Traveling in Place

A Walk in the Clouds

Wednesday morning, Nathaniel and I ventured out for one last hike before the end of our Adirondack retreat.  Clouds were hanging low, but every forecast indicated the sun would be burning them off by late morning.  We headed up Pitchoff Mountain.  The higher we got, the soupier the fog. When it became obvious that we would be afforded no commanding vistas, I was mostly concerned about how disappointed Nathaniel would be. Turns out, my concern was misplaced.

Standing on an outcrop that on most days would provide a clear view of the falls on the side of Cascade Mountain, Nathaniel said, “This is cool. I’ve never hiked in the clouds before.” He also told me how nice it felt. “When you hike in clear weather,” he explained, “you’re always sweating. This is much more comfortable.” It’s not that he doesn’t revel in breathtaking panoramas. Who wouldn’t? But this walk in the clouds provided its own rewards.

As we continued on, climbing to what was sure to be a complete whiteout at the summit, a thought developed in my head. Knowing there was no great view awaiting us, we weren’t hurrying to get to anything. We were just hiking for the sake of hiking. It seemed to me that this settled us into a more relaxed pace (even though some of the steeper scrambles were quite challenging). We had slowed to a saunter – or its hiking equivalent. The word “saunter” derives from the same root as the word “saint.” A saunter is a sacred walk that is unconcerned with a destination, for the focus is on the walk itself.

This led me to an additional thought. In the ancient Middle Eastern world of the Bible, clouds were associated with God’s glory. (That’s probably because big thunderheads are pretty scarce, so when they come, they turn heads.) Moses was covered in a cloud on Mt. Sinai as he stood in the presence of God. The same thing

Retracing an Earlier Hike

My son Nathaniel and I are spending a few days in the Adirondacks. This morning, we climbed up Cascade and Porter mountains. Ten years ago, when Nathaniel was in the 4^th grade, our whole family spent the first of several summer vacations camping in this area, and we decided to try hiking. Just to warm up, we scrambled up Mt. Jo, a tiny peak overlooking Heart Lake. Then, we chose to ascend Cascade, because one of the locals informed us that the trail to the top was the shortest for any of the over-4,000-foot high peaks. The view at the summit is one of the best in the park, so it is an amazing reward for the amount of effort involved. For this reason, it is often the first (or only) Adirondack High Peak scaled by many tourists.

Well, ten years ago, we were new to this adventure, so that first trek up Cascade (2.4 miles with an ascent of 1,940 feet to an elevation of 4,098 feet) nearly did us in. But we made it, huffing and puffing, and once we witnessed the 360-degree panorama at the top, we pretty much forgot how hard it had been.

The next year, three of us decided to return up Cascade and then walk over to Porter Mountain, another high peak only a mile from the summit of Cascade. I remember that it took us about two hours to get up Cascade, and the walk down into a col and back up to the summit of Porter seemed like an eternity. But we made it.

Now, the Cascade hike feels easy. Nathaniel and I reached the top in 80 minutes, and the extra jaunt to Porter didn’t bother us a bit.

We started out early – before 8 a.m. – both to beat the summer crowds and to arrive at the top before the sun was so high it would wash out the iconic view to the south toward the Great Range. We had the entire open summit all to ourselves the whole time we were there. Same for Porter.

On the way down, we must have seen a hundred people. Given Cascade’s

In Search of Male Identity

My son Aaron recently sent me a link to David Brooks’ latest column. I sometimes find Brooks’ insights compelling, but Aaron has little patience with what he considers Brooks’ “inane analogies to things he feels educated people should know about.” He had nothing good to say about this latest essay. As you can read here, Brooks explores why the number of adult men in the work force has been dropping steadily, and concludes that a major contributing factor is “some ineffable shift in the definition of dignity.” (Aaron: “I am not even sure what this means.”) He references an old John Wayne movie and waxes nostalgic for the image of the classic Western hero.

Many men were raised with a certain image of male dignity, which emphasized autonomy, reticence, ruggedness, invulnerability and the competitive virtues. Now, thanks to a communications economy, they find themselves in a world that values expressiveness, interpersonal ease, vulnerability and the cooperative virtues. Surely, part of the situation is that many men simply do not want to put themselves in positions they find humiliating.

Aaron says this is mostly bunk. I agree. Brooks makes a passing reference to but ultimately discounts what I believe to be a far more important factor for the crisis of male identity in our society: changes in family structure.  Some cultural observers try to blame the women’s movement or the sexual revolution for the decline of families, but the fundamental threat came much earlier. The Industrial Revolution sent men away from home to do their work. Furthermore, industrialism placed a measurable value on work with the creation of the paycheck, which was given only to people who worked outside the home. (Thus, domestic work, including childrearing, was regarded for the first time as having no value.)  

Since men had gone “out to the fields” as farmers, they were the ones to go “away to the factory” (or the office.) This created an untenable family situation. Men became far less invested in their domestic lives. Children rarely or never shared in the work of their fathers. In the early days of industrialism, many men were so bored by the mindlessness of factory work that they turned to drink, further alienating them from their families. The absence of fathers at home meant that boys were deprived of male role models – except for the example of leaving home for work.

And now, the RBNT's

Here’s an interesting new weave in America’s changing religious fabric: in addition to the “Spiritual But Not Religious” (the SBNR’s), we now have the “Religious But Not Theistic” (the RBNT’s, I guess).  That’s right. At Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a growing congregation who call themselves the “Humanist Community” meets every Sunday, sings songs, listens to a message, and takes up a collection. They look remarkably like a church, and in fact are not averse to be called a church, but they do not worship God.  Instead, they focus on the importance of building community.

