Vertical Cruising

Sometimes a person just walks headlong into an unexplainable, probably undeserved, but totally hoped for relationship reality. At least that is my assessment as I scratch my head and reflect on the blessing of meeting my wife in that princely, but smelly logging town all those years ago. Today it is Mother’s day and here is what my card to her says:

We have shared so many special and significant moments over the thirty-some years and I can’t tell you how much I look forward to the adventure of the future with you. You have truly been amazing as a wife, companion, encourager, and lover.  As a Mother, well, the only words I can come with are over-the-top, magnificent, empowering, inspiring…and I could go on if I had the vocab. I am so glad we  decided to have our 3 boys together.  Trevor’s stay was short, but I know that having him changed us. Jeff and Brady have brought so much joy into my life, and I just want to say thank you for all of the work, physical, emotional, and spiritual, that you have poured into their lives. I honestly believe that we have one of the best families on the planet, and your love and dedication have been such key ingredients.

One word comes to mind when I think about you and our boys: sparkle.  There is a sparkle in your eye that splashes life all over them as you reach into their souls and draw out their dreams.  There is a sparkle in your eye as you scratch a back, tickle an arm, patiently listen during intense discussions, then offer practical wisdom for life. There is a sparkle in your eye as you pray-a-hug then offer pantry goods as a parting gift. It is a sparkle that gets all over them and shows them who God is, and how love lives.

So… here’s a toast to you, my love, the chief Mom and sparkle splasher.  I love you more than the world!!! Happy Mother’s Day!!!

Gucci, the Himalayan feline, peeks suspiciously around the corner then slinks over to his carpet tree and begins the pedicure attack procedure.  Then he glances over as if to say, “You want some of this?”, before stretching into the fur-lick-splutter-cough-cleaning sequence.  Normally, I claim to be allergic to cats.  Tonight, it doesn’t matter.  I have the privilege of listening to a life-story – a tale of pain and tragedy – a tale of resilience and the human spirit.

My Aunt and Uncle are in town to teen-sit their Grandchildren, and, after a decade or two of distance, we have been invited connect over tea and butter tart squares.  I’m off of sugar and caffeine.  It doesn’t matter.  Connecting matters – and sharing the journey.

It is close to ten years since their year of tragedy.  She had just received the news that one of her eyes would need to be removed, and was officially blind in both.  The physical pain was excruciating, but the emotional pain of losing an eye was almost too much.  Faith was shaken.  After all the years of serving God in the ministry,  could she find Him in this?  I sit on the edge of the couch, watching the body language, seeking out the pain that should be seeping.  Instead, I find faith.  And strength.

Shortly after the doctor’s news about the eye, her husband went onto the roof at the church camp to do some repairs.  His heart was always to serve God by serving people, and his handy-man skills often were needed as well as his pastoral gifting. After an hour or so she started to wonder where he was and began calling out.  No answer on his cell-phone. Soon, a moan drew her attention to just outside the screen door.  He had been laying there all along but she couldn’t see him. Broken ribs, shoulder, wrist, and permanent short-term memory loss.  Another faith-test for him, for her, and for their marriage.

He commandeers the story, explaining how the small insurance policy she had purchased earlier saved them from financial ruin and how they have come to realize that a person doesn’t need a platform, or a title, or perfect health to share God’s love with people.  Availability.  That, and faith. And a frequent table at Tim Horton’s where shoulders are rubbed and spirits are lifted. The little book in his shirt pocket helps with short-term memory, but the story of God’s grace in their lives is long, vivid and stirring.

I sit, misty eyed and awestruck.  I can only think of royalty, and how God must smile every time he offers His heart to someone through these amazing Saints. Out of all the tragedy comes the resounding theme: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.” (1Cor 13:13)

Ten miles per hour.  Sixteen kilometres per hour if you live north of forty-nine.  That’s how fast I like to meander along on my ancient mountain bike.  Any faster and I might miss the architecture of the houses, or the scolding of the squirrels, or the freshness of the cherry blossoms.  I like to wear faded jeans, with the chain side tucked into the white sports sock and some mechanic’s gloves that I bought at Home Hardware.  It is hard not to grin as I nod a clubmember-style greeting to the focused, spandex, bike-shop advertisements on their way by.  They are so polite – likely wondering if they should stop and offer me their gear from last year so that I am not an embarrassment to the biking fraternity.  You only need wicking if you sweat, so I am as fresh as a Bounty sheet, and would need to graciously decline their charity.

