No Turning Back

Cultivating Calling and Pilgrimage is a meandering column documenting the pilgrimage of faith. It’s an occasional letter arriving in the mail from that shabby, wandering uncle you only see a few times year, describing the odd bits and bobs of books, songs, stories, people and places that have struck his fancy, put a lump in his throat, or kept him putting one foot in front of the other toward the Face of Jesus, that Joy set before us all.

Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t,” says Samwise Gamgee, in one of my favorite speeches from The Lord of the Rings. Apparently, Sam has heard enough old stories of perilous quests that his imagination is able to draw on a richly populated resource when his own life is in peril and he is faced with whether or not to press on. Wouldn’t you like to know exactly what stories he has in mind? What names rise to the top of his memory as he searches for the strength to stay on the road? What has shaped him such that he is a person who “hopes all things” so steadfastly? 

I do know that Samwise himself is one of the names that rises to the top of my mind when I find myself at those decision points between going faithfully forward or turning back.  If I stop long enough, I can think of plenty of real life folks whose stories demonstrate Mr. Gamgee’s kind of strength (though clearly literary characters count!). Those names are the ones who’ve walked with me in my own meandering story and, like Mr. Frodo says of his friend, I wouldn’t have gotten far without them. 

Funny enough, one of those folks in my life is actually named Sam! My very own brother. What does Proverbs say? “A brother is born for adversity.” [1] Sam is seven years older than me and, to tell the truth, we were not close at all growing up. In many ways, I’d say we hardly knew each other until we were well into adulthood. I’ve written more about my divorce in my book Only the Lover Sings, but one day, in extreme distress, I drove three hours in the middle of the night to Sam’s house and let myself in the back door. I knew it would be unlocked. I crept in and curled up on the couch, where Sam was surprised to find me the next morning. 

“Can I stay here, Sam?” I said. 

“For how long?” 

“I don’t know . . . from now on, maybe?” I said. He could see the panic in my face and hear it in my voice. I couldn’t go back to where I’d been. I was in a desperate situation. 

“Yes. Of course,” he said. 

That was a little over ten years ago now. I showed up at a time when Sam had just gotten his house all to himself, after many years of having a handful of roommates, which included a dog with the manners of an orc that ruined all the carpet, and a guy who practiced golf indoors (but who obviously couldn’t have been the one to put that golf-ball-sized hole in the wall). In other words, he had no sooner heaved a sigh of relief as the dust settled than I arrived to stir it up again. 

If I had to say which one of us is Frodo and which is Sam, Sam is definitely Sam, and I’m Frodo. Sam is a seemingly endless fountain of good cheer, so much so that I sometimes have to ask him to give me a few extra minutes to enjoy my grumpiness, sadness, or frustration before he pulls me out of it (we all know how good a bad mood can feel). We’ve rubbed off on each other, we mused recently, and he admitted that sometimes I help him stay with some more unpleasant emotion longer than he normally might—long enough to see that joy and sorrow can make good siblings (and housemates). 

I am so thankful for Sam’s (both Gamgee and Clark) reliable friendship. Who has made a place for you when you lost your place? Who has held hope for you after it had been torn from your hands?  

I’ve been rereading a Frederick Buechner book my friends Bill and Diana gave me years ago called, Speak What We Feel: Not What We Ought to Say. Each of its four chapters is an exploration of the work of a different literary figure, with an eye to each author’s personal sufferings. Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mark Twain, G.K. Chesterton, and William Shakespeare are held up as artists willing to pour their broken hearts into their work in such a way as to provide a very particular quality of companionship to their readers.  

I’m only halfway through it this go-round, but it’s been startling to be reminded how painful Hopkins’ and Twain’s lives were. Seeing how they chose to press on in their work makes me so grateful they didn’t turn back the many times they could have. Hopkins especially. I don’t have a lot of poetry memorized, but Hopkins is one whose work, on certain sleepless nights, I’ve repeated to myself in the long dark. He endured a long dark, and he finished the good fight.  

Some years ago, I read Malcolm Guite’s Mariner, a biography of the poet and thinker Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written with a similar approach as Buechner’s book. Coleridge’s life was fraught with tragedy, drug addiction, illness, and sorrow. Yet, though he had chances to turn back, he pressed on. Guite shows that, in the end, after a long, sea-tossed voyage, Coleridge arrived safely at harbor with the Lord. But, as the story goes, for much of that journey he seemed just as likely to pitch overboard and sink into the cold depths. 

In Protestantism (at least in my experience), it’s unfortunate that we don’t have much of a tradition of remembering the lives of martyrs or other unusually heroic Christians across the ages. Sometime last year, our pastor started reading little biographies, speeches, or sermons from various figures in church history who kept faith in Jesus under extreme duress or, in many cases, who were killed for refusing to abandon their allegiance to Christ.  

Now, I know that the apostles were martyred for their obedience to Jesus, but somehow their status as biblical figures separated them in my mind from ordinary faith-keepers. Hearing the stories of people who weren’t even alive when Jesus walked the earth, who yet maintained that level of fortitude in the face of persecution, has been inspiring. 

Today, I’m wearing a shirt with a Rich Mullins quote printed across the front. I was way too cool for Christian music when my youth minister tried to get me to listen to Rich’s songs back in the day. But I came around. I came to sense somehow that this guy wasn’t just blowing smoke when he sang about Jesus. I didn’t even know much of anything about his personal story, but I could feel that he was writing from a place of hard-won, living faith. My intuition turned out to be right. 

I knew that Rich’s mentor was Brennan Manning, the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel. Manning was a failed Franciscan monk, failed Catholic priest, long-time alcoholic, divorcee. What he didn’t fail at was pressing on in bearing witness to the “reckless, raging fury that they call the love of God.” [2] Like Paul, who called himself the chief of sinners, Manning’s honesty about his own brokenness has buoyed me many times, especially when I’ve found it hard to believe that God could still love me. 

There are many other names and faces in my mind that I look to when I want to turn back, abandon post, or disappear into a faithless fog.

I’m thankful to say that I could go on naming them, because I really could. You can see how many people and stories I’ve come to depend on along the way that the Lord has kindly put in my path. 

Before I go, I am remembering something I learned when I was converting my Sprinter van into a camper. I started with what was essentially a big metal box on wheels, and slowly built a sort of horseshoe of structure beginning with a kitchen behind the driver’s seat, and ending with a bathroom behind the passenger’s. What I noticed was that the strength of the individual structures was entirely dependent on their attachment to the structures around them. The kitchen was wobbly, until I built the closet next to it. It got more stable when I built the storage next to that and on and on. The integrity of the build was cumulative. 

Our imagination, our character, our identity is like that too. Our sense of self gets a lot of its structural stability from the stories and people we’re connected with. If, for instance, all the apostles had capitulated early on, I doubt there would have many, if any, martyrs to follow. If I hadn’t had flesh and blood pictures of faithfulness and fortitude scattered across my own story, I wouldn’t still be walking this Way myself. And Jesus, the Way Himself, is of course the most stable thing to build an identity on, precisely because His identity was so stable. I think about the time He washed His disciples’ feet—something that would shake most anyone’s sense of self. What gave Him a stable enough identity to do something so humiliating, without losing Himself? Scripture says, “He knew that He had come from God and was returning to God, so He got up from the meal, took off His outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around His waist.” 

Okay, then, maybe when I get to a place in my story when I’m tempted to turn back, I can press on. If the One who sits at the center of reality itself, who is the source of all that has been made, can keep moving forward under extreme duress, maybe He can help me do the same. Let me speak good of Jesus, y’all. If Sam Gamgee got that kind of faithfulness we admire from anywhere, he got it from Jesus, via Tolkien and Jesus’s steadfast people.  

I ran across a scribble in a notebook this week from April 19, 2024. I was driving somewhere in Utah, when an old favorite Bruce Cockburn song came on. It’s called “Incandescent Blue.” When it got to the bridge of the song, I nearly had to pull the van over, because I suddenly burst into heaving, hot tears. The bridge goes, 

Concrete vortex sucks down the wind 

It’s howling like a blinded violin 

O, Tongues of Fire, come and kiss my brow 

If I ever needed you, I need you now [3]

The song, it seems to me, is about a singer whose song keeps getting either snatched away from his hearers or goes unheard in this cruel world for whatever reason. The unheeded “notes float up into the overcast, and change to white birds as they sail on through, and soar away free, into incandescent blue.”  

I took the song personally, in that moment, as a prayer for one trying to keep faith when it feels most impotent, pointless. Like a tender violin melody drowned out by the noisome howl of a concrete jungle, the voice of God’s Spirit is sucked down into a vortex of tornado-like brutality. I can’t exactly explain what a “blinded violin” is, but I can absolutely feel it.  

In that moment, hearing Cockburn sing that pleading bridge, “O, Tongues of Fire, come and kiss my brow!” I felt, even in the midst of tears, a kind of hardening of resolve somewhere within me. Some smoldering wick was rekindled. No. No turning back. Press on. 

[1] Proverbs 17:17, KJV.

[2] Mullins, Rich, “The Love of God”, Never Picture Perfect, Reunion Records, 1993.

[3] Cockburn, Bruce, “Incandescent Blue”, Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws, True North Records, 1979. 

The featured image, “Kenyan Sunrise 1 – Overcoming,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.

Matthew Clark

Matthew Clark is a singer/songwriter and storyteller from Mississippi. He has recorded several full length albums, including a Bible walk-through called “Bright Came the Word from His Mouth” and “Beautiful Secret Life.” Matthew’s current project, “The Well Trilogy,” consists of 3 full-length album/book combos releasing over 3 years. Each installment is made up of 11 songs and a companion book of 13 essays written by a variety of contributors exploring themes around encountering Jesus, faith-keeping, and the return of Christ. Part One, “Only the Lover Sings” is available both as an album and as a companion book. 

Matthew also hosts a weekly podcast, “One Thousand Words – Stories on the Way,” featuring essays reflecting on faith-keeping. A touring musician and speaker, Matthew travels sharing songs and stories in a van called Vandalf.

www.matthewclark.net/