On Sunday, by chance I caught the very tail end of The Chris Matthews Show. He was passing on some wisdom to the Class of 2005.
Chris Matthews was speaking about a “movable feast”, pulling from Hemingway’s memoir of the same name (which I’ve not read) and reflecting on his own experience in the Peace Corp, urging the graduates to find their own movable feast. Hemingway found Paris in the 20s to be a movable feast that stayed with him for the rest of his life. “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
Mr. Matthews found his movable feast to be the 2 years he spent in Africa as a Peace Corp volunteer. “My movable feast was from 1968 to 1970 in Southern Africa. I have so many memories. I have tried to put them in books. I’ve had two books this wide of notes. There weren’t that many days! It was the loaves and the fishes. How can I have so many memories when I was only there for two years? How come? There must have been 20 impressions a day. Down days, too.” (I couldn’t find an online transcript from the show, but those are Mr. Matthews’ thoughts from a different address, found here.)
I imagine you see where I am going with this. A mission is often a movable feast. Mine was. I had many wonderful experiences and some painful experiences. I spent several hours a day studying the scriptures (I was an English-speaking missionary, so no time was spent studying a foreign language). I developed a very powerful testimony and learned some important lessons, many of which I could have learned outside of the missionary experience, but it would have taken much longer. Even my personality changed a bit because I left for the mission very shy, was forced to be outgoing (and I hated every minute of that), and returned a little shy (after the first few months of my post-mission attempt to avoid all human contact, anyway). The ups and downs of each day seemed dizzying if you step back a bit, but in the midst of the experience, it became the norm. It seemed like an entire life was lived in those 18 months – quite the intense experience.
Now, a decade later (10 years ago this month I entered the MTC), I still reflect on the mission. I still greatly value the friendships I made. I’m still incredibly grateful for the lessons I learned and the testimony I developed. I’m not one of those people who ever said it was the best year and a half of my life; it was so much harder than I ever thought it would be and I was happy when it was over and I came home. But I served well, worked hard, and it didn’t kill me. I am so glad I went. I think of how much I would have missed, how much my life would be weaker without those 18 months, had I not gone. Mr. Matthews’ quote above matches perfectly with my mission experience.
I’m not one who believes the mission should be the highlight of your spiritual life, and then it’s downhill from there. Such would be a tragedy and a waste. But as a wonderful kick-off to adult life, a mission seems to be a movable feast that can serve you throughout your life.