Traveling in Place

Finally...A Clear View from Giant Mt.

My relationship with Giant Mountain began eight years ago.  That’s when I and my son Aaron, who was 16 at the time, got up early one morning, drove to St. Hubert’s in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks, and scrambled our way up the Roaring Brook trail to the top of this impressive peak.  The forecast that day was for sunny skies, so we expected a spectacular view to reward our efforts.  But at the top, all we could see was a thick blanket of clouds floating below us. (See first picture below.)  We then trekked over to Rocky Peak Ridge, another high peak that sits right next to Giant.  When we reached that summit, we were in the middle of a cloud, and visibility was approximately three feet.

Three years later, Aaron and I were joined by my son Alex for a hike up the Ridge Trail to the top of Giant.  Again, the forecast was for uninterrupted blue skies, which we did see most of the way up.  This spectacular hike traverses a lot of open rock with expansive views that we were able to enjoy.  But the higher we climbed, the more humid the air became, and when we got to the top, we were treated to low-hanging clouds and a thick summer haze.  We could just barely see the outline of peaks in the distance. (See second picture.) When we hiked to Rocky Peak Ridge, we watched a thundershower roll across Giant’s summit.

I’ve been up part of the Ridge Trail two other times, once in the winter on snowshoes and once in the fall when leaf color was peaking, but on neither occasion did I have the time to get to the top. 

I had pretty much decided I would never see an unobstructed, clear view from the summit of Giant Mountain.

Underneath the Violence

Last week’s movie theatre massacre by James Holmes has produced a tiresomely predictable debate about gun control.  The 24-year-old who declared himself “the Joker” opened fire during the premier of the latest “Batman” movie, killing 12 and injuring 58 others.  The shooting spree, which involved an assault rifle, a shotgun, and two handguns, has bolstered the campaign of gun-control advocates who want to renew the ban on assault weapons that Congress allowed to expire in 2004.  In response, gun-rights advocates argue that had others in the theatre been armed, Holmes’ violence might have been curbed.  They argue further that weapons bans do not prevent violent criminals from illegally obtaining firearms, but do leave law-abiding citizens helpless to defend themselves.

Gun enthusiasts like to say, “Guns don’t kill people, people do.”  That is true.  It is also true that guns don’t solve anything, people do.  The stale argument over the Second Amendment misses the larger point driven home by Holmes’ senseless massacre: America is a violent society.  And the violence is rooted in the deterioration of community, which leaves the most troubled people isolated in their worst fantasies.  The list of mass shooters that has been growing since two high school students opened fire in Columbine, Colorado thirteen years ago is made up of troubled individuals who share one thing in common: they were all deeply isolated. 

Many of these shooters suffered mental illness, but that illness was exacerbated by the lack of a healthy support system.  The school shootings were committed in large, boxy buildings located in sprawling suburbs.  All of these violent sprees have been committed by “lone” gunmen.  (The two teens who paired up to commit the Columbine massacre were quite alone in that student body.)  None were acting in behalf of a larger cause or making a statement in protest of some perceived injustice.  They were playing out deranged fantasies that were allowed to grow to horrible proportions because, for whatever reason, they belonged to no discernible community. 

Mowing a Dry Lawn

This week, I mowed the lawn for the first time in nearly a month.  My grass is still brown and lifeless, but the weeds don’t mind the drought conditions we’ve been experiencing.  For a number of years now, I’ve been content to let anything grow in the yard that’s green.  So even after weeks of dry weather, I’ve still got some color.

But if I neglect the weeds for too long, they stop looking like benign alternatives to cultivated grass.  They spread out, shoot up and give the yard the appearance of an abandoned parking lot.  Before that happens, it’s a good idea to run the lawnmower and at least even out the ground foliage.  Of course, I could give the grass a fighting chance by watering the lawn from the spigot until the drought is over, but if everybody did that, we would create a serious water shortage.  So at our home, we water our flowers, shrubs, and vegetable plants, but when it comes to the lawn, we take whatever nature gives us and try to keep the weeds at bay.

As I was pushing the mower across my parched weed-infested lot, sweating profusely from the humidity and stopping frequently to wipe big, salty drops from my eyebrows, I was thinking about those inevitable times of life when we feel spiritually dry – when we have no inclination to pray, no excitement about faith, and little or no awareness of God’s presence. We long for the showers of grace that once fell abundantly, but find only a beating sun above us and hard, dry ground below us.  And we wonder what’s wrong with us.

In the Digital World But Not of It

A little over two years ago, I started writing this blog.  A little over two months ago, our church went “viral” by entering the world of “Facebook.”  Any day now, we will be launching a new updated version of our website that will allow us to relate more effectively to the on-line community.   These steps in technology are not just luxuries.  The reality of this digital age is that, unless our church has a strong presence in cyberspace, we are largely invisible.  An attractive, interactive, user-friendly website, a Facebook page, and blogging are critical to our church’s outreach and ministry.

I know this, but some aspects of the digital world still make me uncomfortable.  For one thing, it bugs me that “friend” can now be a noun or a verb, and “friends” are collected like baseball cards.  What does this elastic definition do for the hymn title “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”?  I can’t even make myself say publicly, “Find us on Facebook and be sure to like us!”  That just sounds too much like an insecure teenager begging for attention.  More importantly, I know we have stepped into a universe whose affects on society are decidedly mixed.  On the one hand, the Internet is a great equalizer that has democratized the world of ideas.  Valuable information is much more accessible than ever.  Communication has entered a whole new dimension, so that long-lost friends have reconnected, scattered extended families are staying in touch, and people from around the planet are talking to each other.  In some places, grass-roots political cyber-movements have challenged corrupt powers.

