The Theology of Christmas Poop

My pastor's sermon yesterday reminded me of a conversation about poop I had with my grade-schooler recently.

Now, I'm not insinuating that the sermon was a load of crap. In fact, I thought it was very good. I have heard crappy sermons before, but I don't think I've ever heard one from Dr. Andy McQuitty. No, what reminded me of the poop talk was Andy's analogy about physical and spiritual bread. Let me see if I can walk this fine line between blasphemy and boorishness to explain what I mean.

Andy talked about a passage in John 6 wherein Jesus feeds 5,000 men and then calls himself the "bread of life". Andy said that the common criticism of religion that it is for the weak is akin to saying that food is for the weak. We wouldn't call someone weak because they feed their body, nor should we call someone weak when they feed their soul. I agree with Andy's premise, but I think I would have come at it a different way. And that's where the poop comes in.

A few months ago, I had one of those conversations you can only have with a seven-year-old boy. My son asked me, "Dad, does God poop?" I had to think about the answer. Was there an answer to that question? And did the answer matter? Or should I just roll my eyes at the kid and tell him not to be silly. After a little reflection I was surprised to realize that, yes, there is a theological truth in the answer to my son's question, one that matters a great deal. I told him, "No, son. God doesn't poop. You know why he doesn't poop? Because he doesn't eat. And you know why he doesn't eat? Because God doesn't need food or water or air or any other source of life outside himself." God is entirely sovereign and self-sufficient. He doesn't rely on any provision. He doesn't need any fuel outside of himself. He is, in fact, the only being of which this is true.

Which brings me back to Andy's discussion of the Bread of Life. I think Andy is right, but I also agree with that old saying about religion. It is for the weak. It is for those of us — meaning all of us — who are not entirely self-sufficient.

Eating is an act of humility, just as is every habit of human survival. Every time we surrender to sleep, every time we draw a breath, every time we tuck into a quarter pounder with cheese, we are making a tiny confession that we are needy, we are temporal, we are weak, we are not God. Isn't it interesting how often we are reminded of our neediness — three times a day by growling stomachs, once a day by heavy eyelids, countless times by our emotions — and yet we can forget to acknowledge this most basic truth?

And that's where Andy's analogy was going. It would take a delusionally proud person to insist that they don't have the human weakness that requires food. And yet we are often proud enough to insist that we don't have the weakness that requires the Bread of Life.

There's one more angle to this theology of poop which is appropriate during yuletide. Christmas is the time when we celebrate that, among other things, God pooped. The all-sufficient, all-mighty, sovereign God of heaven — the Ancient of Days who had never known need, never lacked for food, never feared the future or fretted over scarcity — became human, humbled himself at his birth, at his family dinner table, and in ancient Palestinian latrines in order to offer us the Bread of Life.

Somewhere, between learned lectures of my pastor and the uncouth innocence of my son's potty ponderings, I was given a lesson about God and humankind and poop. If that's not a Christmas miracle, I don't know what is.

Victory In Clay Jars

Considering Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 4 this morning:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 

Paul isn't foretelling a glorious victory here for the Christian. He doesn't foresee a triumphant parade for the believer overcoming the spiritual attacks and physical hardships of life. This would not pass muster with the modern American prophets of profit and progress. If you were to tease out a definition of Christian victory from Paul's words here it would be something like "survival". We are perplexed, persecuted and struck down, but not completely destroyed. So at least there's that. Paul is playing not to lose. He seems happy with the moral victory; at least it's not utter defeat. His message might be rendered thus:

"Life is hard for a Christian in the world. After all, it was hard for our leader so we shouldn't expect any different. But hunker down and stay alive. Bend but don't break. We can get through this thing."

Not exactly uplifting.

Of course, the circumstances surrounding Paul's writing are all temporary. A great victory does await when Jesus comes to make all things new. But I think there's some realism in Paul's words that make them appealing, if not inspiring; appealing, at least, to those among us whom life has beaten up.

Jesus said our enemy wants to steal, kill and destroy. Sometimes his destruction comes calamitously — as quick as a gunshot. But just as often he prefers to grind rather than explode. He lays siege to our souls, one disappointment, one failed relationship, one blunted hope, one tiny betrayal at a time. He means to starve us out — to weaken our constitution by degrees until surrender seems advisable, hope pitiable, destruction preferable.

I'm intrigued by the ways scripture instructs to resist evil. Sometimes, we are meant to confront it or expel it (1 Cor. 5:13). Other times, we are told to flee from it (1 Cor. 6:18). Sometimes, though, we are meant to bear it, to "stand up under it" (1 Cor. 10:13). It may be that the best way to combat the attack of a thousand tiny offenses is with a thousand tiny redemptions. So we kiss and make up again, we tuck our kids again, we show up to teach that Sunday school class again, we forgive again, choose love over selfishness again, we ignore the temptation again.

Paul knew what it was to suffer dramatically for the gospel, in shipwrecks and floggings and imprisonment. But he also knew what it's like to feel the siege works pressing in, to endure the daily drumming doldrums that drift us toward despair. And to both circumstances, his message was the same: this life is going to beat you up, especially if you stand for the gospel. Endure it with dignity. Your hope is its own victory.

And your victory will be sweet.

Our Father In Heaven

My friend Nat has three boys in their 20s. It scares me to death to talk to him. His sons are making decisions now that will affect the rest of their lives. They are facing situations that require wisdom and virtue and nuanced thought.

My kids can't decide which pants to wear.

As a parent, I feel responsible to help my kids mature, to grow in character and in capacity to face life's challenges. It occurs to me that God has faced the same challenges with his children.

Last week at church, my pastor explained some of the theological implications of the Last Supper. Jesus was replacing old ways with new. He put himself in the place of the paschal lamb; he is the final sacrifice. He put himself in place of Moses; he is leading the new exodus. He put himself in place of the passover feast; his body and blood sustain us. And he put himself in place of God's first position as our heavenly father — the lawgiver.

God's first interaction with humans (after he made them from dust and whatnot) was to give them a command: don't eat this fruit. In the years between Adam and Jesus, those heavenly laws had expanded to more than 600. The law was a big deal to the culture where Jesus ministered. And Jesus put himself in its place. He said, "A new law I give you: love one another."

What does this have to do with parenting? I think our experience of parenting reflects God's experience with the human race. We parents have to start our relationships with our children with rules focused on behavior: Don't touch that. Don't eat that. Don't hit your sister with that. Our kids don't always understand our rules, and sometimes they rebel against them. They have to learn to trust their parents to know more than they do, and to have their best interests at heart. But we don't want them to stay there. A child must grow not only to trust her parents, but to learn the reasons behind her parents' rules. The goal of parenting isn't just to breed obedient children, but to train up children beyond childish lessons — to become co-adults.

God has done the same thing. The entire sweep of the Bible is from law to grace, from a focus on behavior to a focus on our hearts, from adolescence to maturity, from the concrete to the abstract, from certainty to mystery. We, as a species, have been parented. We have been discipled into deeper understanding of God and his purposes in the world. We are called to higher, nobler, wiser responses to our Father than dumb obedience out of fear.

Of course there is one critical difference between us and God: we will never replace him. We will never put God in a celestial assisted living home and become our own gods to our own little creatures. We will forever be his children. He will always be wiser, higher, and better than us. And that's a good thing because sometimes we face decisions and situations that are, frankly, much too big for us — decisions that affect lives and fortunes and futures and kingdoms. And, if we're honest, some days we can't even decide which pants to wear.

Funeral Reminders

I've been to too many funerals lately. A month ago, a close friend buried his uncle. Two weeks ago, a family in my ministry buried their 11-year-old daughter. Then last week, my church laid to rest one of its patriarchs. Every one of those losses was painful. I watched all three families cry and grieve and sometimes struggle for breath. But as much as funerals are difficult and painful, they are also essential and good. Death is not good, but funerals can be. I never leave a funeral wishing I hadn't gone. Here's why.

Funerals remind us of our mortality. You wouldn't think we need reminding. After all, everyone knows they're going to die. But we often live like we've forgotten. Death no longer happens in our homes or even with our families. Death in our culture is often shrouded by beeping machines and IV tubes and waiting rooms and hospice care. We don't kill to eat and we don't witness death in our own species, so, most days, we go about our lives as if death weren't real.

I was encouraged when I saw that my friend burying his uncle brought his kids to the funeral. It's hard to talk to grade-schoolers about death. But then, it's hard to talk to 40-year-olds about death too. If we're going to live well, we're going to have to do hard things; we're going to have to face hard truths, like the truth that we are mortal.

At the funeral I went to last week, a friend of the deceased summarized his friend's character with three words: empathy, kindness and gratitude. I wondered what three words my friends will use to eulogize me someday. (Probably confusion, dereliction, and fetor, but that's another post.) That, I believe, is a good exercise — to imagine our eulogies, even to aspire to one. I wonder if we would all be better off if we held funerals for our living friends about once per decade, just as a sort-of report card on their lives. I like to think the eulogies would get better.

But funerals don't only force us to face death and encourage us to live well. They do something else.

Funerals remind us of our immortality. We need this second reminder more than the first. As much as we tend to forget our mortality, at least death is something we can see. We file past the open casket and cast our eyes upon the proof of our mortality. But we don't get to see eternity before we enter it. And oh, how we long for a glimpse! It tells us who we most truly are — not accidental collections of biological odds and ends, but players in a cosmic, eternal story; children of God. It tells us where we're going — not to the grave but to the sky, not to an end but to a beginning.

At last week's funeral, the pastor read C.S. Lewis — the last paragraph of the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia — which describes the experience of the Pevensie children after their death in a railway accident. (Yes, one of the most joyous and innocent stories in all of children's literature includes the death of children!)

And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. 

If you've ever gone to a Christian funeral and you thought it was all about mourning and despair, you missed the point. It's a send-off, a farewell party, a great big emotional flower-laden arrivederci; a space in our togetherness, as Khalil Gibran would say. Because we will see them again, in a story that keeps getting better and better.

We serve the God of life; therefore life is good, death is bad, and humanity hounded by mortality is not the way things are supposed to be. But when we gather for a home-going we are reminded of truths that outlast life and a God who outshines death. And any gathering that accomplishes that is a good thing.

Author's Note

At the risk of over-explaining, I wanted to add a quick note regarding "A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill". It was so much fun to write! And I dug in to invest much more time and energy in it than the other stories in my summer writing exercise. Even so, I realize that I made several factual mistakes. The entirety of my climbing knowledge has been acquired from one book and a few Discovery Channel episodes. So mistakes were bound to happen. For instance, I know now that Mt. Everest can't be seen from any vantage point in Kathmandu. Also, I'm sure that, despite much Google-ing, I screwed up some of the information about camps, seasons, and equipment used in climbing the word's highest peak.

Still, I hope the ride was enjoyable. I meant to create a yin-and-yang sort-of duality to the story — Aaron's life for Dawa's; Turner's life for Robert's. Every scene has a pair of some kind, and the final scene refers to a kind-of mysterious balance.

So if you're a world-class climber and you were offended by my ignorance, I apologize. The best way to keep that from happening again is to take me to Nepal with you.

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 6

Aaron lunged forward and hooked his ice axe around both of Turner's ankles. The Kiwi fell hard and slid off the mountain.

For an instant, Aaron was surprised at how smoothly the plan had worked. As expected, both sherpas had taken ill, but Turner's clients had insisted that he take them to the top. Aaron stepped in to offer his sherpa who could care for the clients, leaving Aaron and Turner to climb together behind. The only other obstacle had been detaching Turner from the fixed ropes. Just as dawn was breaking they had taken a knee to catch their breath just above the South Summit. From there, the climb was steep but smooth up to the Hillary Step. The path followed just a few feet on the Chinese side of a ridge that marked the top of an upturned slab of snow-covered granite the size of a city block. The slope pointed sharply toward a glacier four thousand feet below. Aaron looked above and behind. Four climbers could be seen in each direction, but none were close enough to see what would happen next; none close enough to assign blame. Aaron unclipped his climbing partner as he stood from the breather, waited for him to turn to face the mountain, then, without really considering his actions, without remorse, like an athlete who had trained for this very move, lunged at Turner's legs.

That's where it should have ended. Aaron was just about to exhale, just about to breathe deep for the first time since his father's death, just about to see the sunrise over endless craggy peaks. But that didn't happen. It couldn't. The mountain was out of balance and had to right itself.

Aaron felt his right foot jerk away from the snow. Turner had slowed his slide enough to fling his unclipped rope toward Aaron. It wrapped around his leg and now both men were trying to arrest their slide.

Aaron came level with Turner. They were stopped but clinging desperately to ice axes with barely a half inch of purchase. Turner's red cap had fallen off and his face was a pink smudge of blood and snow. He hissed at Aaron.

"What the hell, Aaron? What are you doing?"

Aaron struggled to kick into the ice with his crampons and refused to answer. Turner reached for him and Aaron slapped him away.

"I'm killing you. Like you killed my dad."

Turner stopped struggling and stared at Aaron, breathing hard, his exposed face already succumbing to frostbite. "I—"

Aaron tried to kick at Turner but his axe slipped and sent him six more feet down the slope, his head even with Turner's feet. He saw turner slide a foot back along the snow and then bring it forward fast to kick at him. Aaron grabbed the foot, one of the crampons digging into his wrist through the down parka.

"Let go, you little prick!" Turner screamed. "I swear I'll kill you too!"

Aaron reached higher and caught Turner's harness, then his shoulder. The Kiwi was flailing and swinging his free hand, but couldn't land a punch. Aaron lay on top of him now, both of them breathing hard through frozen blood and spittle. Turner jerked his head back square against Aaron's nose. Aaron felt the warmth of blood running over his beard and down the neck of his parka. "Why'd you do it?" he whispered, his head right next to Turner's ear.

Turner coughed and choked. Aaron's weight was pulling the parka against his throat. "Your dad was an asshole. He was sticking his nose in my business."

"You mean because he didn't want you bringing fat cat retirees up here?"

Turner jerked his head back again. He missed this time, but the jerk started another slide. They went twenty more feet down the mountain before Turner's axe stopped them again. Aaron looked over his shoulder. Two hundred feet below, the granite slab ended and the free fall began. There was a truce, both men trying to catch their breath. Aaron looked to his left. Sunlight was just reaching the jagged horizon now. Purple peaks tickled the bottom of a pink sky. An airliner glided silently over the mountains to their west, below them. Turner said, "I'm sorry," and Aaron thought he heard him cry.

The wind was calmer this far down from the ridge. It was quiet for several long minutes except for their breathing and Turner's faint whimpers. Aaron closed his eyes and breathed deep. He could smell his blood and his sweat and the ropes, the crisp, bitter cold, the sunlight and snow and harness and a broken handle and a dutch oven and a cheap, tinny stereo. He laughed.

Turner must have interpreted that as forgiveness; he said, "Let's get off this slope."

Aaron thought of his father, and of Dawa Lob-sang. He smiled again and reached for Turner's axe. "Yeah, he said. Let's do that." And he lifted the axe from the ice.

Turner bumped and jostled under him as they slid, a jarring ride like the stiff old suspension in a mud-caked blue 4Runner. Aaron watched the landscape speed past and felt himself sliding over washboard dirt roads. Turner's screams were pitched high and thin. They warbled and soared like a guitar solo. They were all together: Aaron and Trevor, Dawa and Dad. Sliding and bouncing into eternity, across sun-speckled granite, through daybreak breezes, to another mountain ramble with Steely Dan.

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 5

Aaron crouched over the tiny burner in his tent, aware that he was playing with fire. And poison. Poison had worked once, he thought. He hoped it would work again. This time, Aaron only wanted to cause illness, not death. It was a risky move — so many variables. If he diluted the risin too much, he would miss the opportunity. If he left it too strong, he could kill innocents. And there was no telling what effect the altitude would add.

He was at Camp Two, the busiest and most boring stop on the journey to the roof of the world, the place where dozens of climbers were leaving and arriving every day, ferrying gear up from lower camps, wrestling through thin sleep, willing their bodies to adjust to the air. Most of the time spent here was in tents, trying to sleep, melting snow, and waiting through the slow and unreliable process of acclimatization. It was evening. Through the unzipped vestibule of his tent, Aaron could see a blood red sun dropped into the slot of sky between the walls of the Western Cwm. Above the sun were hundreds of colors as varied as the tents in the little nylon village at Camp Two.

