Camelot Days
“Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot; For one, brief, shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”
“He who longs for the good old days is a fool.” Ecclesiastes 7:10
The juxtaposition of these two statements, one from a beloved Broadway show and the other from the Bible, pretty much sums up an almost daily dilemma of my existence. Being more sentimental than I often care to admit, and, like many people my age, I tend to see the present through the lens of a somewhat romanticized past. At the same time I try to apply my best critical thinking to most issues, from science to history to human behavior and even to religion. Therefore the wisdom passed on from the Bible’s anonymous sage of Jerusalem is difficult to ignore or devalue. So I often find myself embarking on memory’s voyage back to the best of times I can recall from my life, while simultaneously admitting that the recollection is doubtless much better than was the living of any of those moments.
One of the special gifts of older age is having the time, and the inclination, to reopen those video clips that our brains have filed away for us over the course of many years. While these represent only a small sampling of the thoughts and sensory inputs we’ve gathered from our days on this planet, those that we’ve retained often tell us a lot about who we are today, and what kind of person we have probably been most of our lives. Do our memories take us back to moments of despair, frustration, disappointment and failure, rekindling old slights, insults and injustices? Or do they lead us beside the still waters that restore our soul and bathe us in smiles and joyful tears? If there is truth to the saying that we are, as older folks, what we’ve always been—only more so—then the memories we retain and revisit are a Rorschach of self-revelation.
Several years ago, perhaps when a mid-life birthday reminded me that the highway of life had more pavement in the rear-view mirror than up ahead, I began reviewing my own timetable in search of what I judged to be “golden days.” These were moments in my life, some stretching for months, others a day here and there, in which time seemed to stand still and life felt complete and wholesome. To put it in more contemporary parlance, I was trying to discover those times when I may have most been in a state of “mindfulness.” Given the subjective nature of such recollections, I doubt any can be fully understood by or shared with any other person. Yet I have to think that our ability to recall such moments, in any of our lives, is rather universal, even for persons who have endured great suffering, tragedy and deprivation. I therefore find much value in moving past the blunt realism of the writer of Ecclesiastes and onto those restorative musings about times and places, people and circumstances that remind me how good and spiritually uplifting life has been and can be.
That is why I have titled this essay, Camelot Days. I know this is pure idyllic fantasy, shared only by those who find comfort in the thought of places like Eden, Shangri-La, or the early 20th-century Main Street of a Walt Disney theme park. Nonetheless I feel drawn to what places like this may help keep alive in the human heart: a touch of innocence, of homespun simplicity, of the milk of human kindness about which poets and preachers once rhapsodized, and of goodness celebrated both as the means and end of our common life. Such excursions of the mind often gives a person pause, much like an evening’s indulgence watching a Frank Capra film or a Hallmark Christmas romance. Camelot symbolizes all of this for me, providing me a fixture upon which to hang my remembrances of the very best times I have known.
My own journeys to Camelot book no passage to far away lands or castles that may somehow suggest a medieval once and future king of Arthurian legend. Nor do they lead me to the thousand-day reign of the slain president of my youth. Even the wonderful libretto and music of Lerner and Loewe’s enduring Broadway tale fall short of conveying me to its destination. For me, Camelot is that state of being in which we become aware that we are experiencing something akin to, perhaps identical with, the sacred. It is the realization that where we are, what we are doing, and those with whom we are sharing this moment are caught up in something that transcends our normal reckonings of place and time, activity and social convention. Lest I be misunderstood I should clarify that the sacred, or the holy, at least in my own understanding, is a moment of heightened sensitivity to realities that cannot be explained by, or contained by reason alone. It is that “surprised by joy,” or more precisely, awakened to “awe” perception of transcendence that all of the major religions and mystical traditions recognize and seek. Whether known as samadhi, nirvana, satori, tao, Fana or the beatific vision, sacred experience appears to be universal and timeless.
Some of my Camelots were played out on afternoon hikes and whiffle ball games with childhood friends. One was set against a Canadian twilight, the rocking of our small aluminum boat offering choreography to my dad’s patience in teaching me how to fish. Many of my most treasured Camelot moments were spent with my own dear Guinevere, my life’s companion for nearly five decades. The mind quickly flips pages of memory to when children were young, when they triumphed in school, when they married and added lads and lasses to our family’s story—all worthy of Camelot reflection. So are a host of priceless recollections from the four very different but oh so memorable places where my vocational ambitions found both a home and a community to express themselves. Like the historical Camelot that defies any precise location in time or space, those of our remembering lie forever beyond replication or recovery.
Now I would never call myself a mystic or be accused by others of hyper-spirituality. Yet I’d like to think of myself as someone sensitive to the otherness—or the numinous as Rudolf Otter termed it—underlying all aspects of life if we but have eyes to see and hearts to perceive. Camelot symbolizes that for me—not in the details of its mythical characters and plot intrigues—but in its idealized vision of life where goodness and joy are sensed in their fullness, at least for a few precious moments. Perhaps it is what the patriarch Jacob felt after a dreamy night in which he saw heaven’s staircase descend upon him, and then declared, “this is none other than Beth-el, the house of God.” Or was it that which so overwhelmed him when his long estranged brother, whom he had repeatedly abused and tricked, threw his arms around him and kissed him, moving Jacob to stammer, “seeing you is like seeing the face of God.”
No wonder Camelot represents the very best place to visit for happily ever aftering. That may be why I try to keep my Camelot days ever fresh in mind. And right now that is a good thing, given the many upsetting events and concerning preoccupations that fill so much of our time and conversations. Whether it is just escapism or a necessary leveling of the scales in a world that often seems off-balance, such reveries help me straddle the yin and yang energies which, while often threatening to tear us apart, must both somehow have their way in life if hope and peace have any chance of surviving.
In just a few days the reminders of September 11 will reopen wounds of hurt that have never been stanched, and rekindle fires of rage that are far from extinguished. Twenty-one years have not erased nor mitigated the anger and resentment so many of us harbor from that terrible day. Yet on the eve of that anniversary, a group of old friends will gather for an annual reunion in which they have remained faithful for more than fifteen years. I count myself part of their fellowship in a relationship that began when choral music became the tie that has bound us together these many years. While distance only allows me an occasional chance to join their company, they continue to laugh, and sing, and share their friendship and love each time I return, with them, to the Camelot in which we never grow old or silent. And on this sacred weekend, it will be upon memories like this, far more than on the agonies and bitterness of 9-11, that I will steer my thoughts. For while we can and must never forget the worst and most terrible of our human offenses lest we ignorantly perpetuate and repeat them, our spiritual well-being depends on how well we are willing to set our minds on “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable…”* I imagine even Arthur would hope for nothing less.
*Paul’s benediction to the church he founded in Philippi, chapter 4 verse 8.
