Traveling in Place

Different Perspectives

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” – Isaiah 40:31

I just returned from my annual spiritual retreat. Most of the weekend was foggy, misty, or rainy, the sort of conditions that encourage a lot of reading, writing, reflecting, and praying. But before hunkering down on Saturday morning, I spent all of Friday, a gorgeous, cool fall day, hiking in the high peaks.

I walked the entire length of the Lake Road in St. Huberts to Lower Ausable Lake and then trekked toward Gothics Peak by way of Pyramid Peak. This is a wickedly steep trail (as are most that branch off the Lake Road), but I’ve been itching to take it for some time.

Pyramid Peak stands at 4,550 feet of elevation. Were it listed among the 46 high peaks, it would rank 17^th. But, alas, it is not officially considered a separate peak because it stands so close to Gothics, which ranks 10^th , at 4,736 feet. And yet, Pyramid affords a view that is unmatched in the Adirondack wilderness. The top is bald, so hikers can see in all directions. To the north, you are looking directly into the impressive slides of the entire Great Range. Last year, I enjoyed a partial view of these slides from Sawteeth Mountain. But on Pyramid, the view of the full rise of those massive peaks is totally unobstructed. It’s a bonus that Marcy and Algonquin, the two tallest peaks, are also visible. And of course, the panorama to the south, stretching from the Green Mountains of Vermont to the lower peaks west, is also impressive.

Utter Delight

The activity in our backyard picked up considerably this summer. Last spring, I hung a bird feeder from a tree branch outside our sunroom. It took a few weeks, but the feeder began attracting a variety of birds. I was refilling it every day.

So I decided to buy a larger feeder. Before long, both of them needed refilling daily as the number of birds visiting them increased. For Father’s Day, Martha got me a peanut feeder to attract woodpeckers, and I purchased another feeder so I could experiment with different blends of birdseed.

The result is a mesmerizing and sometimes comic display. Wrens, sparrows, cardinals, goldfinches, purple finches, grosbeaks, chickadees, nuthatches, titmice and woodpeckers flock to this part of our yard, flittering between the feeders, the birdbath, the birdhouse, and a thick bush just over the fence in our neighbors’ yard. It is not unusual to see a dozen birds at the feeders, another dozen or so perched on the chain-link fence awaiting their turns, and morning doves, squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits all foraging on the ground below the feeders where seeds and shells have fallen. At one point this summer, we decided that multiple sparrow families had declared “learn how to feed yourself” week. Dozens of tiny sparrows would fly from the birdhouse or the bush at the same time, some perching at the feeder, some landing on the ground, others not ready to go any further than the fence. In addition to all of this, monarch butterflies and hummingbirds have frequented the butterfly bush and the flowers planted in the garden box on the ground. Martha calls this area the “open table” with “enough for everyone.” I call it our “peaceable kingdom.” It is a constant source of total delight.

A Day with the Loons

On the first truly free day of my summer – just this last Wednesday – I decided to go looking for loons in the Adirondacks. I’m happy to say my search was successful. I hiked around Black Pond near Paul Smith’s, and spent as much time crouched or sitting on the shore as walking. I believe I spotted six different loons. I tracked one of them for better than an hour, and was rewarded when he swam within 15 feet of the edge of the lake, practically posing for my camera.

The next day, I told a group of pastors that I had spent the previous day “with the loons,” and one of them quipped, “What – you went to Washington?” Another asked, “What do they do besides swim and fly?”

The Commoditization of Everything

From time to time, someone who knows how much I love the Adirondack Mountains will ask me if I’ve been hiking lately. The regrettable answer has been “no,” though I hope to return to the wilderness before the summer gets completely away.

One reason I haven’t been to the mountains as often is because it’s been hard to find the time. But there’s another reason as well. In the last few years, the number of people traveling there from all over the country has rocketed to a level that is causing unprecedented stress to the landscape, and I don’t want to be part of the problem. The Adirondacks, and particularly the High Peaks Region, have fallen victim to social media. As hikers instantly post to the Internet pictures of themselves on the various peaks, people who’ve never heard of the Adirondacks suddenly become interested in replicating the experience for themselves.

Trail workers are finding it impossible to keep up with the increased erosion caused by overuse. The fragile vegetation in the alpine region that has been painstakingly brought back to health is now threatened on a daily basis by the carelessness of people who know nothing of the trail etiquette that has been instilled in more experienced hikers. In addition, rescue workers are spending more time and risking greater danger extracting people who have fallen, lost their way, dressed inappropriately, or failed to bring enough food and water. The Adirondacks are being loved to death. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that they are being overrun by people who don’t love them, but regard them as just another consumable product providing adventure and entertainment.

