The faded scratched sign invited me onto a “bridge to the past.” What kind of past would I be stepping into and who’s past? Mine or someone else’s? Do I really want to go back? Could I step back out again or is there a risk I would be stuck there? A vision of frantically trying to get an old DeLorean up to speed to fashion an escape popped into my mind. It is a dangerous temptation to step back into the past and meddle with events, altering the outcome of the future, but there was no such possibility here.
This particular bridge is located in Minneapolis. My wife and I arrived the night before in a 737 rather than a DeLorean, and it was nearly 1:00 am by the time we reached our hotel. We checked in found the way to our room, which was slightly complicated because there were two hotel franchises occupying the same building: one on each side, although they were colour coded to keep you on the right track. We went to the blue half.
Morning arrived too soon, and it was only after a serious caffeine intake I felt I could face the day. I had a two-hour window to get some exercise in before driving to Rochester, so I looked on my phone for a route. It’s always hard in a new place to determine where to go. It’s first option was the Mall of America which was situated only a few blocks away. Apparently, it has a measured route marked out. But that was not all appealing to me, especially as when I emerged out of the front doors the freshness of a beautiful spring day engulfed me. It would be criminal to be inside, so instead I walked down the road in the opposite direction.
Bass Ponds
After ten minutes or so I came across a sign pointing down a road which read “Minnesota wildlife refuge Bass Ponds.” It sounded far more promising than walking along a pavement beside a busy road, so I descended down a hill where the tarmac ended, and a trail began. Indeed there were ponds, although I didn’t see any bass, but there were birds of all kinds engaged in spring preparation. A pair of ducks weaved their way through the reeds, a bright yellow warbler sat on a branch full of budding hope. A pair of white pelicans stood on a small island basking in the warmth and a blackbird with bright red epaulettes chirped at me as I passed by. I followed the trail past several ponds and then under a modern concrete bridge with commuter traffic streaming above me, intent on reaching their present realities.
A bit further on I came to the sign. A “bridge to the past” turned out not to be some sort of time transporter, but a rather dull grey bridge constructed out of steel girders. Some bridges are designed with beauty in mind, some are just focused on the function of getting to the other side, this bridge is very much the later. Apparently, it had been built by the Illinois Steel Bridge Company and had opened to much fanfare in 1920 to replace an older bridge. It was at that time the longest bridge in Minnesota. But sixty years later, like its predecessor, it too had become obsolete, unable to take the weight and volume of modern traffic. This bridge however was still standing. Although it had been condemned for demolition, a community outcry commuted its sentence and it has been repurposed as part of a trail system for bikers and hikers to cross 860’ of lakes and marsh.
Long Meadow Bridge Minnesota
Bridges are a necessity of life. It doesn’t matter where you live in this world, at some point you are going to need a bridge. Whether it is to cross a lake, a marsh, a river, a steep rocky chasm or gorge, you need something to span it. Humans have been building bridges for thousands of years bridging gaps over stuff we wish to cross unscathed. We build them, and then tear them down and replace them when they no longer take the strain or suit our purpose.
A week later I walked across another bridge, although newer than the bridge in Minnesota its history is more famous and dates back far longer; London Bridge. The first London bridge was built by the Romans around 50 AD and was destroyed and replaced by a succession of wooden bridges until King Henry II rebuilt the bridge out of stone in 1209. It stood for six hundred years, and during the Tudor period there were as many as 200 buildings on the bridge itself. I wonder what it is like living on a bridge belonging to neither one side nor the other? In 1831 it was decided to replace the bridge which in turn was replaced in 1973 with the current bridge as it was sinking into the river under the weight and volume of traffic. The 1831 bridge was famously bought, taken down, transported and meticulously rebuilt in Lake Havasu City Arizona in the late 1960’s as part of a scheme to help promote the development of the town.
London Bridge
There is a famous nursery rhyme which l like so many others learned as a child;
London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.
The origins of this rhyme are uncertain; possibly it alludes to a Viking attack on the bridge by Olaf II in 1014, but regardless of where it came from it speaks not just to London Bridge but any bridge’s vitality and vulnerability. Want to hurt your enemy; take out their bridges; they are easy targets.
Bridges are not just physical structures, but they can be anything which spans the gap and connects us from one side to another. For many people they want to be connected to the past, perhaps they look back with nostalgia to a time when life was “better,” and wish they could return, or better still, transport the past to the present. Others however view the past as something evil and dangerous, the connection must be cancelled because there is no way any of the past should be allowed across to today’s culture and contaminate it. The past should be held in isolation. But as Mark Twain wrote;
“History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.”[1]
We build our spans for today with the discarded stones of yesterday, we just arrange them differently.
For many of us we have no interest in crossing a bridge anywhere except to the present. We lack the time and interest; it’s all about here and now. All the materials we need to build the bridge of the present are found in places like the Mall of America where we are offered a multitude of items to bridge our current reality for a preferred one. So, we build with trainers, mobile phones, cosmetics and jewellery. These bridges however, soon become outdated, unable to keep up with the ever-increasing flow of expectation and need constant maintenance and replacement. The cost is high, and the distance traversed is a small.
Perhaps one of the hardest bridges we face crossing is communication. Today we have a better understanding of how to communicate as well as better tools to bridge the communication gap, and yet it is continually under stress and getting knocked down in our polarised world. Bridging the gap of divergent personality, preference and opinion seems to be nearly impossible at times.
