June 01st, 2022

I was privileged to spend my first two summers after college performing at the Sterling Renaissance Festival. The site is in beautiful woodland, close enough to Lake Ontario that, on quiet evenings, you could hear the waves lapping on the rocky shore. Some of the friends I made there are among my oldest and dearest, even after 35 years.

I got to perform there again for two summers in the 90s. I remember spending a lot of time walking around the grounds, trying to recapture the magical feelings I had experienced back in the day, and failing. Suddenly, I became aware of a small voice in my head that had been repeating the same words over and over, just outside my field of awareness. They were from the section of the Acts of the Apostles that is read today, Ascension Day. The day commemorates Jesus' ascension into heaven, and the words were, "Men of Galilee, why are you standing here, looking up at the sky?"
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I realized I was doing a very similar thing to what the disciples did: looking around for Jesus who was no longer there--or, in my case, looking for my twenty-two-year-old self. Ever since then, my takeaway for Ascension Day is that Then, however wonderful it was, is not Now, and our job now is not to mourn for Then, try to recapture Then, or get all dewy-eyed about Then; our job is to rally round and do the needful Now. As the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield put it, "after the ecstasy, the laundry."