c. 2003 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

INDIANAPOLIS _ I come home from my high school reunion banquet with emotions churning: joy mixing with regret, relief with remorse.

The remorse is easiest to pinpoint. In trying to connect with a classmate’s wife, I make too much of a 40-year-old basketball score. Is it just the high school setting, or do my attempts at humor often fizzle?

The relief, I think, has to do with fitting in. My baseline expectation for this weekend was that I would feel some sense of belonging. I do, and it feels great. Despite the changes and chances of life, some verities remain. I am glad I drove 700 miles to attend.

The joy is more complex. I treasure these people. They help me to know who I am. They accept me as I am. They are kind. No games, no “gotchas.” They listen, they show interest, they build up. I am so weary of people who don’t know how to get outside themselves. It is joy to be in a circle of kindness, to know I am worthy of kindness, to feel my own capacity for kindness drawn out.

I have no idea whether Shortridge High School was among the nation’s finest, as we were encouraged to believe. But I do know that I had the extraordinary blessing of growing up among kind people. They are the same today, they have married kind people, and as I watch them share that kindness with my wife, I realize it wasn’t institutional excellence that sent me off confidently into the world, it was kindness.

That explains my regret. I am sorry to leave. I look forward to going back to job, home and friends. But I regret leaving behind people whose kindness gave me wings.

Churning emotions aren’t easy to sort out, especially in middle-of-the-night wakefulness. I do know to let the churning proceed. It is part of being alive. No need to escape or to stifle.

In standing on this bridge between past and present, it occurs to me that life probably isn’t any more difficult today than yesterday. Neither day seems a golden age. The difference, if one exists, is that we were engaged. Television was still a small part of life, computer games and music videos weren’t stealing time, air conditioning didn’t discourage playing outside, families ate together and processed the day, music was about youthful yearnings, not third-hand anger, and we weren’t rushing to escape in alcohol and drugs. Not because we were especially noble, but because the predators hadn’t found us yet.

As a result, we felt life. Not always happily, as shown by tonight’s missing faces. But we did learn to engage in life. The highs were real, not chemically induced, and the lows were deep and rich, almost literary.

The good news is that such engagement isn’t a matter of era, but of intention. We can turn off our television sets, put our computers in sleep mode, decide against physical comfort as a primary life goal, resist the easy soothing of depressants like alcohol, stop demanding entertainment, and spend more time with family and friends.

Religion has a critical role to play, as a champion of engagement. Vendors and entertainers certainly don’t want us engaging in life. They would rather we shopped, ate and watched.

Faith’s singular contribution to modernity could be to raise a flag for engagement, for taking life seriously, for valuing kindness over mastery, for feeling the highs and lows, for knowing the churning emotions of life not as a mistake to be masked or escaped, but as the very essence of being alive.

To help its constituents engage in life, religion would need to engage its constituents. Not as a way to feel mellow, not as a safe refuge where preachers try to please, not as one more venue where consumers get their way, and not as an arguing-pit where brouhahas over rules stoke diversionary heat.

Religion needs to emulate Jesus, that is, to challenge, to name the wickedness, but above all else, to call people outside themselves, to discover their better and kinder selves. For it is mercy and kindness that will give us wings.

KRE END EHRICH