This morning the ride is special.  The sky is blue and the air is crispy-calm.  A Perfect way to kick off my fifty-second year.  My wife says that a conversation should be like a tennis match.  This time, the God-set has an easy, steady rhythm and I’m finding that the mystery volleys, though not fully understood, are gentle and returnable.   Along with the sights, I have time for moments of reflection and thanksgiving before finding a new favourite bench overlooking the lake.  White coated hills reflect on shimmering double-takes and jet streams fade across the haze of the early sun.   A few deep breaths.  A sense of peace and contentment.  Then a revelation or two.

How do I get to enjoy this panorama without paying a toll?  No HST.  No maintenance fee. No need for ownership.  Just an awe that beckons me to the responsibility of stewardship. I am not naive.  Someone paid tax on the bench, and the path that got me here hitched a ride on the back of an honest day’s work.  But the path is not the view, and neither is the bench.  The view is free, and it is the most rewarding.  It ignores creed, or race, or class. The purity of a world without agenda, available for capture without watermark or licence. This is one of the best things in life – and it truly is free.

Is ownership just an illusion – a way to get hardworking charismatics to buy into long-term stewardship – more of a long-term lease than a title deed?  Perhaps.  My Father-in-law says that, “The more junk you own, the more junk you have to fix”.  Even so, some premeditated scene-scapes can only be created in the absence of committees and consensus, and would never be approved due the artistic flare and outlandish risks that are necessary.  The bureaucratic red tape and the penalties exacted, however, often reign in the freedom horse, keeping it well within the confines of the cultural fence.  It makes me wonder if the price of ownership is the loss of freedom rather than the expression of it.

At this moment, overlooking this peaceful lake-scene, I am just grateful that I can enjoy the moment without any lingering angst from previous battles fought.  I know that freedom is not free, but there is a knowing deep inside of my memory that points to a time in man’s earliest history when life and sustenance were gifts to be enjoyed rather than recompense for sweat and toil.  This morning has been a gloriously free gift and I accept it as a grateful steward.  Ah, the freedom of non-ownership.

For the most part relationships seem to be undefinable and enigmatic.  If you think about them for too long you will likely get a headache, or worse, a heartache. The waxing and waning of emotional energy that courses through mutual friendship veins is like an erratic heartbeat, one minute bringing life and laughter, the next bringing a panicked search for oxygen. Throw in the fact that you have a herd of multi-levels and you could find yourself sucking wind and blowing off steam, all at the same time. This kind of ambivalence is likely to add more stress to your emotional quotient than your already-diet-stressed being can handle. Makes me want to be a wildebeest in Africa. Eat grass, run away from lions, have offspring, eat grass. Or an introvert perhaps. Oh, wait. Introverts take relationships too seriously.  Maybe an  extrovert, then. Nope, they have too many friends.  I guess I’m stuck. I’ll just be an extrovertly passive-aggressive hermit that has a check list for any kind of ships that want to pass too close in the night. If they approach uninvited they’ll pay the toll extracted by my wet-blanket cannon.  You’ve never seen art until you’ve seen the dismantling of a persona by a grumpy old pirate that is blind in one eye and has a patch over the other one. Ok, enough Peter-Panish sub-surface phoney babble. I’m not really like that… on good days.

My wife says that each person is like a Lego block.  Some people have lots of dock-like nipples that people can attach to. (Ouch, that is a picture I don’t want to explore) Others have only a few docks.  I think she is a well-endowed Lego block.  I have only a six-pack.  Once my docks are full, one ship must be dispatched before another can nestle up for a nip. I’m OK with having a whole slew of ships in the area, but it only takes a few attachments to empty the emotional fuel tank. Actually, it only takes one that needs extra nourishment and soon the cackling sound of a straw sucking air at the bottom of my emotional slurpee is loud enough to attract the attention of the relationship police. I can tell when a friend is getting drunk from my fumes – the questions start erupting like garlic-breath-burps. Very healthy, but very annoying. Or, maybe not so healthy either.

Just how important is fellowship?  It is one of the cruise ships that invites you into a lavish buffet of delightful tidbits. At times, prime rib is on the offer, and who doesn’t need a good feed of protein. This cruise is definitely one I can appreciate. It makes all the pain in the hind quarters of relationship worth the trip.  There is nothing like hopping aboard a ship that is sailing off into your own horizon. You get to your destination faster, and with much less effort.  Oh, there are bumps and bruises that tell the wounds-of-a-friend story, and there is a chance the ship may hit an iceberg due to hidden agendas. Until then, why not play the music, and eat your fill, and laugh together until your bodies heal.  Just don’t stay  on board once “Nearer my God to Thee” comes blaring over the airwaves.

There are some fellow ships you should never abandon, and one of them has a Captain that  knows where the icebergs are. By the way, He sure knows how to throw a banquet.  If you’re getting cynical, and are tired of the Lego block square dance, why not take a break from the noise and give the Creator-Cruise a try?  Who knows, you might even learn some skills that will help with your battle ship boundaries. I think it is helping me replace my wet-blanket cannon with a coconut cannon.  It can still do lots of damage, but once in a while, someone makes a spectacular catch and enjoys the taste of a virgin pina colada.

I normally consider myself to be apolitical.  More of a passively aggressive sort, hanging out in the wings, near the closest exit of the debate hall.  In this case I am throwing my hat in the ring, and jumping in headlong after it.  Bloody noses and all.  Bring it on!

Both frontrunners in the Alberta election have claimed to be Pro Choice so that the abortion issue will be, as they say, a non-issue.  Fancy that.  How would you like to be a Non-Issue?  Forget all the arguments about whether an unborn person has the right to dreams and hope and love, and a chance to make a difference in the world.  Think about this:  Every day a young girl or boy walks into the kitchen and is told that they are a Non-Issue.  Words aren’t always the mode.   Silence is.  The silence of a father, long gone, out sowing more oats in greener fields.  The kind of silence that starves and strangles. Forget a pure, meaningful embrace, a face held between loving hands and a long look into the soul that says, you are my daughter and I am proud of you.  Forget even a quick glance that avatars “I see you!” All gone, and replaced by an air of indifference.  “If you are here, or not, it doesn’t make a difference to me.”  This time the abortion is slow and agonizing, but it is abortion.

I seriously think that all the Psych Professors would be teaching mathematics or philosophy or basket weaving if a cure for this Non-Issue illness was found.  You see, not just aborted fetuses are being deemed a Non-Issue, but marriages, and families, and healthy sexual relationships, and a host of other main-stays that have long been the glue of a thriving society.  It might be time to watch another movie like “The Postman” where Kevin Costner helps us see what could happen when morals are hurled out the window along with wisdom and restraint.  Depravity.

That’s a good word to describe what happens when a society won’t deal with Non-Issues; depravity. Just imagine a society where Non-Issues are now eighteen, turning over burning cars to celebrate an olympic event, or twenty-something, and determined to change the judicial system, or forty-something and teaching a class on family planning at the local clinic, or sixty something and shaping the mores of a society academically at the university of tolerance.

You get the picture.  Or not. It doesn’t matter.  In the end, the Non-Issues will have their say, and they will meet out a judgement that is payment for the silent cry of a child, born or unborn, that has lost its way and can only be redeemed when a significant other cradles their heart in His hands and says, “I knew you before you were born, and you ARE an Issue to me!”  “I am pro-choice, and I choose YOU!!!”

Giant snowfluffs are mounding in sloppy mid-lane congregations and splatting on windshields, wiped speedily to the side as white-knuckled drivers try to keep the all-seasons tracking in the grooves.  Once in a while an over-competent semi-driver passes, spraying slush and nerves all over the freeway.  This is my fourth blizzard in a week, and I’m ticked off. If my body ran on solar power, which it does, I would have run out of steam long ago, which I have. It is already almost a month past the first day of spring. Perhaps we should have a spring time zone. For every day you drive north of the equator, the first day of spring should be a month later.  Except that would mean spring would begin in November here.  So much for my meteorological logic.

Dad is ahead in the ambulance.  I bet they are tempted to flash up the lights and part the white, slushy sea, but this is only a hospital to hospital transfer, and there are para-rules for this sort of thing.  The heater has blown a hose in the old unit, so it might be expedient for Dad to fake an embolism to cut the trip-time in half.  He won’t need to fake hypothermia, though, but might not like the pounding on his chest and the constant yelling of his legal name.

