Strike A Blow For Sanity: Take a Holiday From the Holidays

Photo Credit: Lightstock: Christ centered, royalty free photos

So I am sitting here, engaging one of my favorite past-times, which is watching youtube, when . . .

I know, YOU think it is a waste of time but I know YT as an invaluable tool for creative types like me.  The ROI on great ideas and amazing, informative information has got to be, like, 100 to 1.  

I've come up with so many great ideas from watching youtube I don't know what to do with them all.  The inside of my brain is like Fibber McGee's closet (for those of you too young for this reference, think of the reality show, "Hoarders").  
So here is an idea that actually made it outside of my brain and into my word processing program.

WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF US??!!

It comes courtesy of one of television's all-time great comedy series, "Seinfeld," and from one of comedy's all time great characters, George Costanza's father, Frank.  You know, THE GUY WHO YELLS AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS ALL THE TIME, PLAYED BY THE ACTOR JERRY STILLER!!  

Frank Costanza, who invented FESTIVUS FOR THE REST OF US!!!

Sheer genius.  Unmitigated social nirvana.

You may be thinking that Festivus is some sort of pagan, secular humanist alternative to Christmas.  And you'd probably be at least half right.  I don't think the Seinfeld show writers were terribly keen on Jesus as the reason for the season.

But that Frank Costanza had the right idea.  I think we can learn some things from him.  For instance,

1. He had that moment of insight, when he was pummeling another human being in a toy store in a fit of holiday buying frenzy, that something had gone terribly wrong.
2. He found tinsel to be distracting.  I do too. Tinsel is definitely counterproductive to enjoying holidays.
3. He was driven to rebel against the blatant commercialism of the holidays.  I am not sure I want to rebel by putting an unadorned aluminum pole up in my living room, but I definitely see his point.

Iglesia Bill Harrod Christmas 2011
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

There is no need, of course, to slavishly copy all of Frank Costanza's ideas.

For instance, I would NOT recommend copying the Festivus tradition of sitting your family down and recounting all the ways they have disappointed you.

MAKE A PLAN

Here are a few things I'd recommend, just to prime the pump for your own brainstorming:

1. Write out a holiday manifesto. Put down in black and white all the things that stress you about the holidays, then declare your freedom.  Write out what you want your holiday experience to feel like, to look like and what you want to feel when the holidays are over.
2. Focus on what YOU can change to make the holidays more meaningful, NOT on what you wish other people would do with the holidays.  Please do NOT saddle your children or your friends and family with traditions, demands or manipulative expectations to make YOUR holiday happier.  
3. Say "no" to at least one irrational holiday activity this year.  Figure out how to say "no" to one of those crazy obligations that only make you LESS like that person whose birthday we will celebrate on Dec. 25.  
4. Now this next step is important: Schedule an Activity to Replace that useless, crazy holiday obligation.  Ideally it would be an activity that genuinely helps other human beings, that requires you to get up off the couch and into relationship with actual human beings.  No fair creating another crazy obligation- that will defeat the purpose- but trust the genius of serving others during the holidays.
5. Spend 25% less this year. Start by asking for less.  See if your extended family or your immediate family would agree to setting a dollar limit on gifts, or eliminating gift giving in favor of a service activity that would get you all together doing something for someone else.
6. Make a real effort to engage in 50% less drama. You could start by making a resolution NOT to tell someone how much they have disappointed you.  Or you can resolve to simply respond with "I love you," when someone else tries to guilt you.  Just "I love you." Period. Oh, and you might avoid at least 50% less drama by bowing out of one of those exhausting, irrational, crazy-making obligations you get yourself into every Christmas.
7. Take time to remember and honor the people who are not here with you this Christmas.  Friends who retired, children who are busy during the holidays or who will be spending time with your ex, loved ones who have died.  

When it comes to people who are still living, #7 can sometimes be tricky.  It is usually not a good idea to play up the "I miss you so much because your rat of a mother wouldn't let you spend Christmas with me," angle.  That one is guaranteed to give your child a Christmas memory you are not going to enjoy having played back to you when they are thirty-something.  

