SENTENCES

Jeremy Frey

Mennonites take seriously the thought that to love others, one must die to one’s self.

During my college years, before I started writing and just before the strokes took his tongue, my Grandpa Metz summed up his life of mentorship to me in one complex sentence: Whatever you decide to do with your life, make sure it serves people.

I lightheartedly understand my grandfather’s guidance, now over a decade past, as a sort-of Jesus-confronted-by-the-Pharisees moment: Jesus’ summing up of Torah in one compound sentence. Jesus’ summation a response to the question of what the most important command is, that trap set by the suspicious guardians of sacred text, the treasured Ten Commandments, ten rules for the road brought down from a mountain in a tortured place.

Atop the mountain Moses and Yahweh had met in secret under lightning and behind burning bushes, while the followers fleeing slavery at the base of the mountain made a sculpture of precious metals, Moses descended the meeting on the mountain and found his people creating for themselves slavery anew in the shape of a calf, Moses enraged as a bull threw down the rules for the road at their feet, went back up the mountain in search of another copy.

Then Jesus as new Moses is confronted by limited Pharisee minds, their little ideas confronting a larger one, the bully of the past path standing in the way, his compound sentence a turning of the cheek in another direction, encapsulating the ten into one new take—love your God with all your heart and mind and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself—his answer a glance in another direction, a kiss, a blow, a sentence to death.

A couple years after I received my Grandpa Metz’s instruction, my Gramma Frey died. I approached her open coffin and stood there for about a half-minute of discomfort; my mid-college youth in the face of her old-age death. Her summation of her life of mentorship to me was then spoken in the silence between us at the mouth of her coffin; a whispering, a secret meeting of mind, though I knew not then I had a mind like hers. Live well.

How troubling, on both accounts. Both grandparents believers: Grandpa Metz, patriarch of my mom’s side of the family, a conservative minister to a single congregation for over forty years, his directive "Whatever you do with your life, make sure it serves people," and Gramma Frey, matriarch of my dad’s side, a liberated harmonica-doodler and grandchildren-racer in desert, her discernment to "Live well." Both statements, in their own rights, difficult to achieve.

And a possible paradox of instruction, from my perspective: where his life tended toward the ascetic, hers leaned toward the hedonistic. Both grandparents gave great amounts of themselves to the world, and yet, in some ways, lived at times as self-centered as many of us. Both were followers of Menno Simons, himself a follower of Christ of Torah of Moses of burning clouds by night, of intuition, a fire in the mind by day.

Regardless of what I believe from moment to moment about who or what God is, regardless of my playfulness, of my limited knowledge, of my secret meetings barefoot on mountains, of my Pharisee-like desire for old answers and my divine in-dwelling of new questions, I find myself sentenced to die, for life.

—Jeremy Frey, Tucson, Arizona, has published in numerous journals and anthologies. In 2006 he completed an MFA, focusing on poetry and creative nonfiction, at the University of Arizona, where he now teaches Rhetoric and Composition. He also has rediscovered acting in films and has uncovered a knack for editing memoir and poetry manuscripts. For more of his work, check out www.burntpossum.com.