The Test

PROLOGUE

Return with me now to a beautiful spring morning in 1999, and to the teacher's lounge of a small elementary school located in Santa Rosa, California. Class is shortly to begin. As if oblivious to that fact, a middle-aged man--a substitute teacher--is standing alone, lost in thought before the faculty bulletin board. His eyes are fixed upon a little poster that reads as follows:

THIS LIFE IS A TEST.
IF IT HAD BEEN A REAL LIFE
YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN INSTRUCTIONS
ON WHERE TO GO AND WHAT TO DO.

At first the man cannot help but laugh. Indeed, an involuntary "Amen!" almost escapes his lips. How many times--especially in recent years--has he ached for greater clarity about his direction in life? How many times has he felt that it was somehow hidden in darkness, engulfed in silence? Yes, he finds it comforting to know that others have experienced the same struggle, and healing to be able to laugh out loud with them about our common plight.

Yet as the true meaning of the poster begins to sink in, the man's laughter quickly fades. One by one, insights fill his mind, slowly carrying his thoughts into the depths.

First, he recognizes that for all its humor this poster is either an implicit plea for help, or an explicit cry of despair. "The author," he reasons, "is saying that human life can never be real, for real life would come with instructions, presumably at the mouth of a divine creator who would tell us what he wants us to know and what he would have us to do. Yet the author obviously believes there are no such instructions, probably because he believes there is no such creator. He thinks we are alone in the universe, and that human existence is an absurd 'test'--a trial run for a real life that, tragically enough, will never come."

As he ponders this gloomy conclusion, faceless people begin to appear at the edges of his imagination.

First, he sees the anonymous author of the poster, and also the anonymous teacher who put it up in the lounge.

Just behind them he thinks he sees a mass of anonymous "baby-boomers," multitudes of skeptical souls whom the author and the teacher quite likely represent.

Next there arises a huge cloud of high schoolers, many of whom he has taught, and some of whom he knows have already embraced the poster's formula for despair.

Then comes a smaller cloud, this time of little children; children too young and too unspoiled to get the joke, but who soon might--and might take it to heart--unless someone can reach them first with an alternative message of hope.

Finally--as if through the lens of his own past experience--he catches an unsettling glimpse of millions upon millions the world over; of the famished and fearful faces of all who have ever given up on the very possibility of "real life."

But this is not the end of his reverie. For now he is struck by a very different kind of thought, and along with it, a delightful irony. To begin with, he realizes that this poster--so clearly designed to poke sardonic fun at a life without meaning-- actually contains the hidden key to discovering what that meaning is! Or so he reckons, since in recent years he himself has become convinced that life really is a test!

Mulling the thought afresh, he recalls once again his own long and difficult journey: the early years of disillusionment with philosophy; the chilling specter of a world without "instructions;" the subsequent years of spiritual awakening, questing, and far-flung religious experimentation; the dreadful season of crisis and collapse; the climactic months of resolution and renewal; the ensuing years of struggle, healing, study, service, widening insight, and ever-deepening joy.

And thus, with his grateful mind fully returned to the present, he makes his final response to the poster before him: "Yes, life is a test, but not an empty trial run; not a mockery of life as it should be. Instructions HAVE been given. We HAVE been told where to go and what to do. Real life really IS possible-if only we are willing to take the test."

Then, with the bell just about to ring, a sudden recollection brings yet another irony to his attention, an irony that both surprises and encourages him. In recent years he has indeed been thinking about life as a test. But more than this, he has been trying to write of it as such. In fact, there is already a book, painfully slow in taking shape, almost languishing. Standing before the poster, feeling once again the anxious longing of all who must take the test, he therefore wonders: "Is this morning--this very moment--a work of Providence? Is it a confirmation of the value of the book? Could it even be an exhortation to finish it?"

Ever the mystic, he answers "yes" to all of the above. Quickly, then, he removes a 3x5 card from his brief case and jots down the words of the poster verbatim. Tucking it safely away in his shirt pocket--giving both it and his heart a little pat of satisfaction--he resolves once again to finish the book, and also to make good use of this remarkable event. "Perhaps," he says to himself, "I could even use it in the prologue."

For the moment, however, he must rush off to his classroom and teach the fourth graders. As he does, he finds himself hoping that somehow he will be able to relate--even to these ten-year-olds--the simple truths that once again have gripped his heart: Life really is a test; instructions really have been given; and for all who are willing to follow the instructions and take the test, there awaits the unspeakably precious prize of real life.