"Thus Began Our Longest Journey Together"

I cannot help it: I am an associative thinker. The pathways in my mind are not always the shortest distance between two points. They are typically "the scenic route" as "way leads on to way." In my mind, I am often joined by memorable lines from the literature that has shaped my life. As a Christian, many of these lines come from Scripture, old hymns, and newer praise and worship songs. As a former English/Literature/Drama teacher, an equal number of mental conversations begin with lines come from fragments of literature.

There have been times in my life when I imagine hearing a narrator say ominously: "Thus began our longest journey together." It is typically when I begin a walk or trip into unfamiliar territory with an unknown outcome of the far side. It sometimes comes as a premonition (if such things are permissible for people of faith). I'll be starting out on some vaguely unfamiar task or trip, no reason for anything to go wrong, and yet I can imagine, as if in future hindsight, that what begins innocently enough takes an unexpected turn and nothing is the same from that point forward. Like most fears and worry, the ominous possibility never becomes a reality, and it's soon forgotten, but even a broken clock is right two times a day, and when a strange occurance actually happens and we remember having a feeling that "something was going happen," we give far too much credence to our clairvoyance.

The line comes from the movie and screenplay of  To Kill A Mockingbird."

Screenplays are written in present tense:

"Scout and Jem walk past Radley house towards school. Jem has her by the hand and in the other he is carrying a costume that Scout is to wear in a pageant that evening.

JEAN LOUISE’S VOICE This night my mind was filled with Halloween. There was to be a pageant representing our country’s agricultural products. I was to be a Ham. My duties, as I gathered from our two rehearsals, were to come on stage left when Miss Stephanie call “Pork.” Jem said he would escort me to the school auditorium. Thus began our longest journey together.

Here is what happens in the moments after that line is read: