Tuesday, August 30, 2011

A Little Charring is Not a Bad Thing

August 29, 2011

I drove to Kalispell last Tuesday to attend a Wednesday morning hearing of one of the Montana Legislature's interim committees.  The August sun beat down on the asphalt.  A hot breeze blew hard even at the top of McDonald Pass.  The beetle-killed pine trees lined the road in both directions and marched en masse to the horizon.

I took a right on Highway 83 from Highway 200, not far from where the Clearwater River dumps into the Blackfoot.  Both rivers were running low, lucky to pull any water away from the parched earth.  There was an orange sign on the side of the road that read fire crews ahead.

I couldn't help but think that it was amazing how I'd driven all this way through tinder-dry wilderness and this was the first sign I saw of wildfire.  It had been a wet June and July.  To my left, snow still capped some of the peaks of the Mission Mountains.

Montana was well on its way to escaping fire season relatively unscathed.  This would be the third year in a row - a minor miracle considering the fact that the pine beetle-ravaged trees caught fire easier than cheap charcoal.  Four years ago, the state had already been burning for two months by now.

Now we were preparing to have football season start before fire season had much more than kicked off.  I counted our blessings and continued driving north to Kalispell.


The next day, I traced my way back down Highway 83 through a smoky haze.  I figured that the Swan Lake fire had stirred up a bit over the night, but when I hit Highway 200 it was clear that the smoke was coming from more than one fire.  The Blackfoot River was cloaked from its headwaters on the Continental Divide until it dumped into the Clarkfork River 75 miles away.

I'm often wrong about things, but seldom does the level of wrongness become that clear, that fast.  Usually my wrongness tends to meander back and forth, just below the surface; until it finally pops up and sweeps me away.   I cleared my mind  and continued onto Butte where I had one more meeting, before heading home to Helena. 

I drove down Interstate 15 and into the Helena Valley that evening.  The sun was low in the West.  A huge cloud of smoke rose up in the sky from the North, beyond the Scratchgravel Hills.  It was obvious that we were on the front end of a miserable couple of weeks, if not months.

I couldn't help but think how often I misjudge life's adversity.  No matter how many times I'm proven wrong, I still think that if I do certain things or follow the right steps then things will be okay.  The chaos of life will settle down and drift along as gently as the Missouri River beneath Holter Dam.

Life doesn't have a Holter Dam.  Churning adversity will appear before us, no matter how hard we fight to avoid it.  When we clear that set of adversity another round will pop up from a direction that we do not expect.

In the midst of this turmoil, most of us will ask God to clear the way for us.  Sometimes those prayers will be answered, but for the most part they won't.  I will not hazard a guess about why some are answered and others are not, but I know that we are not called to paddle gently down the meandering river of life.  We are called to immerse ourselves in the struggle.

Often, it will feel that we're about to lose the fight.  The things that we fight to hold onto are ripped from our grasp; but, those losses are not as tangible or permanent as they appear.  The Divine scores our wins and losses differently.  As described by Jesus, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.  What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" Mark 8:34-35.

It's a strange system and one that we are not meant to completely understand.  We build our life knowing that the fire will claim some of it and we will have to build again.  Success and failure falls on upon us all.  We love and we lose.  The task at hand, our general directions, and the final goal are the only givens.  Thankfully, that is enough.

Monday, August 15, 2011

The Sunset Didn't Have to Be That Beautiful

Note: This post does not make an argument for or against evolution.  That question is between you, your pastor, your rabbi, your scientist, your monk, your guru, and anyone else who might be able to help you shine light on that riddle.  Fortunately Catholicism lets me off that hook by providing that: "Christian faith does not require the acceptance of any particular theory of evolution, nor does it forbid it, provided that the particular theory...does not deny...that God creates each human soul directly to share immortal life with him." U.S. Catechism, page 60.  That's good enough for me.

Near sunset on a Sunday night in late July of 2011

I drove home to Helena from Canyon Ferry Lake.  Fiona and Rowan were in their carseats in the back.  Our little Subaru Forester climbed up the Spokane Hills.  The pines stood green over the dry yellow grass.  I didn't have a direct view of the Sun, but the sky took on shades of orange and pink into its deep blue.

We drove through some construction, past the Glass Slipper bar, then by a little subdivision sprouting up in the farmland.  The radio rattled on.  The girls jabbered to each other.  My mind flipped back and forth between the road and trying to plot out my schedule for the upcoming week.

