At the Edge of Peace

I don’t consider myself to be an edgy guy. I am not fashion-forward, not an early adopter of technology, I don’t have a quick temper or often do impulsive things, I don’t hang glide or climb frozen waterfalls (not that I wouldn’t take you up on it if you offered), I don’t climb big rock faces or go slack-lining, I don’t have to be the leader in any situation (although I will step in if needed), I don’t dive into political arguments or theological debates on social media. I’m happy to leave all of those edges to someone else. I did have a former pastor who once referred to me as “the edgiest deacon in our church.” I took it as a compliment, but I’ve never been sure what being an edgy Baptist deacon means.

However, there are some edges I am drawn to, over and over. The western escarpment of the Guadalupe Mountains is one. Another is the cliff face known as Wilderness Ridge that overlooks McKittrick Canyon, also in the Guadalupes.

One of my most profound spiritual encounters happened at sunset with my feet dangling over the Wilderness Ridge cliff. I was completely alone, but the solitude felt warm and comfortable, as if God was reminding me to trust Him a little while longer. It was settling, and contented, and peaceful, and full. It was my “still point of the turning world,” moment. (T. S. Elliot)

Henri Nouwen described it well: "In the center of breathless actives, we hear a restful breathing, Surrounded by hours of moving, we find a moment of quiet stillness. In the midst of action there is contemplation. ... Somehow we know that without a quiet place our lives are in danger. "

Peering over the cliff edge also reminded me of Bilbo, from The Hobbit, who hardly thought of himself as an edgy guy until “something Tookish woke up inside of him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.” (J. R. R. Tolkien)

I remember back a few years ago when we were all reading the small book, “The Prayer of Jabez,” by Dr. Bruce Wilkinson, which encouraged us to pray, “Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory,” Cyndi told me, “You can’t know how big your territory is until you walk all the way to the edges. You can’t know the extent of God’s blessing until you push out to the fence lines.”

She said, “I wonder how often we settle for a small portion of what God has for us, thinking we have it all, because we stopped exploring too soon. We don’t know where the boundary is until we walk up to the fence. Don’t stop too soon.”

Pushing to the edge of our territory is seldom about peace. It’s usually risky and frightening. As Gandalf told Bilbo, “There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.”

So in 2015, I hope to explore the rare junction of sitting on the edge of peace, living in the moment, and pushing to the edge of adventure, not being afraid. There is mystery in that point, and I want to know more about it.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

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It Should Have Been Miserable But It Wasn't

Saturday of Easter weekend, I lead a group from Midland to hike Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas. I say “I lead” in broadest terms since most of the other hikers made it further up the mountain than I did. The hike is eight miles round-trip with 3,000’ vertical climb, and since 2003 I’ve made it to the summit 16 times with groups of varying sizes. My first time up this trail was in October 2003 and the group was Cyndi and me. We’d invited our entire Sunday School class to join us but our loyal friends thought we were crazy and weren’t interested. So it was just the two of us. Why did we do it? We’d heard our friend Meta talk about how cool it was, and she was a Yankee transplanted to west Texas. We felt like we were letting Texas down until we hiked up the trail ourselves.

This year, I almost had a meltdown Wednesday before the hike. I was worried that the group was getting too big (26+?) and would we have enough transportation to haul everyone and did we have enough drivers and did the newcomers know how hard this was or did someone sell them on a walk in the park and what about all these people I didn’t yet know but felt responsible for and how did it come to this and why do I always get myself into these situations … and well, like that. You know how it goes.

About mid-afternoon Wednesday I finally remembered why we make this same hike year after year after year. It’s because men make friends outside; because people form friendships on the trail; because God speaks to us on the mountain in ways we aren’t prepared to hear when sitting at home; because the core group of hikers are some of the best men I’ve ever known and any time I get other people around these guys only good things can happen; and because grace leaks out of our lives when we do difficult things together.

After all that, I settled down to do what I should have done from the very beginning. I remembered this was God’s trip and we were just tagging along. I was lucky to be part of it.

As it turned out, we hiked in the cold rain almost the entire day. It was 60* with drizzle in the parking lot when we started up the trail, and the rain increased and temperature dropped all the way up the mountain. At the summit the temperature was about 40*, the wind was frightening, and the rain clouds had morphed into thunder and lightning. No one spent much time at the summit since Guadalupe Peak is, essentially, a lightning rod for the entire state of Texas.

The sun finally came out during our descent down the trail, and by the time we all got to the parking lot our clothes were drier. We changed into dry gear and spread out wet clothes in the sun to dry out.

Here is the curious part … the day should have been miserable, but it wasn’t. We were all cold and wet, but once we dried off and started sharing our stories, we were friends. Because of shared hardship we were no longer strangers. All because we’d spent the day on the trail together. One of my favorite writers, Jonathan Katz, wrote, “I am coming to see life as a series of paths, some literal, some emotional, some in the nature of life – marriage, divorce, work, family. These paths take all of us to different places. Paths are important, they are the symbols of our lives, they mark the passages of time, they take us out of our lives or, sometimes, into it.”

What a shame it would have been if we’d not made the hike due to a little rain. We’d have collectively missed a passage of our lives.

As for me, I’m embarrassed about my Wednesday crises and sad I ever doubted a process, a spiritual activity disguised as a mountain hike, which was handed to us from God, which has strengthened the hearts of so many. Who did I think I was to assume this was about me and whether I could handle it all?

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

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Is It Time For a Fresh Start?

Monday morning my laptop disavowed its own touchpad and I had to borrow a mouse from Cyndi. (It was purple, with flowers, very girly.) Next, my laptop refused to recognize either of the two wireless networks in our house. It was an unsettling trend. What might fail next? I turned the laptop over, pulled the battery out for five minutes to give the electrons time to stop spinning, reinstalled the battery, rebooted, and everything worked. All it needed was a fresh start.

And so I’ve been wondering about that myself these past weeks. Do I need a fresh start?

Several friends have commented about my recent bike crash and my perpetually bad knees, and the comments go like this: “Maybe God is telling you to take up something else. Is it time to move on from running and cycling?”

I was asking myself that same question a few years ago, in 2008 to be precise, when I ran the Austin Half-Marathon.

My training had been marginal, more walking than running, and not much of that, because my knee was still sore. Too much body mass and too little running made it hard to motivate myself to hit the roads every day. Yet, I wanted my love of running back. I wasn’t ready to put that phase of life behind me.

I knew the half-marathon would either make me hungry for more, or tell me it was time to move on to something else. Would I step in or step out? Would I say, “I’ll never do that again,” or say, “When is the next race?”

And now, five years later, I’m wondering the same thing.

I’m currently under the care of Midland Memorial Hospital’s Wound Management Specialists - a lingering effect from the bike crash on March 4^th - and they won’t let me do much of anything until I’m healed.

It’s OK. I am more than willing to stay away from running or cycling or hiking or backpacking or yard work or manual labor in order to let this wound heal, but at the same time I am ready to get back as soon as possible. I am hungry to move.

The question of fresh starts is bigger than running or cycling, wounds or arthritis. I don’t want to squander my life holding on too long to something I should leave behind. How do we know if we’re bravely hanging on or merely being delusional? It isn’t always easy to know the difference.

So one morning this week I read this from Psalm 20, “May He give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.” (Ps 20:4 NIV)

I saw in the margin of my Bible where each year I had written the desires of my heart in response to this promise. However, I also noticed my desires kept changing. I held on to some, let go of others. How could God give me my desires and make my plans succeed if I kept starting over again and again?

But my core desire stayed constant: I want to impact the lives of people. My heart hadn’t actually changed; it just takes a life time of digging to uncover desires from all the debris thrown up by daily life.

Later that same day, after reading Psalm 20 and praying for insight into fresh starts, I received two clues about the true desire of my heart:

I was listening to an audio book by Rich Roll, titled Finding Ultra, about how he turned around his life after discovering ultra-endurance sports. He described an epic endurance event in which he and a friend decided to do five Iron Men-length events in five days, each on a different Hawaiian Island. His description of the effort was brutal, but the more he talked about his suffering, the more I wished I could do it, too. I realized that was an indicator of my own heart, that it has many more miles in it. Rather than think Roll was crazy, my heart wanted to be with him.

And then I saw some photos of another local cyclist who crashed while riding in the Texas Hill Country, and his injuries looked significantly worse than mine. Again, rather than scaring me away from cycling, I couldn’t wait to get back on the saddle.

I suppose I have a life-time of fresh starts still ahead of me, but for now the one I’m most looking forward to is moving down the road again. I can hardly wait to get started. In fact, I’ve already started planning future races.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

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Knowing the Answer

Why do I always want to know the right answer, right away? Maybe the engineer side of me wants to fix the problem and prevent further trouble, minimizing the damage. Or the writer side of me assumes I can see the big picture and describe the full meaning.

I used to believe conflict occurred because God wanted to teach me something specific, and the sooner I learned the lesson the quicker the conflict would end. I saw that as a spiritual principle, whether about school work, or relationship troubles, or sickness, or whatever. I don’t know whether I was taught that, or if I made it up myself.

I don’t believe it now, at least not in the same way. Conflict, and the lessons I learn, are usually months if not decades apart. This became clear to me as I worked on my personal timeline in preparation for the Storyline Conference. I realized I’m only just now finding meaning in events that happened twenty or thirty years ago.

So the night before I left for the conference, I finished reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. It’s an account of her solo hike on a large portion of the Pacific Crest Trail.

She began the hike mourning for her mother who died at 47, her own failed marriage, and her descent into serial sex and drug use. But like most long-distance hikers, her reasons for hiking changed the further she went. Finally, the movement itself is what changed her; the daily monotony of covering the miles spoke to her heart.

She was a newby when she started. She had never been hiking or backpacking and knew nothing about gear or survival in the wild. (At least she was aware of her ignorance. Worse would be a beginner who thought they knew how to do it.) She wrote, “Every part of my body hurt. Except my heart.”

One thing about the book that personally spoke to me was how she accepted her inability to articulate the meaning of her trip. Making a mental flash forward to four years (married) and nine years (kids) after finishing her hike, she wrote, “I couldn’t yet know … how it would be only then that the meaning of my hike would unfold inside of me, the secret I’d always told myself revealed.”

“It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn’t have to know. That it was enough to trust that what I’d done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was.”

Cheryl Strayed addressed one of the lessons I’m trying absorb nowadays: to wait for the answer. Often, that means to wait for a long time. I’m learning to slow down and don’t get in such a hurry to solve the puzzle or know the answer. For lasting change, I believe we have to linger in the moment.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe God wants us to know him and know his purpose in our life, but it was arrogant of me to think I could quickly figure out God’s purpose in the middle of my conflicts. More often, I was lucky to survive, much less be spiritually insightful.

So I need to slow down, and stop being in such a hurry to understand my story. I’m learning to linger in the moment, accept the changes without knowing why they happened, and trust that God will show me the answer when he is ready. Or when I’m ready, or old enough, or wise enough, to handle the answer. This cannot be passive lingering, however, but constant conversation with God.

Well, speaking of conflict and trouble, last Monday I crashed while riding my bike. Specifically, I was turning a fast right-hand corner when my back tire went flat, causing my wheel to skid out from under me. It happened so fast I didn’t even know I was in trouble until my right hip bounced off the pavement. Instantly, I was down. I hit the asphalt hard enough to knock the wind out of my lungs and make my ribs sore.

My first comment to myself was, “I’m 56 years old; I shouldn’t be doing this to myself.”

But now that its three days later and I can move round and sit up without getting dizzy, I tell myself, “I’m grateful I can still go hard enough at 56 to hurt myself. It means I haven’t given up.”

Yet, I can’t help but wonder: what should I learn from that crash (other than to stop immediately upon getting a flat)?