Suddenly, an hour further south and a meatball-sub-stop later, the heavens part and the sun renews an old acquaintance. “And the son is shinin, in the great Prairie.  “And the son is shinin, and it sure isn’t a pity.” Funny how quickly the pathetic whining breaks into the Trooper Hallelujah Chorus when you can see where you are going and you might actually get there.

Once Dad is safely nested among his small-town, big-heart homies, I will head back to my gorgeous wife, and great, grown-up sons in the wine-vine paradise valley of the Okanagan. One week, one major surgery, and off to the next challenge that life is going to fling.  Flail, or flourish? That is the onomatopoeia-like response that I get to choose. This time I mostly chose to flourish. At least before the slush-storm meltdown, anyway. I’d like to permanently get rid of my old alter ego, Woe and replace him with someone like Grow.  How does this sound: “Grow is me, for I am a man of unseen trips”?

Ooops, gotta run! Still some planning needed for the next Cambodia/Thailand Missions Trip. Oh, right. My wife does that. Well, I can try to give her a hand, by getting some heat going in the kitchen, or throwing in a load of laundry.  I used to be an iron-man too, but the wrinkle-free cycle freed me from that marathon.

There I was, minding my own business, walking through Aunt A’s newly renovated kitchen when a pie caught my eye.  One glance, second glance. Too late! Somehow, without my permission, a fork jumped out of the drawer and sat smugly attached to one of the apple morsels. I could have kept walking if the handle wasn’t pointing at my taste buds. Fruit is a healthy choice.  Pie is not, but it is still my ultimate soul-food. The connection to some semi-cognoscente childhood memory of my Mother and her Mother, and a summer of fun and chores at the family farm. Only one other smell can bring me back to the farm in an instant, and it involves a five-gallon bucket at the top of the stairs that needed emptying into the outhouse every morning. OK, back to fragrance of the apple pie.

I started thinking about what I call the proximity law. In layman’s terms; If there is junk food on the counter you will eat it. If it is hidden in the closet you may eat it. If it is at the corner store, you probably won’t eat it – unless there has been a traumatic comfort food pacification-needing event that sets off the “gotta have it” psychotic reaction.

Fast forward a couple of hours to my thoughts as I passed by an Adult Store on my way to somewhere significant.  How many marriages have been poisoned and eventually snuffed by men who had to drive by that place on their way to somewhere significant.  Somewhere like home. Think closer to home. Think laptop, and a second glance that opens the door to a few white lies and an addiction that maligns wife-trust and eventually punches her in the heart with a deathly blow.

This may be the most important question of this ecomaniacle era; Why do we legalize this stuff and allow it to be seen by anyone? Not just semi-consenting adults, but eight-year-olds, and teenagers with undeveloped brains and raging hormones. Are we still wafting in the fumes of the culture of the sixties, or are we just asleep on the ferris wheel?

Well, I did eat the apple pie, if only a morsel.  Then I was hooked into what I call the Craving Law. Without intervention this will invoke the Addiction Law. Just three little apple pie escalation laws that remind me of the studies of a brain scientist (whom I should recite here, but won’t because I can’t remember the exact quote or who she was) who said that, If you catch a thought before it gets too deep into the brain, you can chuck it into the garbage bin and move on.  Also reminds me of a preacher (that I can’t remember either) who said that temptation is not a sin, the dwelling thought to act on it is.

As a society, if we have already made the mistake of setting the apple pie on the counter, then I think we should at least heed a highly inspired man who once said, “But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness”.

Run, baby run!

Every once in a while a curve ball comes humming out of left field, catching you off guard and knocking your sensibilities all over the place. Then there are the times when the meteor is coming straight-on, seemingly in slow motion. There you stand, frozen, watching, as the size seems to increase before the inevitable collision. I think the curve balls are easier. No blame, no shame. No harm, no foul.

The foreseen catastrophes are the tough ones.  They can create a series of aftershocks.  “I should have prepared better!” “I could have deflected the blow!” In a society of robots, the post traumatic cleanup on isle seven would take a matter of seconds.  In ours, sorting out why the mess happened in the first place is a big part of the clean-up. If answers come slow and hard, the lingering odour can waft around a person’s groceries for an eternity. Most people go for the Fabreeze therapy and create spheres of distractions for semi-interested observers. Once in a while a lover comes along, pushing his way through the peanut gallery and sniffing out the underlying melee, like a bloodhound on scat. If he can get close enough his hugs will hurt like healing, squeezing bubbles of tide and joy all over the place. If not, the musk remains.

