but, ironically, struggled with his poetry. I just seem incapable of appreciating poetry properly. At any rate, I was intrigued by the following paragraph where Wiman reflects on his vocation:

I think any serious poet wonders whether the life has just been a mistake. Because there are so few readers, and so few poems last. Your work’s probably not going to last. And you just wonder: What in the world was this? What was I doing? That comes over me at times, to be sure. But I feel some reprieve from that. The poet Seamus Heaney asks a question: “How perilous is it to choose / not to love the life we’re shown?” And I think I have loved the one that was shown to me.

My first thought was, “Gosh, if Christian Wiman—who has published all kinds of books and articles and poems and has lectured in all kinds of prestigious places—feels like this, what hope is there for the rest of us?” And I predictably found myself substituting “sermons” or “articles” for “poems.” So few readers, listeners. Nothing’s going to last. Yes, it is easy to wonder, “What in the world was this? What was I doing?” What’s the point of agonizing over the writing of words in a world of Instagram reels and the infinite scroll?

But that line from the Heaney poem speaks a hard and beautiful truth. How perilous it is to choose not to love the life we’re shown. Whatever the life we’re “shown” might encompass—and it would surely include the biblical, the dispositional, and all the stops in between—it is the place where Christ meets us, summons us, corrects us, breaks and remakes us. To refuse to love it is in some important sense a grave peril. I, too, want to be able to say, no matter how influential (or not) I have been, no matter how well my career has fit the trajectory (or not), no matter if any of my words will be remembered, “I have loved the life I was shown.”

At the end of the interview, Wiman is asked a final question: “When a hundred years from now people are having a conversation about the 21st-century poet and pilgrim Chris Wiman, what do you hope they’ll say about your poetry and your faith and the connection between your poetry and your faith?” Wiman responds thus:

To tell you the truth, I’d like to be remembered as a simple Christian. I guess that means that I would be forgotten, because if I were remembered as a simple Christian, it would only be by the people who are around me, my friends and family. But I would like for them to have an awareness that at some point, I stopped thrashing around. At some point, I was just a simple Christian. That’s it. That I was able to live with the simplicity of the Christians whose lives I have admired, people I’ve known. Not famous people, just people. That is my highest aspiration at this moment.

I like that very much (particularly the “stopped thrashing around” part). To accept that we will be forgotten does two important things, I think. It sets us free from chasing what is always passing away in this life (status, recognition, influence, esteem). Even if we attain what we think we want, it will be gone before we know it, like sand falling through our hands. We humans are not great at wanting the right things for the right reasons or being satisfied with them once we get them.

Perhaps even more importantly, it plunges us into trust and anchors us in the God who remembers. “Remember me,” said the thief on the cross. I suspect we tend to think this is just a different way of saying, “Save me.” And it may be. But I’m struck by the fact that the one uttering these words had likely lived a forgettable life. A life that would be evaluated with disgust or pity or apathy by most who looked upon the manner of its ending. A wasted life, perhaps. A misspent life. And yet, a life that, with one of its last breaths, pleads remember me. 

And Jesus does. And Jesus will.