Of the twelve expeditions on the mountain, nine had climbers at Camp Two. Though high and cold and cramped, there was a festive atmosphere. Climbers shouting to one another from tent to tent. Jokes and hopes passed on the whistling wind. Aaron screwed the cap on the thermos of poisoned tea and set out to offer it to two men he had never met.

Trevor Turner had made four successful ascents of Everest, each time with at least two sherpas. While most climbers took only their most trusted aid to the top, Turner felt the need for additional support. That meant three men in one tent, which meant a larger tent, which meant a bullying campaign to find a wide enough spot to pitch it. Aaron forced himself to smile when he called out through the logo-rippled nylon.

"Room service for the Turner Trio?"

There was a chuckle and a grunt and then the tent's vestibule zipped open. Trevor Turner's gold-topped head erupted from the zipper. He looked both confused and pleased at what he saw. Aaron held out two mittened fists, one with a Thermos of tea, the other with a metal flask. "A drink for good luck?"

Aaron had to squat in the entrance of the tent, not able to crowd in past the vestibule. Turner greeted him with an energetic but furtive smile. Said it was good to see him on the mountain again. Aaron did his best to create a jovial reunion. He passed the Thermos to one of the sherpas, met his eyes, smiled, and gave a little bow with his shoulders. Then he unscrewed the cap on the flask and handed it to Turner, "Tea for the buddhists. Something stronger for us."

Aaron asked about Turner's clients — a middle-aged couple who were both here for the first time and had almost zero qualifications for their attempt save for the two that meant the most to Turner — their large bank account and their New Zealand citizenship. They were in the tent next door, probably asleep. Turner talked about the weather like he had planned it. They talked about rugby because Turner must always talk about rugby. They talked about Dawa Lob-sang and Prenesh Ghode. In less than fifteen minutes both the Thermos and the flask were empty and handed back to Aaron. He pocketed them and slipped on his mittens.

"Aaron," Turner said. "It was good of you to stop by. I should have reached out more since since your dad … I should have checked on you."

Aaron tried to smile. "I thought you and Dad had a falling out."

Turner shifted uneasily on his sleeping bag. "I guess we disagreed, but there's no use holding on to that now."

"About what?"

"It's not important."

"It might be to me. What did you disagree about?"

Turner shifted again and studied Aaron's face. He wasn't going to escape the question so he sighed and said, "Business. I climb for business. He climbed for love. He wanted to keep the mountain for people like himself."

"You mean climbers?"

"Everyone on the mountain is a climber, Aaron."

"The couple next door? They're climbers? He's a surgeon, right?"

"He's camping at sixty-one hundred meters; he's a climber."

"I see. And you and dad fought over that?"

"I'm sorry to say we fought on the morning he passed."

Aaron gathered his feet under him and reached for the zipper. He turned to the sherpas with a smile. "I hope that keeps you warm tonight," he said. "Big day starts in a few hours."

Both sherpas smiled, mute.

"He was a good man and a great climber," Turner said, his tone trying to rescue something.

"Yes, he was."

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 4

Trevor Turner arrived at Advanced Base Camp like Charlemagne, leading a procession of people and equipment so colorful and so expensive that it was hard to interpret it as anything but a claim to kingship. Turner was the most visible and most successful among a crop of Everest guides from New Zealand who enjoyed playing the mountaineering underdog. Their assertion was that, despite the starstruck claims of Europe and America, of Reinhold Messner and Alex Lowe and George Mallory, New Zealand was the cradle of mountaineering greatness. And all the knighthoods and accolades from the West only reinforced their zeal.