Here is the question.  What if the catastrophe is a perfect, crafted blow that does a surgical damage, exposing festering slivers that might have grown into blinding planks? The exposition is agonizingly messy. The extraction is likely to be a much deeper pain. The potential for more disaster is immense, but a well-healed scar speaks a tale of a battle fought and won.

Fast-forward out of the Psychobabble and into room 1026 on the tenth floor of the Spinal Unit. Great view of the city, except Dad and I haven’t been able to book the window bed. We do have the TV on our side of the room, and Bubba has just won the Masters without ever having a golf lesson. Other lessons, for sure. Becoming a father is bound to change priorities and take the pressure off of his golf game. I almost heard his emotional acceptance speech while grabbing for the spit-up pan and unsuccessfully thrusting handfuls of Kleenex under the paternal stubble-chin. I always tear up when someone wins a tournament, except when a grateful underdog wins.  Then I usually weep like a maple tree.

This is the third day of the post-surgical marathon.  I was praying for a sprint like the last time we were here, in this same hospital, with the same broken back.  This is not the same. This time we are recovering from an 8-hour surgery.  At age seventy-seven, the stakes are higher and the care more acute. The morning gave a cranky blend of unmentionable oddities and a few wretches in the wrong direction. Then the doctor gave the news of a possible transfer to hometown in a few days, but only if everyone behaves and does the strict regimen of pneumonia-reducing huff and puffing.  Spirits have jumped to the next level, eagerly dragging the body in tow.

So, the catastrophe has hit.  The questions are being asked.  The tweezers are in hand.  I just hope that the deed is clean and quick so that the healing can begin. Nobody can see through two-by-four colored glasses without falling off the road.

For most of us, navigating through the teenage years was like looking into a mirror, trying to find ourselves, while simultaneously sauntering through a field of landmines. The platform shoes I was wearing (standard coolness equipment in the 70′s) were not helping my odds for a successful journey either. It was during this phase, when my brain was somewhere between under-baked and almost evident, that I suddenly decided I no longer needed to breathe. Well, it didn’t happen exactly like that. It was a more gradual decline into a state of oxymoronogenic deprivation.

I can vividly remember watching an uncool young man who had a slightly distended belly and thinking to myself, “How uncool is that”? The fact that he was motoring by me in the 400 yard dash was lost to my semi-firing cognition. On that day, I decided that I would never have an uncool, distended, although quite speedy, belly. My naturally swayed back would have much to say about this decision in the years that followed.

So, a couple of months into my belly assassination plot, I was exhausted from all the situps, tummy crunches, burgers and fries… nope, not gonna give those up! Then I discovered the ultimate shortcut to charlesatlasness. I could just hold in my stomach and, voila, it was gone. You would have likely rolled on the floor in hysterical fitness if you had seen me the first few times I went to the beach. Where my absixpack was supposed to be was a chasm the size of my sister’s Frisbee. By the time I arrived home I was exhausted from all the tight effort. And my brain was having difficulty connecting the dots that I was seeing.

This is the point when the cruel slap of peer honesty would have been very helpful. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have any friends that were honest, or courageous, or even cruel. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I even had any friends. Family kept trying to bring me to their senses, but they don’t count until you’re 22.

Fast forward thirty years or so. Is it too late to get some oxygen to these under-sensored cerebral circuits? That’s the sneaky craftiness of the human body. You create the right conditions and it can regenerate. At least that is what I and a million intelligent, over-educated bloggers believe. So, now I am unlearning the shallow breathing and letting it all hang out. It is tougher than I thought it would be. Especially at night when I have to breathe in my dreams. Pray for my wife. I don’ think she has seen me with a lager belly before.

I’ve been thinking about the way faith can be like breathing. A shallow, self-conscious faith can be as debilitating as shallow breathing, causing a shortage of spiritual gas. Some of us need to change the conditions so our faith can regenerate. It might take a dying to the self-image. It might take an openness to input from friends. Probably, though, it will take a “letting it all hang out” honesty that is an invitation for God to demonstrate His love on our behalf. Check out this video. Maybe it is time to breathe again.

Chris Tomlin – I Lift My Hands (Official Music Video) from emimusic on GodTube.