Am I an Evangelical?

Yesterday, I heard an interview with former President Jimmy Carter. He’s just published a new book entitled Faith: a Journey for All. I’ve read and heard Carter address the importance of his Christian faith many times.

I’ve always admired Jimmy Carter. Did he “succeed” as President? Not in the way most people define success. He was never comfortable playing the game of Washington politics. He championed human rights around the world and brokered a Middle East Peace deal that is still in effect, but economic problems at home and the Iran hostage crisis doomed his chances of re-election. He left office deeply unpopular.

Sounds like a failure. But Carter never compromised his personal integrity. He never wavered in his faith. And his post-presidency, the most consequential in American history, has redeemed his image.

As I listened to him yesterday, I was struck by how easily he defined himself as an “evangelical born-again Christian,” even though the vast majority of those in our country who share this identity espouse a world-view that is directly at odds with his own.

For Carter, being an “evangelical” is not a matter of politics. He asserts that there are many evangelicals who are politically moderate and even liberal. This claim sounds archaic in an era when white evangelicals are now regarded as a reliable voting block. But I know whereof he speaks. Growing up as a Southern Baptist (like Carter), I understood the importance of being born again – of awakening to the reality of Jesus Christ in a personal way and committing myself to follow him. To be an “evangelical” in those days simply meant that you believed the gospel of Jesus Christ was an urgent message that needed to be shared with the world. It meant your Christian faith, while personal, was not a private matter to keep to yourself, but something to be shared with others because it had universal significance. It also meant that, since the Bible is the only written witness to the life, teachings, and ministry of Christ, you regarded the Scriptures as the final authority for all matters of faith. (The early evangelical confessions qualified biblical authority by saying that all of scripture must be interpreted in the light of Christ.)

My Lenten Musical Discipline

“How’s your Lent going?” a colleague asked me a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t know how to respond at first. My eventual honest answer was, “It’s going fine for the church, but I haven’t really internalized it.”

Fortunately, that simple but penetrating question was posed early enough to give me an opportunity to develop a Lenten discipline, or rather, repeat a discipline I have adopted the last four Lents. In each of those years, I have chosen a classical piano piece to learn – not to perform, mind you, but only to learn. (DO NOT ASK ME TO PLAY THESE PIECES IN PUBLIC!) I’m far from proficient on the piano. I cannot “sight-read,” which means I have to spend a lot of time finding all the notes and learning how they all fit together. And there is a decided limit to how much difficulty I can manage. I don’t have the virtuoso talent of others who are blessed with the uncanny ability to master the works of composers who pressed the limits of what an 88-note keyboard could produce.

But, for lesser musical mortals like myself, great composers mercifully produced slower movements of otherwise challenging sonatas, and short, relatively simple pieces that, while not easy, are at least accessible – and often achingly beautiful.

So, one year I learned the second movement of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” Sonata. Another year I taught myself a Rachmaninoff “Moment Musicale.” I’ve also picked up a “Nocturne” by Ottorino Respighi and one of Mendelssohn’s “Venetian Boat Songs.” This year, I’m working on Liszt’s “Consolation No. 3.” None of these come easily for me. They are just hard enough that I have to struggle with them, but not so hard that I cannot learn to play them well enough to enjoy them.

Each year, this has been a spiritual experience. When I begin, I have to break through the frustration of finding every note and coordinating all of them as

After Parkland, Treat the Symptoms and the Disease

This week’s tragedy in Parkland, Florida, marks the 18^th (and deadliest) school shooting of 2018. In the last decade, mass shootings in the U.S. have reached epidemic proportions. After each of these heartbreaking incidents, we offer our thoughts and prayers to victims and survivors. We send money to the grieving communities. A predictable public debate about how to prevent further mass shootings lasts for a couple of weeks but leads nowhere. Then we move on, as though each incident is somehow exceptional.

But how many times do they have to occur before we realize that they are not exceptional? The killing of innocent people, whether children and teachers in school, young adults at a dance club, worshipers at a church, or country music fans at an outdoor concert, has become horrifically normal.

There are too many guns in this country, and guns designed for military combat, whose purpose is to slaughter masses of people, are too easy to get. We have the loosest gun laws in the world and more people per capita are killed by guns here than anywhere. Any fool can see the connection.