On the other hand, the explosion in information and the exchange of ideas appears to have done more to polarize us than bring us together.  We are harder in our ideologies, less patient, less willing to listen or consider different points of view, and surprised at nothing.  The line between fact and opinion seems to have been smeared into oblivion.  The rumor mill has accelerated to light speed.  Spin has replaced thoughtful consideration of just about anything said or written publicly. 

A Brief Word of Thanks

We haven’t heard the sound of lawnmowers in our neighborhood in quite awhile.  Like a lot of other places around the country, we’ve been suffering through above average temperatures and below average rainfall, so the lawns are brown and dormant.  Flower and vegetable gardens have relied on hose water for several weeks.

So the thickening clouds that greeted us this morning were a welcome sight.  The crowd at church was pretty good for mid-July.  We welcomed a new member and commissioned our high school youth who are leaving on a mission trip next week.  All this was good.  But the smell of coming rain as people made their way into the building made it even better.  I started the service this morning with a single word prayer – more of a command, actually – “RAIN!”  The congregation repeated this plea in full voice as we gazed out the windows.  During the scripture readings, we heard rolling thunder.  Before the sermon was done, sheets of water were cascading down off the roof.  So the first word of thanks during the pastoral prayer was for the rain.

This is the first summer we have enjoyed an air-conditioned sanctuary, made possible by a bequest given from the estate of a church member who died last year.  Since the sanctuary sits a half story above ground, heat and humidity like to collect there.  Opening the windows and back doors brought little relief from the sense that we had crammed into someone’s attic for worship.  My sermons were probably mostly lost on the committed souls who sweated through them.  So the air-conditioning has been a welcome change.  Now, even on the most uncomfortable summer days, our sanctuary is an inviting place full of cool, dry air.

I’m grateful, however, that our sanctuary also has windows through which we see foliage and sky.  Air conditioning has the effect of closing people off from each other and the outdoors.   The old-timers in my native South lament how air-conditioning there completely transformed summers from lemonade and ice-tea on the front porch to TV in the living room.   Because we have air-conditioning, we keep the sanctuary windows closed, but we can still see when it’s raining outside, and sunlight still pours in when it breaks through the clouds.  So I believe we have found a good balance between comfort and awareness, between technology and nature. 

As I write, it’s early on Sunday afternoon.  More rain is on the way.  I’m feeling grateful for another day of worship, Sabbath, and God’s provision.

Copyright 2012 by J. Mark Lawson

Religion and Politics

A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds that a growing number of Americans want their houses of worship to keep out of politics.  The number has risen from 43% in 1996 to 54% today.  Meanwhile, the “Faith Matters” project sponsored by Notre Dame University finds that people are hearing less about politics from the pulpit.  Hot-button social issues no longer receive as much attention while efforts to galvanize worshipers to vote a certain way have been largely abandoned.

One of the lessons of the last 40 years of American religion is that parishioners don’t like churches getting mixed up in politics.  Mainline Protestant churches lost members in the 1970’s, partly because leaders in those denominations were seen as too closely aligned with liberal politics.  The conservative evangelical churches that rose up in their place mobilized to transform the Republican Party.  Now, evangelical churches are seeing an exodus of members who object to their churches being too closely aligned with conservative politics.

The conservative churches that triumphantly rode the wave of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and other highly politicized organizations wrongly assumed that American Christians had rejected liberalism when they left the mainline churches.  But what we know now is that American Christians don’t like religious partisanship of any kind, whether liberal or conservative.

The moral of this story would seem to be that churches should just stay out of politics.  But that’s a bit simplistic.  If we choose to be a-political, we become

On Trails and Traditions

On Tuesday, my son Nathaniel and I climbed Ampersand Mountain, a 3,352-foot peak that affords a view described in the ADK trail guide as “one of the best in the Adirondacks.”  It sits between the high peaks to the south and east and the lake country to the north and west.  In the 19^th century, surveyor Verplank Colvin had all the trees removed from the peak.  Erosion washed away the remaining soil, so now the expansive summit is open rock.

This was not the first climb up Ampersand for either of us.  Our whole family made the same trek back in 2003 when we were all hiking neophytes.  The length of the trail from the highway to the summit is 2.7 miles.  The first 1.2 miles is mostly on the flat, and the next half-mile is only moderately steep.  So 1,400 of the 1,800 feet of elevation gain come in the last mile.  Nine years ago, despite our dropped-jaw reaction to the 360-degree view at the top, we completed that trail wondering how we made it and vowing never to try it again.  Ampersand to this day remains our family’s definition of a steep hike.

In the last few years, I’ve wanted to return.  After climbing the likes of Gothics, Colden, the entire McIntyre Range, and Marcy, I suspected that Ampersand wouldn’t seem like such a daunting challenge.  But I assumed that, whenever I did return, I would be scrambling to the top on my own.  Nathaniel’s older brothers have joined me for several strenuous hikes, but have always remembered Ampersand with a groan and a shake of the head.  Nathaniel has been to the summit of several smaller peaks, but has never been a big fan of hiking.  So it was a nice surprise when he said he’d like to do a mountain hike with me.  And I was even more surprised that he only hesitated for a few seconds when I suggested Ampersand.  “Sure,” he said confidently.  “Let’s do it.”