HOPE IN THE RYE [F, 10-30-20]

 CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

HOPE IN THE RYE   [F, 10-30-20]

I have been thinking about hope. Partially because it is an assignment from The Royal & Philosophical Society of Guys in Exile, but also because everything about the world seems so hopeless. Fortunately, I have recently been reminded of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

It is the quintessential story of teen angst, the protagonist angsty teen being Holden Caulfield. The title comes from Holden’s dream, which he describes to younger sister, Phoebe. There is a huge rye field, on the edge of an abyss, and many children play in the field, unaware of the abyss. Holden runs along the rim, and whenever a child gets too close to the edge, he catches them and pushes them back into the field.

Holden decides to solve his problems by going somewhere else, by running away. When life becomes too much, teens think that a change of place is the solution. Old people think that, too. In his last few years, my father changed from nursing home to senior apartment and back again,  to the same settings in different towns, over and over, quite sure that if he only got into the right place, he would be just fine, 85 again.

Before Holden runs away, he wants to say goodbye to the only person who does not seem phony to him, sister Phoebe. He tells her to meet him at the museum for farewell. When Phoebe shows up, she has her suitcase. She is going with him.

That’s the last thing Holden wants. He tells her she can’t go. He walks away. She follows, dragging her suitcase. All through NYC he goes, Holden trying to lose Phoebe, the little girl dragging her suitcase behind her, resolutely following. She doesn’t say anything when he yells at her to go back, doesn’t try to change her brother’s mind; she just follows.

Finally, he gives up and takes her to the park. There he buys her a ride on the carousel. As she rides around, she reaches out, dangerously, to “grab the brass ring.” [On a pole beside the carousel, too high for a rider to see into it, is a box full of metal rings. As they go by, riders can reach into the box and grab a ring. There is only one brass ring in the box. If a rider grabs the brass ring, they get a free ride.]

Holden wants to push Phoebe back onto her horse, keep her safe, be the catcher in the rye. But he has learned something from Phoebe. “I guess,” he says, “If a kid is going to try for the brass ring, you’ve just got to let them try.”

Phoebe is the Christ figure, the embodiment of hope. She doesn’t try to keep her brother from his bad decisions, because loving someone means letting them be free. Because she loves him, though, she is willing to go with him into whatever future his decisions, bad or good, might take him.

Christ is not the catcher in the rye, keeping us from playing too close to the edge, but the savior in the rye, not taking away our freedom, not pushing us back to safety against our own desires, but going over the edge with us if that is what it takes. Being catcher and being savior are very different.

God will not save us from going over the edge, from reaching too far as we try to grab the brass ring, but God never abandons us. In Christ, God will go over the edge with us.

Hope is not in the action of God, but in the presence of God.

John Robert McFarland