Maybe – just maybe – the Parkland shooting will be the final straw. Today, tears of grief have given way to outrage. Parents and teachers from Parkland are not mincing words. They are angry that Congress does nothing to curb gun violence. They are demanding action. They say the NRA has way too much power, and that both the President and Congress are too afraid to do what’s right. They are tired of all the excuses, and they want something done now.

At some point in the tired debate about gun violence, there is always a discussion about “the symptoms” and “the disease.” And because this discussion usually carries spiritual implications, I want to address it.

The Last Third of Life

I just filled out the mind-numbing, repetitive medical paperwork to see the second medical specialist in a week’s time. After I saw the first specialist last week, an array of prescription drugs contained in bottles, boxes, and sprays crowded the bathroom counter.

There’s nothing seriously wrong with me, but I’ve reached the age when the maintenance of even a relatively healthy body becomes more time-consuming. Following up on multiple referrals, I feel like I am being rudely initiated into the last third of life – ushered into that special fraternity of people who joke that their new full-time job is keeping up with doctors’ appointments and organizing all their medications so they know when to take them and in what dosage.

All kidding aside, there is something very spiritual about coming to terms with the fragility of one’s body. Richard Rohr refers to the “journey of descent,” an invitation to deeper wisdom that quite purposefully parallels the accelerating decline of one’s physical strength. If we are privileged to live long enough (as a growing number of people are these days), we are invited to a season of radical letting go. We let go of the need to erect our own towers, prove our own importance, and build our own egos. We let go of our stubborn demands, unexamined biases, and the need to be right all the time. Eventually, we have to let go of friends and loved ones – both those who precede us in death and those whom we must leave behind – and finally, we learn to let go of our own bodies. As sad as all of this “letting go” can be, it also opens us up to receive God in a truly transformative way.

According to Psalm 90:10, “the days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty if we are strong.” That was a remarkable claim to make 3,000 years ago. Even after bracketing out infant mortality, which was quite high, life expectancy in the ancient world was less than 50 years. But there must have been some

Surprise?

All the stories in the gospels of the events leading up to the birth of Christ share something in common: the element of surprise.

Mary was surprised to be visited by an angel and told that she would give birth to the Messiah.

Joseph was surprised (and distraught) to learn that Mary was pregnant, but even more surprised to learn that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

Zechariah was surprised to learn that he was to become a father.

Elizabeth was surprised to be with child despite her advanced age.

The Magi were surprised to see the star signaling the birth of a king.

Herod was surprised to learn from the Magi that one had been born “King of the Jews.”

The shepherds were surprised by the choir of angels that lit up the night sky where they were tending sheep.

The whole story of Jesus’ birth is surprising. Who knew that God would answer the prayer of the prophet, “Tear open the heavens and come down!” (Isaiah 64:1) with the birth of a baby in the humblest of circumstances?

And yet, the season in which we celebrate Christ’s birth is the least surprising time of the year. It has become so laden with tradition, custom, and expectation that hardly anything happens that has not happened before. In fact, deviation from the norm usually results from some sort of loss, whether of a person, mobility, or a home, and in turn causes grief.

Hope in Normalcy

This morning, we awoke to the season’s first measurable snowfall. The sight of it was comforting to me.

Something normal. Right about on schedule. Life goes on.

I’m tired of abnormality. I’m tired of norms – not just political ones, but also moral norms that used to define basic human decency – being tossed aside with contempt. I’m tired of feeling gut-punched by bad news, and I’m tired of trying to remain sensitized to everything that should gall me, instead of becoming numbed by the frequency of tragic events.

In truth, the first snowfall is always a mess. It comes after a few consecutive nights of frost, which means the leaves on my maple trees are falling quickly. They’re under the snow, in the snow, and on top of it. But the comforting thought is, “This happens every year.” And every year, I have enough time to mulch and/or rake the leaves before the winter sets in.

Normalcy is a reminder of cycles. Cycles give us hope. Day always follows night. Winter always gives way to spring.

As I ponder Jesus’ parables about the end of the age, I consider how these stories are usually interpreted as warnings about the end of all cycles – a final reckoning that gives way to one final transition, never to be repeated again. Tribulation and judgment are followed by the fulfillment of God’s kingdom.

While I believe that the universe will have a definable, purposeful end just like its beginning, I also believe there is another layer of meaning in these parables. The early church did not cull together a New Testament until it became unavoidably clear that the Day of the Lord would not come as quickly as they thought. In fact, the first generation of the church interpreted Jesus words, “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place,” to mean that EVERYTHING – including Jesus’ bodily return, the final judgment, and the fulfillment of God’s reign – would happen before any of them died.