Then we crested the hill and the Helena valley opened up before us.  I didn't hear the radio.  I didn't care about next week's calendar.  Thankfully the road stayed where it was, because all I could focus on was the sunset erupting in front of us.

The ball of trembling golden light struck the mountains to the west and rippled its rays up through the clouds above.  The clouds surrounding that gold patch, were divided between shades of orange and pink.  The colors rippled, tore, and cascaded through each other.  A massive turqoise perimeter nipped at the edges of the orange and pink clouds.

It was amazing.  From the back seat, Fiona (3 1/2) said, "Ooh, pretty!"  Two seconds after her, Rowan (2) said the same.  Then the car was quiet.  We were all transfixed on the dance of light beyond the windshield.

Black tires rolled over black asphalt between the painted lines all the way into town, but I'm not sure that would have been the case if it wasn't mostly a straight shot.  Somewhere during that drive, I realized that the sunset didn't have to be that beautiful.

The spectacle was caused by the Earth turning in its rotation around the Sun.  Earth's act of rotating part of itself way from its primary light source had to cause a transition from day to night.  That transition required some changes in the coloring of the sky, but really it didn't need to be spectacular.  From light, to gray, to black would have worked.

Similarly, the human eye and mind had to take in that the sun was going down.  This evening, that knolwedge let me to flip a switch to turn on the car's lights.  Generations ago, I would have known it was time to either light a fire or call it a night.  That basic human knowledge could also have been accomplished by the ability to perceive a transition from full light, to gray, then black. 

That's probably overstating it, but evolutionarily-speaking me and my two daughters did not require the ability to take in and appreciate the immense beauty of that sunset.  A little less color sensitivity and natural beauty appreciation probably wouldn't have gotten our ancestors eaten by sabre tooth tigers, but just functional wasn't enough for the Divine Creator.

The Creator took what needed to merely function and made it indiscribably beautiful.  From the wildflowers poking up from the wet Spring dirt to the stars glittering in the night sky.  They didn't have to be that beautiful and we didn't require the senses to appreciate that beauty.

The beauty of the Universe is evidence that the Creator loves Creation.  Genesis 1:31 ("God looked at everything he had made, and he found it was very good.")  It's the same pride in workmanship that every great craftsman knows.  Functional is not enough.The details have been unfolded and reworked from the smallest particles to entire Galaxies.  The Creator has noticed even the smallest sparrow and counted the very hairs on our heads.  Luke 12:6-7.

We were given the ability to appreciate that beauty so we would know from the core of our being that something incredibly powerful loves us and has blessed us beyond measure as evidence of that love.  In dating terms, the Creator could have gotten us carnations.  That would have done the job, but the Creator went the extra mile and sprung for roses.  Most of us intrinsically know what that means, now we need to let ourselves believe it.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Trapped: Focus on the Basics

March 2008

The winds hit gale force levels by the time we finished sledding to the bottom of the canyon.  The snowstorm had become a blizzard.  Dropping a fresh layer of white on top of the four and a half feet snowpack.

Quake Lake was on our left.  It was frozen solid.  Fifty yards from us the ice opened.  Water flowed out of the ice and into the canyon to form the Madison River.  The Madison's first ripples turned into rapids right in front of us.  By fifty yards down river, the water had already developed serious hydraulics.  At that point, the river turned into the canyon and out of sight; but we could hear the rapids beyond that.

Josh Galt, one of the icons of American riverboarding, sat next to me on the icy riverbank fiddling with his camera and putting on his fins.  Josh had ridden whitewater from Norway to New Zealand.  On the way up, he'd told me that he had his eye a potential world record waterfall drop that summer.  Despite all that, it was clear that Josh thought that running a Class IV in freezing temps and blowing snow was probably a bad idea. 

Five minutes later, we were off.  Josh was the better rider and quickly took the lead as we headed into harder rapids.  I followed him over a powerful swell and then blasted through the wave below.  I cringed as my face went through the wall of icy water.  I squeezed the handles tighter and adjusted my hips to track the top of the plastic inflatable board.  Losing the board on this stretch of water in these temps could be fatal.

I pushed fear from my head and focused on finding the smoothest line possible through the crashing hydraulics.  The Madison was much fuller than it had been last fall.  The water rushed through the canyon.  Rising and falling, cascading over icy rocks.  We rose, fell, and cascaded with it.  I was beginning to get into the groove.  Time seemed to slow.  It was perfect timing.  Right as we headed into the S-Curve, the hardest stretch of water on the run.