"I love you" is good.  Just "I love you."  Or "I am so proud of you," that is equally good.  If you need to get difficult feelings out, talk to a friend or write a letter with ALL your feelings but don't send it.  That kind of writing may help you to unburden yourself without dumping on others during the holidays.

My last idea is this: take some time to read the story of Jesus' birth.  I mean start early and read it often.  You can find two slightly different versions in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke.  Here's a wonderful link to the Christmas story that also has links to more stuff.  

The idea of actually spending Christmas-tide getting to know the story of Jesus' birth is pretty novel these days.  It could radically change your experience of Christmas.

O.K., thanks for putting up with so much tongue-in-cheek humor today. 

I know these aren't all the ways to make a truly life-giving, sacred holiday, one that really is for the rest of us who see how insane things have gotten.  Leave a comment about something you are doing this holiday season to reclaim Christmas for Christ.

Blessings,
Mark

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

Where is Your Refuge Today?

The Horner Family Chapel in Baylor Health Care Systems' Outpatient Cancer Center
Photo Credit: Mark Grace

On the edge of the Baylor University Medical Center campus, enveloped in the heart of a gleaming state-of-the-art building dedicated to healing from cancer and to the support of those whose lives have been upended by their experience with the disease, there is a quiet place, spacious and simple in its design, that is dedicated to the presence of God and the experience of prayer.

One cancer patient told Jennifer Holder, one of our oncology chaplains at the time, "I love this place.  I found God's presence here, in the midst of an overwhelming experience."

The cross shines through in a burst of light whose calming and healing rays extend upward and outward. The altar is formed in the shape of the Hebrew letter ayin, which symbolizes the light of God's ever-watchful, loving gaze upon all who enter.*

Where is your refuge?  Chapels and crosses and altars may help you remember, but nothing can bring you relief until you seek refuge in God, and return to your rest in the One whose compassion for you never fails.

Hear the Psalmist today:

Psalm 116

¹ I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;
    he heard my cry for mercy.
² Because he turned his ear to me,
    I will call on him as long as I live.

³ The cords of death entangled me,
    the anguish of the grave came over me;
    I was overcome by distress and sorrow.
⁴ Then I called on the name of the Lord:
    “Lord, save me!”

⁵ The Lord is gracious and righteous;
    our God is full of compassion.
⁶ The Lord protects the unwary;
    when I was brought low, he saved me.

⁷ Return to your rest, my soul,
    for the Lord has been good to you.

*AYIN: means "eye," or "to see." By extension it also means "to understand and to obey." Ayin further refers to the primeval light, mentioned in Genesis 1:3. According to the midrash, the light of God is far greater than the light that emanates from the sun and the stars.  Though concealed in the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew and Christian bibles), our spiritual eyes can behold the presence of this radiance (see John 1) but only with the help of the Holy Spirit (ruach hakodesh).  from the website, "Hebrew for Christians"

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

Silver Linings Playbook and the Spirituality of Imperfection

Photo Credit: The Weinstein Company

In the darkened theater, as the credits were rolling on this screwball dark horse of a romantic comedy, I turned to Linda and said, "I think we just discovered another Christmas tradition."

Not that Silver Linings is full of Yuletide glow, but it is a movie with a heart and a soul, one that exalts what Christmas wants to be for so many of us.  Because of that it can be forgiven for its imperfect portrayal of mental illness and family dysfunction (I saw a tweet on this last night I thought was terribly arch: "I never knew mental illness could be so good-looking.")

Mental Illness Never Looked So Good

Silver Linings Playbook is about Pat, a high school teacher who, after finding his wife in the shower with another teacher, has a break down, nearly beats the guy to death, and is sent to a psychiatric hospital.  He is still desperately in love with the (ex)wife who wronged him, won't take his meds and is skating a manic step just ahead of more personal catastrophe and another trip back to the looney bin.   He meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who seems every bit as confused and broken and heading in the wrong direction as Pat.  The two proceed to help each other out.  I won't spoil the plot by giving any more details.

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence may be so much better looking than your average person struggling with mental illness, but then they are way better looking that your average person, period.  Despite this unfortunate handicap, both of them rise above their God- and makeup artist-given challenges to provide pitch perfect performances.

As a veteran of both sides of the therapeutic and life-crisis divide, I CAN tell you that the performances of every major cast member were just about as perfectly imperfect as you could ask.  Cooper and Lawrence along with Deniro, Chris Tucker and Jackie Weaver inhabit their roles as though they knew something about their characters' inner lives.

Of course this movie does not tell the whole story.  There is as much Hollywood as reality in Silver Linings.  There is enough reality, however, to invite thoughtful human beings into a re-examination of our ideas about the complex, confusing and often anguishing experiences that we lump into the catch-all label of "mental illness."  If you are curious to know more of the facts, I'd strongly encourage you to click here.

As I watched the plot unfold and characters develop, however, I was repeatedly reminded of friends and counselees, hospital patients and homeless human beings I have known over the years, and I felt tears coming to my eyes. I felt myself mourning the courageous individuals I have known who did not make it out of their personal torment while also  rejoicing for so many people I've witnessed write even better true-life screen plays with their lives than the one I was witnessing unfold on Saturday night.

I thought of the close friend I knew in the eighties who was homeless, living out of his car while struggling to recover from mental illness and drug addiction and I thought of the dog he cared for.  That dog was his major therapeutic project, he said, because, "I've never been responsible for anything except my habit, and this dog is keeping me clean and sober."

I thought of the psychiatric patient who carefully explained to me why he was Jesus.  I was reminded of the emergency room patient who stopped in the middle of a rant closely resembling one that Cooper acts out in this movie to look at me with desperate eyes and plead for me to pray for her emotional release.  I thought of a beautiful young woman- Jennifer Lawrence gorgeous-on an adolescent psychiatric ward who planned and participated in a memorial service for her younger brother, dead four years from a successful suicide attempt.

These people and so many more were in my mind as I watched this movie, so that I found myself tearing up at unexpected moments and laughing in between punch lines.

Are We Actually Applauding?

I can't remember the last time I was in a theater, watching a comedy where the audience laughed so much.  It has easily been a decade since I've been in a theater where the audience applauded at the end of the movie.

Yes, the movie has an "R" rating, though I'm a little puzzled at that, given some PG 13 movies that come to mind, and no it doesn't include an overtly Christian message.  

I don't require a movie script, director, or actors to share my world view-- in fact I happen to think in that it is generally a good thing to understand how others who don't share my beliefs or values may see this world-- so those things were not a problem for me.

So Much Depends On Imperfect People Caring for Imperfect People

What Silver Linings did so well was to show the crucial roles that family and friends and all the other "extra-therapeutic factors" play in the healing and recovery that many, many people find on their journey through Bedlam.

It may surprise you to know that while counselors and medications have their role to play, the vast majority of positive outcomes that happen for those struggling with mental and emotional problems are brought about by finding purpose, friendship and the support of family.

Pat's family seems every bit as screwy as he is at times. It becomes painfully obvious that some of Pat's burdens are directly related to his family history.   Growing up in that screwy family has not always helped him.  

Photo Credit: Mark Grace

In the end, however, it is the love, courage and intense, imperfect, often bungling commitment of family and friends that makes the difference for this movie and for its protagonist.  While faith is never mentioned in Silver Linings, I can tell you that my faith AND experience have given me a deep understanding of how people can learn to love one another in ways that heal.

I see it every Sunday when I look at the faces of my friends and parishioners at Iglesia Bill Harrod.

None of us are perfect.  Nearly all of us come to church because of our poignant awareness of our flawed natures, and our desire to find something better than we have known.  We aren't perfect in our love for and support of one another, but what I have seen work miracles is the determined commitment of people to one another, the healing power of finding purpose in serving Christ, and the strength that community provides.

That brings me to the last thing I was reminded of on Saturday night as Linda and I drove home, talking all the way about this wonderful movie.  It is a book written by the chronicler of Alcoholics Anonymous, titled, "The Spirituality of Imperfection."  

As I thought of all the "mentally ill" people I've known and worked with in my lifetime, of the untold number of people bearing wounds in the very core of their lives, I also thought of how much healing I've seen them bring to one another and to my life.  

"We have this treasure in earthen vessels," the Apostle revealed.  For an hour and one-half while watching this movie, I think I glimpsed the genius of God's plan to use those imperfect, earthen vessels to bring healing to this broken down world.

Who are the imperfect, slightly eccentric, and totally committed people who have helped you find healing?  Leave a comment.

Blessings,
Mark

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Friendship's Power to Carry Us Through

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Yesterday I preached on Ruth 1:1-18, where Ruth says to her mother-in-law, "Do not entreat me to leave you . . . where you live I will live . . . where you go I will go . . . your people will be my people and your God will be my God."  Ruth's name means "friend," and in that moment she showed the depth of her friendship in an amazing demonstration of self-sacrifice and commitment.  

Ruth's story made me think of Hazel Rhodes Thomas.  Hazel is a chaplain colleague who lives and works in Houston.  She is also a former Clinical Pastoral Education Resident in our program in the Baylor Health Care System who has just given a kidney to a friend.  Wow.  Talk about commitment.

Isn't it amazing the unexpected way in which determined loyalty and love given as a gift to someone else, so often comes back to grace us with miraculous power?  

Today is Monday.  I know Mondays can be hard.  But today cannot possibly be harder than the situation Naomi and Ruth found themselves in so long ago.  Each had lost every man in their lives who could possibly be of any help to them.  They found themselves destitute, without prospects for the future.

Their only possible investment was in one another.  Yet that proved to be enough.  Fifteen hundred years later Jesus would pledge his friendship to all of us who would become his disciples.  "I no longer call you servants.  I call you friends," he said, just hours before he sacrificed his life for each of us.

Who do you need to invest in today?  Who needs your commitment, your loyalty and your fierce, loving support today, your willingness to go above and beyond in friendship?

I am praying that the secret of friendship doesn't just help you to make it through this Monday.  I am praying that it launches you into week of abundant joy.

Leave a comment about a friendship that has seen you through tough times.  I'd love to read about it.

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

Hope for the Hopeless? Jesus on Divorce

Below you will find the conclusion to Linda's sermon on Mark 10:2-16.  Without collapsing the tension or avoiding the dilemma that Jesus' teaching poses, she points us to a surprise ending, one that is routinely overlooked when this passage is preached.

The disciples are listening in when the Pharisee’s propose this question: "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" and it appears they are equally stunned by his response to the Pharisees. 

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“What did he say?  Did Jesus just say that Moses was wrong?"  

As soon as they are alone, they ask Jesus the same question again.  This time, Jesus goes even further; not only is divorce not allowed, but anyone who remarries, man or woman, is committing adultery.

Why would he say that?  It sounds like the ultimate sin and Jesus offers, it seems, no way out.  

OUR DISORIENTING DILEMMA

In contrast to Jesus' words in Mark 10, there are other passages where Jesus ministers tenderly and lovingly to the woman caught in adultery.  He rescues her from almost certain death, and after he has cleared the field of her would-be executioners, all he says to her is this: go and sin no more.  

There is also the woman at the well, who Jesus knows has been in and out of relationships over and over again and then living with someone to whom she was not married.  Instead of pronouncing her sin to be unforgivable  Jesus offers himself to her as living water that will wash away her sin and her guilt. 

So how are we to understand Jesus' words in Mark 10?  

MAKING SENSE OF MARK 10

I think two keys that unlock Jesus' meaning are found at the beginning of this passage and at the very end.

The passage begins with a question from Jesus' enemies, a faction of the group known as the Pharisees.  These religious men came for one reason and one reason only. Mark tells us that they came with a question intended to trick him.  They were not after anything real or life-giving.  Their purpose was to find a way to humiliate Jesus.  

Instead, Jesus sees their true intentions.  Even more important, he is able to see something in their question that they themselves have not anticipated. 

You see, the Pharisees where guilty of having made the law into something that effectively blocked the path to God—for themselves and everyone else.  For everyone else, because the 10 commandments given by Moses had been expanded to become 613 commandments that almost no one could keep.

Only the rich and well-educated had a chance at being able to meet all of the rules and regulations.  That is why Jesus repeatedly chastises the religious rulers of his day because they used the law as a battering ram, beating down the people instead of using it to draw the faithful to God.

But, their use of the law also blocked their own path to God—and that is what Jesus saw and they did not—nor in this case did the disciples.  Neither the Pharisees or the disciples saw that the law, turned by human beings into a giant list of do’s and don’ts—also meant that if, indeed, one thought that they were fulfilling the law, they effectively had no need whatsoever of God.  

God was out of the picture—if we can earn our salvation by following all the rules, who needs God—on the other hand, if the rules are so burdensome that we can never hope to follow all of them then our path to God is blocked.

In his response to the Pharisees' trick question, Jesus does what he is so good at; he refuses to be boxed in by the legalism of his questioners.  

Jesus changes the question by broadening the meaning of the law so that it is abundantly clear that no one, no one, can ever meet the letter of the law by themselves.  

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, "You have heard that it is said (in the law) do not murder, but I tell you that anyone who has been angry with his brother has committed murder.  You have heard that it was said do not commit adultery, but I tell you that if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery. You have heard it said, love your enemies, but I say to you to do good to those who persecute you."

Indeed, Jesus' persistent message to to all of us is simply this: we cannot earn our salvation by being good enough to keep the law all by ourselves.

We have all gotten angry, most of us have lusted after someone else, and most of us have great difficulty doing good things to those who seem to hate us.

And so it is in this passage.  "No," Jesus says, "don’t even consider divorce.  It is not allowed. If you divorce and remarry you are still in deep trouble because now you have committed adultery."

So, what a are we to do?  

THE ENDING WE HAVE OVERLOOKED

I believe the answer is found in the very last verses of our reading today.  These verses we read today are rarely included, but there is very strong evidence that they belong here.  

Without missing a beat, Mark moves directly from the discussion of a very difficult topic, to tell us that people are bringing children to Jesus to be blessed.  Whether he did so consciously or unconsciously, the apostle focuses our attention on those who are most often the real victims of divorce.  

The disciples reaction is typical, isn't it?  "Don't bring those kids in here!  We are talking about grown-up stuff."  

Isn't it interesting that these two stories which are jammed so tightly together in Mark's narrative, are so seldom connected to one another? Yet Jesus sees these children not as victims or as intruders into the conversation, but immediately lifts them up as examples and teachers for us.

"Come," Jesus says, "come to God like little children, children who are dependent on God’s mercy and forgiveness."

Those people who think they can make it on their own are living a lie that will suck the life out of them. 

And those of us who have messed up, who failed in our promises to one another and missed the mark badly when it comes to loving and valuing the person we married, well, our only choice is to come to God as the children do.  

We must abandon ourselves to God's life changing forgiveness.  We cannot hope to correct our errors or somehow make up for them.  It is our sin, our need and our child-like faith that have driven us into the arms of God who, as a familiar praise song says, offers rest for the weary and hope for the sinner.

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Stumbling into a River of Grace

There is a line in one of my all-time favorite movies, "A River Runs Through It," that sums up so much of the peculiar ambivalence about grace that I have felt all of my life. 

Norman MacLean is talking about his father, a Presbyterian minister who has an ardent love of fly fishing.  "My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him, all good things - trout as well as eternal salvation - came by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy." MacLean goes on to say that if it were up to his father, no one who fished the wrong way would ever be allowed to disgrace a trout by catching one.

Photo Credit: Mark Grace

I’ve been stuck on that statement for years, trying to think it through.  Some days I cannot see an ounce of grace in that philosophy.  All I see is the older brother complaining about the prodigal son getting off scot free.  The prodigal certainly didn’t go about catching his fish in the right way.  

He stumbled out of a good home with a generous parent, then  hit the road to drunk and disorderly, and finally came crawling back a filthy disgrace.   Didn’t seem to matter.  His father gave him the ring and a feast all the same.

Meanwhile his older brother did everything right.  He worked his heart out to get it right.  To use MacLean’s metaphor, he learned to fish the right way.  In the end, however,  it seems his brother was the one who caught the fish.  That sloppy ne’er do well tripped all over himself and lucked into the biggest catch of a lifetime while his faithful brother had nothing to show for all of his hard work.

Most of my life I’ve stood firmly in support of the older brother in this story, and by extension of Norman MacLean’s father’s take on grace.  Grace should come to those who have mastered the artist’s craft.  The individuals who have put in the time and effort are precisely those who should catch grace

Over the last decade or so, however, things have changed for me.  Passing through agonizing darkness, I confronted my own carefully ignored prodigal failures and found myself sitting at Jesus’ feet in the long hour before dawn, asking him what a braggart who always thought he was the one who got it right but finally realized he had it just about as wrong as it could be gotten would have to do to find peace of mind.

He smiled and said quietly, “You must be born again.”

I hope I haven’t lost you by this point, because I have covered a lot of ground- a movie, a parable ,painful self-disclosure and Jesus talking to Nicodemus.  A lot to take in . . .

I want to pause for a moment and say to you, “Stay with me.  Just a  few more words and I believe I can show you the beauty I found.”

You see, many trout will be caught by hard work and expertise, but now and then some fool will luck into a trophy catch.  And prodigals will have their parties and their fattened calves, as they should have. But then prodigals must wake up on the morning after the big party and learn how to be responsible, hardworking sons of their heavenly father.  

THAT is the real reward. That is why the prodigal was given the ring, after all, as a sign that he had come back to those who really loved him and responsibilities that could finally satisfy him, not just a lucky reward.

I can imagine the older brother waking up after a night of sulking, hung over from an overdose of bitterness and realizing that not one moment of the time he spent working shoulder to shoulder with his father was wasted.

I can see him laying in bed just a little longer on the morning after the feast, remembering the days he basked in the wisdom and love of his father’s presence.  When he gets up to go to work, he may pass his younger brother’s bedroom, the one who is a prodigal no more, and think to himself, “I am so glad I stayed.  I could see the anguish in my brother’s eyes last night.  It will be a long time before he can accept the love that has been offered him. He'll need someone to remind him that it is his to receive.”

Now the prodigal stirs, and stumbles out of bed.  It is his first day back home and he is determined to make good on this second chance.  The obligations from which he fled so long ago no longer appear as chains holding him back.  They have become the new life he was always seeking.

In the end, both the prodigal and his older brother get what they need.   Life in the presence of their father.  

May it be so with you.

Mark

Photo Credit: www.crosscards.com

Your Soul, Is It Well? Try to Remember . . .

Sunset on Winchell Lake, BWCA
Photo Credit: 123RF.com

Paul Sutton, a Baylor chaplain colleague of almost seventeen years,  and I spent most of a day in the air and in a taxi making our way to the wild and lonely Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the adjacent Quetico Provincial Park.  

It was our first time to the BWCA, which sits on the northern border of Minnesota.  

We spent an hour or so on the first evening at the outfitter's lodge talking to the manager, a guy I will call Pete.

I don’t think we impressed Pete at all.  Not one bit. “What sort of fish are you looking to catch?” Pete asked.

There was an awkward silence as Paul and I looked at each other.  “I don’t plan on fishing,” I said attempting to sound casual, “I’m just here for the experience of nature.”  Paul nodded his head in agreement. Pete looked incredulously at the two of us, then ducked his head to the map, describing in excruciating detail his recommended route for two guys who were just up sight-seeing.

Next morning one of Pete’s coworkers met us on the dock with a worried look on his face and the news, phrased as diplomatically as possible, that he wanted to see us handle the seventeen foot kevlar Wenonah canoe.  You read that right.  Paul and I had to test-paddle the canoe before they would let us take it out. To add insult to injury I had to be shown how to use a bent paddle.  We managed to satisfy our instructor, and we were off.  I swear I could see a panicked look on the man's face as he stood on the dock watching us balance a heavily loaded seventeen foot canoe.

Before we had paddled very far on Moose Lake, we were greeted by a Bald Eagle who silently glided above us and down the length of our boat.  We gasped in wonder and rocked the Wenonah as we craned our necks to see him float by. 

Our first campsite was picture-perfect.  The sunset was grander than any I had known.  The lake was still, reflecting the shifting hues of peach and gold, then deep blues and finally purples as the sun set.  The September air became palpably colder and heavier.  

As if queued by a conductor, a chorus of unearthly whinnying calls of Common Loons drifted into our camp from across the water.  We listened, enthralled by the purity of music they made. We had difficulty getting to sleep as we reveled in each new sound.  Later it occurred to us to worry about whether we had hung our food cache high enough to keep it away from bears, then worried if that might enrage the bears. 

We spent the next five days canoeing through six lakes, straining to translate two-dimensional map symbols into three dimensions of dense, unfamiliar landscapes that changed according to time of day, amount of light and the kind of weather.

Paul must have heard me say “Just keep paddling,” often enough to want to throw me out of the boat.  I couldn’t understand why he wanted to stop to consult the map so often.  Later- much later- we would joke about it and informally label the experience, “In the Middle of Nowhere: Two Angry Guys Alone In A Canoe.”

We managed to stay on track and on time, paddling from one end of each lake to the other, skirting islands on the big waters and tree falls and underwater obstacles on the smaller.  We learned to unpack the canoe and portage supplies and canoe from one lake to the next with  a certain efficiency. 

We adjusted to an entirely new rhythm.  For long stretches we endured boredom.  Often we were overcome with awe as we witnessed creation at its wildest and most beautiful.  On several occasions our hearts were in our throats as we encountered unexpected risks.  The worst day for fear happened when we battled high winds and choppy waves on Knife Lake.  I paddled in desperation, terrified  as the waves bounced the bow of the boat so high that Paul’s paddle barely touched water.  Somehow we figured out the line we would need to paddle in order to advance toward our goal down the length of Knife’s long narrow gorge without broaching and so tipping ourselves and our supplies into September’s chill waters.

A calm Knife Lake, Quetico Provincial Park
Photo Credit: 123RF.com

On the very last portage, Paul cracked his ankle.  He had sprained it during an earlier portage.  The BWCA seemed determined to exact some sort of toll for letting two tender feet through safely.

For me it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Since then we have talked about how each of us arrived on the BWCA struggling with personal pain and anguish.  We weren’t looking to catch any fish; each of us seemed to be looking for a way to leave a load of anguish up there in the wilderness.

One night we camped out on a tiny island of ancient precambrian rock thrust up from the lake bed. The stony island was clothed in a thin coat of ferns, white and red pine and a few spruce trees.  Paul and I leaned against boulders that had witnessed the beginning of earth's creation and stared silently into the night sky.  The heavens were so black and the stars were so near that it felt as though I might extinguish them if I breathed too heavily.  

Paul began to sing a hymn.   After a moment I joined him. As I recall, the hymn was “It Is Well with My Soul.”  

And it was.  

And so it is on this Monday morning, whether we know it or not.  To quote Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

What memories keep your soul well?  How do they call you back from the brink of anxiety and fear? Leave a comment to tell us about the memory that keeps you well.

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