But what about a bridge to the future?
For hundreds of years London Bridge was the only option if you wanted to cross the Thames, but now there are thirty-five bridges, the newest is the Millennium, a pedestrian bridge opened on the 10thJune 2000. A couple of days later it was closed because it had too much “wobble,” which unnerved people making the crossing. It stayed closed for two years as engineers tried to work out what was going on and how to stop it. They thought the obvious cause was “synchronous lateral excitation,” as you would, but in case you don’t know what that means (hard to believe), it describes where people subconsciously walk in sync with each other. Now I am not an expert in these things, but I have watched and people don’t walk in sync at all. Some are fast, some slow, some stop to take photos, they are all over the place. There is very little synchronisation as far as I can see. In fact, a later study concluded the “wobble” came because of the exact opposite;
“In their report, experts from Bristol and Georgia explain that they have investigated many other bridges with similar oscillations and have found little to no evidence of synchronicity between walkers.
Instead, they assert that the swaying of the bridge is in fact caused by pedestrians trying not to fall over. The pedestrians walking randomly on the bridge provide ‘negative damping’ whereby the energy from a person’s wobbling is transferred to the bridge.”[2]
Millennium Bridge
That seems much more like it because that’s how I go about life; stumbling and trying desperately not to fall over. I try to walk in sync and not cause ‘negative damping’ and sometimes I can keep it up for a while, but then something will happen and I will get out of step and the wobble begins. I’ve read the books and studies, listened to the podcasts, attended the seminars, and watched the videos and although some are useful none of it seems to get to the core of my “wobble” problem.
Has it always been this way? Does everyone have a “wobble” problem? What is it like to walk a wobble free life and live in synchronicity? We have to go all the way back to the first human beings to find someone who walked in sync. They lived in a bridge less world, at least relationally speaking, I can’t say about physical ones. Adam and Eve were naked and not ashamed.[3] There was no gap between them which needed to be traversed. No intentional or , misplaced word, no selfish action, no discriminatory thought, or put down, or anything which would separate them from each other. They had no history which needed to be cancelled. Their nakedness was a vulnerability of which they were unaware; Nothing separated them. There was no embarrassment, shame or guilt to come creeping back across from a bridge to their past. No failures could be exhumed from the past and used against them. They could live in complete freedom.
But more than that they had a bridge less relationship with God. there not even the slightest fissure to be spanned. God’s presence was with them in the Garden, they didn’t need to cross anything to get to Him. Relationships between human beings and God without any need of bridges.
Then came the first wobble and it was a big one, seismic in fact, and it reverberates until this very day. A voice told them that actually God was holding out on them, He was not being vulnerable with them but was exploiting them because God knows if they eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge they will be like Him. They could build a bridge into a future where they will be God. Does that sound familiar? It is the bridge we are all furiously hammering away at, however, far from leading to a glorious future it returns us to an unescapable past. Not the past of the bridge less Garden but the post paradise world pockmarked with relational chasms and gorges. These we try and span in our day to lives, crossing without causing too much wobble, we hope. Every now and again though we find the wobble too much and we are catapulted off into the depths below, hopefully resurfacing at some point, coughing and spluttering, pulling ourselves out to try again. On occasion people fall from such a great height or onto such unforgiving ground there is no way back. Cross at your own peril. No wonder we retreat back, unwilling to step out and attempt to bridge the gap.
As hard as the gap between us is to close there is an even harder relational gap; the one with God. This isn’t so much a gap as it is a chasm; it is an expanse which is so massive it is unbridgeable, at least by us. Not that it stops us from trying. But while in London we can choose from any of the 35 bridges that have been built to get you across the Thames we can’t choose any bridge we like to get us back to God. They have all been tried. Sacrifices, charitable works, asceticism, and mindfulness are just a few of the ways. Two thousand years ago in Judea the way to bridge the gap was through strictly following rules and regulations. It was purely functional, nothing beautiful about this bridge, but what they failed to realise is it didn’t reach the other side, not even close.
God has been constructing a bridge for us to cross over since the chasm opened, but not to lead us back to the Garden but to take us forwards into an even more wonderful land. The Bible is the history of God’s bridge building. It started with a promise to Abraham and then continued through his descendants taking them into a Promised Land. They didn’t need physical bridges to get there; God split seas and held back rivers. They walked across on dry land. God gave them the law, not as a means for them to build a bridge but rather to help them walk in sync so they could stay on His bridge, but unfortunately like the rest of us they found it too hard and often ended up being thrown off.
God’s plan however all along was to give us the ultimate bridge, one which is both functional and beautiful. His name is Jesus Christ. He is functional in that His work on the cross is all sufficient to cross the chasm between us and God, but we must never reduce Him down to mere functionality which unfortunately seems to happen often. Jesus’ bridge is beautiful because it is constructed out of love, mercy and grace. Who wouldn’t want to step out on to it? Anyone can, it just takes faith.
End Notes
[1] Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The gilded age, A tale of Today, 1873 p 161
https://mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk/the-gilded-age/ebook-page-161.asp
{$NOTE_LABEL} https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/new-study-uncovers-real-reason-behind-millennium-bridge-wobble-15-12-2021/
[3] Genesis 2:25