The roar of the rushing water increased as the canyon opened up to the S-Curve.  I let my eyes linger for a moment too long on the horizon.  The water careened me up against a rock and my board stopped.  My still-moving body pendulumed through the water, wrenching against my shoulders.  I pulled myself part of the way up onto the icy rock.  I tried to peel the edge of the board free.  It didn't move, then the current took me.

I fell backwards off of the rock.  The current pushed that backwards fall into flips.  The world became dark, wet, and icy.  The base of my neck slammed against a rock.  Then my hip.  My arms flailed, trying to pull towards the surface but not sure what direction the surface was.  My face bounced against a rock.

I reached towards the bottom, found a hold, then was ripped away from it by the churning rapid.  I felt death pulling me from below.  I thought of my soon-to-be born daughter as the river sent me cartwheeling into the next set of rapids.  I couldn't die without meeting her.

I focused on the basics.  Let my body slacken to prevent injuries and lower the heartrate.  Every extra beat wasted oxygen.  Short, measured breaths only when I knew my face was well clear of the water.  The desperate urge to breath  and the water-filled lungs that resulted from it had to be fought at all costs.

Time slowed again.  My body bounced against the rocks, but the pain wasn't as sharp.  I snuck a breath every two or three rapids.  I didn't feel peace, but the terror subsided.  Eventually the final turn of the Madison's S-Curve completed and the current released me towards the shore.

June 2011

Rita came in the NAMI Montana office again today.  I could see that she'd had a breakthrough.  Rita didn't look well during her last couple of visits.  She struggles with a combined illnesses of diabetes and bipolar disorder.  She'd really been in a bad place over the last couple of weeks and I was worried that she was going to end up back in St. Peter's hospital's behavioral health unit.

But, something had changed.  Rita's smile was content.  A smile of happiness, not a symptom of mania.

I commented on how happy Rita looked and she beamed back at me.  "I didn't let it destroy me."

I nodded and waited for her to continue.

"We took in a vet last week.  He really got to me.  Well, we got to each other."

"Took in a vet?"

"An Iraq war vet.  He was in our trailer park and needed a place to live.  We knew that it was only right to take him in."

I nodded again.  A small trailer, Rita, her husband, Rita's deathly ill mother, and a homeless veteran.  Why is it that the poorest among us are always the quickest to give?

Rita continued, "It was alright for the first couple of days.  He was like the son I never had.  We had long talks and got along great.  Then we started getting on each other's nerves and it got ugly after that."

I winced, "Did it get violent."  You see a lot in our office and get comfortable asking questions that politer company would dance around.

"No, nothing like that.  Just real ugly on both sides.  I caught myself feeling and saying things that just aren't like me.  It just kept getting worse.  I didn't know where it was going to stop."

She was trapped in the current, I thought.  Two bruised egoes whirlpooling around another.  Each dropping further and further in order to lower the other.  I'd been there too many times.  Eventually, you get to the point that you can hardly recognize your actions as your own.  They've been so twisted by power of battling egos.

Rita put her hands on my desk.  "I went to church and asked God if I should kick him out.  He told me not to.  So instead, I prayed for strength.  I didn't want to end up back on the behavioral unit again."

"That's great Rita."

"So I went home and worked on the little things.  I took walks.  I made sure I got enough sleep and ate right.  I took my medicine.  I prayed and I went to church."

She focused on the basics.

"I couldn't really separate myelf from him because the trailer's so small, but I tried.  Eventually after a few days, we pulled out of it.  I took him to the VA and they set him up with a plan to move to Missoula.  It's better for him there anyway.  Lots of young kids and way more to do."

I agreed with Rita and told her to let the vet know we were here to help him if he got stuck and needed some guidance on where to go.  But I was more interested in Rita and how she'd pulled herself out of the negative relationship.  She went back to the basics.  The simple building blocks of life that we all take for granted.

Rita knew that the best way she could straighten out a complex negative interaction with someone else was to focus on the basics within her control.  It was the same philosophy that had set me free from the Madison's current in the winter of 2008.  I hadn't thought about applying it to interpersonal relationships, thankfully Rita had.



NOTE 1:  Here's a video clip of our riverboarding trip on the Madison. 

NOTE 2: Try out the Looking 4 Answers cell phone app.  It's free on iTunes and the Android Market.  Looking 4 Answers is a personal and spiritual growth tracker that uses a short daily quiz.  Let me know what you think.