I don’t know, yet. And I’m comfortable with that sort of conclusion. My engineer self, and my writer self, wants to find meaning right away, but I’ll just have to linger a bit longer and listen to God.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Find me at http://berrysimpson.com and learn more about my books. Or find me at  http://twitter.com/berrysimpson and at http://www.facebook.com/BerrySimpsonAuthor

How Much Can You See?

Does God intentionally hide himself from us? Sometimes it feels that way, doesn’t it?

I was reading a cool story in my Daily Bible, from Exodus 33:17-23, when Moses said to God, “Show me your glory.”

God said, “I will cause my goodness to pass in front of you … but you cannot see my face … I will remove my hand and you will see my back.”

So Moses asked to see God’s glory, but he got God’s goodness instead. He couldn’t see God’s face, but he was allowed to see God’s back.

I doubt there is a big theological difference between glory and goodness, or face and back. I think God wanted to reveal himself to a much-loved and trusted friend, and showed as much of himself as he could.

Maybe Moses would have melted down if he saw all of God. Or maybe he would have seen nothing since God is so huge. Maybe he needed small details to focus on since the full nature of God was too much to take in.

I don’t know; I am guessing. But I don’t believe God was being coy, or contrary, or even hard-to-get. He doesn’t tell Moses - “If you handle this wilderness adventure like a big boy, I will show you some more.” No, I believe God was being generous with himself. He showed as much as Moses could take. Too much too soon wouldn’t help him see more clearly.

Here is an example: My ten-year-old nephew, Kevin, asked me, “So what are the Lord of the Ring movies about?” He has trouble seeing past the image of Gollum, having been creeped out by seeing one of the movies when he was too young. And in fact, I hardly know how to answer him. To describe the story behind the LOTR movies is complex even for people who’ve spent their life reading the books and watching the movies. I told him, “Frodo has to destroy a magic ring so the rightful king could be restored to his thrown.”

That hardly does justice to ten-hours’ worth of movies, but to explain further wouldn’t have helped Kevin understand. More details would only have confused him further.

I think there was an element of that between God and Moses. Showing more wouldn’t have helped Moses understand. It would have confused him further.

Another example: If you meet someone on an airplane - one of the few places where we sit close to strangers and have plenty of time to talk - and they ask, “Tell me about yourself,” what do you say?

Do you dive into childhood stories, life victories, and emotional wounds, telling about your goals and dreams, listing off New Year’s resolutions, spilling the content of your heart? I don’t. I doubt even my most extroverted friends tell their whole story to strangers.

Why is that? Without the context of a deeper relationship and shared history, most of what you tell won’t make sense anyway. Too much too soon does not become deeper understanding.

But then there is another question from Exodus 33: Why did God show himself at all? Why not tell Moses it couldn’t be done? And even more, why did Moses think he had the right to ask it of God?

I think part of the answer lies with the traumatic moment they shared. They had just discovered the entire nation worshipping a golden calf in full Egyptian fashion, and it broke both their hearts - God’s and Moses’s. God was so angry he was ready to destroy the people and start over with Moses, and Moses threw himself in front of that anger to plead for mercy and grace.

When we go through something traumatic together, it pulls us closer. We become combat buddies, of sorts. And mutual survival of a struggle earns us the right to share more of ourselves. We learn to trust each other through shared hardship.

I have hiked Guadalupe Peak at least a dozen times with the Iron Men group, in addition to multiple trips up Tejas Trail and Permian Reef Trail. And something happens to conversations as the miles on the trail pile up. Guys start sharing more about themselves and opening their hearts in a way that could never happen back home in a classroom. Not every guy; not every trip; but guys have told deep secrets they’ve held close for years. Why? Because we earn trust through the shared struggle of the hike.

And so, the more of life we experience alongside God, the more we’ll learn to trust him, and the more of himself he can reveal to us. We have to grow further up and further in to before we can see God more clearly.

Maybe God allows us to travel extremely difficult trails because that is the only way we’ll know him better. Maybe living through those moments when God seems to be hiding are the very times we learn to trust him so we can see him more clearly.

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Find me at http://berrysimpson.com and learn more about my books. Or find me at  http://twitter.com/berrysimpson and at http://www.facebook.com/BerrySimpsonAuthor