The creator of this venture, Greg Epstein, is the humanist chaplain at Harvard.  He insists to his fellow atheists that traditional religion has its good points. “We can learn from the positive while learning to get rid of the negative,” he says. As a community-builder, Epstein understands the power of a religious congregation for nurturing a communal ethic. 

As it turns out, the Humanist Community at Harvard is not unique. A similar congregation exists in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, led by former evangelical pastor-turned-atheist Jerry DeWitt. It’s called “Community Mission Chapel.” 

So whereas most “SBNR’s” have rejected institutional religion but still pray to God and seek authentic spirituality, the “RBNT’s” affirm many aspects of traditional religion but reject spirituality and belief in God.

Those of us who continue to worship God within a religious community cannot help but see how these two movements represent two halves of the same whole. The two great commandments, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself,” have been torn asunder.

Marcus Borg relates a frequent conversation he has with his students at Oregon State University. They tell him that, even though his lectures are interesting to them, they have trouble with his use of the word “God” because they don’t believe in God. Borg always responds the same way: “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.” Invariably, he says, they describe a distant, judgmental God who only intervenes in response to certain prayers. “I then tell them I don’t believe in that God, either” (The Heart of Christianity, pp. 68-69).  I chuckled when I read those

We're Not Perfect, but We Could Be Egypt

I spent a good chunk of July 4 at our local annual Jazz Fest, one of the true gems of Central New York culture. I heard local groups, an up-and-coming regional band, and I thrilled to the unbridled exuberance of the New Orleans Preservation Hall Jazz Band.  Before the night was over, I was singing in full voice as the Doobie Brothers banged out their old standards with all the energy, vocal harmony, technical ability and raw talent they had in the 1970’s. And all I had to pay was $5 for a place to park.  At dusk, the 15,000 of us sitting in lawn chairs and on blankets craned our necks skyward to watch and cheer a spectacular fireworks show. Oh, and I ate some really good barbecue. Not a bad way to celebrate the birthday of our nation.

During the cackle and color bursts of the fireworks show, I pondered how thankful I felt to be enjoying all that music with all those people in a country where experiences like this are not uncommon. Given the current news from overseas, it is not to be taken for granted that, despite our nation’s flaws and current troubles, we live in a stable, mature democracy and do not resort to mass demonstrations, military coups, and bloodletting in order to change leaders.

It’s pretty obvious that we’re not Syria, where a brutal dictator desperately clings to his waning power by butchering his own citizens as his nation crumbles into mutually destructive factions.

We’re not even Egypt, where peaceful protests two years ago resulted in the removal of a dictator and the rebirth of democracy. Today, the hope of the Arab Spring in this largest of the Middle Eastern nations is, well, fuzzy at best. A popularly elected President has been deposed because the same people who took to the streets demanding the end of the Mubarek regime were back again, saying they had made a mistake. They chanted their dissatisfaction with President Morsi as vehemently as they demanded Mubarek’s ouster. To quell the crowd, the military forcibly removed Morsi from power. He wasn’t even allowed to complete his term in office.

I’m not defending Morsi. When he was first elected, he gave signs of being a political pragmatist despite his affiliation with the Moslem Brotherhood. He pledged to honor the 35-year-old peace treaty with Israel. He seemed genuinely interested in an open society. But his tenure quickly disappointed Egyptians across the political spectrum. The young adults who are demanding true democracy and

Remembering Gettysburg

On July 1, 1863, 160,000 Union and Confederate soldiers descended upon the tiny town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Two days later, 51,000 of them would either be dead, wounded or missing. 

This week, 200,000 tourists are in Gettysburg commemorating the 150^th anniversary of the battle now known as the “greatest” of the Civil War. Whether it makes more sense to call it the greatest or the most tragic – given the carnage it left behind – it is true that a different outcome might have changed American history. Gettysburg was the only battle fought north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Had the Confederacy succeeded in penetrating Pennsylvania, we might be two nations today instead of one.  Most historians agree that the Union victory at Gettysburg and the simultaneous victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi, marked the turning point of the Civil War.

I have no desire to be part of the bedlam that is surely overtaking that otherwise quiet community this week, but I’ve been to Gettysburg many times. While my oldest son was a student at Gettysburg College, we paid multiple visits to the battlefield, museum, and the National Cemetery. Gettysburg is a moving place. Millions travel to its National Military Park every year, far more than visit any of the battlefields of the Revolutionary War. Some visit Gettysburg purely out of historical interest. Others come with the words of Lincoln’s famous address echoing in their minds. Still others journey there as pilgrims to a shrine of the “high water mark of the Confederacy,” remythologizing the Old South as an idyllic society devoted to personal freedom and limited government (as though the issue of slavery was incidental). The Gettysburg battlefield is the geographical intersection of competing stories about our nation.

In a 2011 post marking the 150^th anniversary of the attack on Ft. Sumter, I reflected on the significance of the Civil War for America’s historical identity. I invite you to read it. Much of what I wrote there is very much in my mind this week as Independence Day is overshadowed by the Gettysburg anniversary. It seems to me that, while the Civil War’s bloodiest battle ended 150 years ago, a psychological “battle of Gettysburg” continues today.

Copyright 2013 by J. Mark Lawson