Sunlight broke through a week-long cloud as if to trumpet the arrival. From the uphill edge of camp, Aaron watched Turner shake hands with other guides and their clients, working the crowd like a politician at a black-tie fundraiser. It was the same job, Aaron thought; stealing loyalties, forging alliances, asking for "support" in the form of guide fees that rose to Himalayan heights. He wore red from head to toe, the most high-tech gear and clothing, splattered with the logos of climbing's biggest sponsors, and gilded by a sweep of wavy blond hair that framed his broad, skull-capped head. His gait was easy and even, almost floating across the jumbled tallus field, greeting and hugging fellow climbers, welcoming them into his exclusive fraternity of the mountaineering cool. Turner smiled his way to the communications tent — the only collection of shared equipment on the mountain and a sort-of command post for all twelve expeditions making their bid that year. When Turner ducked into the tent, his caravan was still appearing over the moraine ridge in two lines a quarter mile behind him.

It was May first. The best guides had been on the mountain for three weeks already, spending valuable resources on the invisible processes of planning and acclimatization, and waiting for the skies to clear. The forecasts called for clouds to move out in the next few days; that's when the ascents would begin. It had been an unusually wet winter and every expert was predicting a short season. By mid-May, the snow would be too unstable for an ascent. Two weeks to reach the top of the world. Two weeks to confront another of his father's killers.

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 3

The guest room was barely part of the permanent structure below it; more of a rooftop garden covered by corrugated metal and plywood. It wasn't plumbed. To pee, Aaron had to descend a cascade of wooden steps to a half-rotted platform that failed to hold level with the threshold of a metal bathroom door whose rust clashed viciously with its ochre paint. His room did have electricity, which is to say it had a single bare light bulb and a duplex outlet, half of which was permanently occupied by an electric space heater that threatened to set half of Kathmandu ablaze. Outside a small square window, the shadow of two buildings seemed to lean in toward one another as if peering in at Aaron's little nest. And between then, behind them, Aaron could see the sharpened, indigo peak where his father died.

There was a gentle knock on the door; Aaron jerked and spilled tea on his leg. He pulled an ice axe from a pile of equipment and leaned it beside his chair before he answered, "Come in!"

A tall man stepped into the light of the single bulb and let the door swing closed behind him. He smiled deeply, openly, without pity. His teeth shone brighter than his eyes which hid behind smudged walnut cheeks.

"Mr. Ghode?"

"Aaron. I bring you greetings. It is good for you to visit us," the man said loudly. He crossed the room faster than Aaron could stand so that his outstretched hand almost caught Aaron in the forehead as he rose.

"Please sit," Aaron said, studying his visitor carefully for a long moment while he levered his frame into a squatty wooden chair. The light bulb swayed narrowly above a metal card table and the two men. Aaron had only met the visitor once, years before, on his first visit to the Himalaya. Prenesh Ghode was a titan of Nepali industry. His "brokerage" (Aaron thought "slave market" might be more accurate) supplied more than three-fourths of all the sherpas on Everest. Though he had never climbed higher than the steps of his office building, he dressed the part of an explorer. He wore thick boots, wool slacks, and a down vest right out of an L.L. Bean catalog. Aaron sat and then remembered his manners. "Tea?"

"No, thank you friend. I hope you don't think me rude, but I cannot stay long. I have many men coming to the mountain this season. some arriving tonight."

"No worries," Aaron said and then waited for more. But the visitor only looked around the tiny room, taking inventory of its contents. Then, satisfied that he had cataloged Aaron's possessions, he turned his gaze to Aaron's eyes, as if taking measure of his thoughts. "I didn't expect to see you. How— how have you been?"

"No, I'm sure you didn't expect me," Ghode smiled. "I wasn't sure I should come but—" here he trailed off and resumed his study of the room.

"Why did you come?" Aaron asked.

"I heard you were in town and…and I'm sure you have heard about Dawa?"

"Yes. Terrible."

"Well, your arrival and his death coming so close together, I thought…I saw it as a sign. An opportunity."

"Oh? An opportunity for what?"

"To betray a secret.

Involuntarily, Aaron's left knee started to bounce as if keeping time with a rapid, barreling tune. He tried to respond casually, "Secret, huh? I'm all ears."

"Dawa Lob-sang was a dear friend. We worked together for many years. He was the best guide in Nepal."

Aaron remembered Ghode's habit of using the title "guide" for his sherpas, and the title "sponsor" for the foreign climbers charged with getting their increasingly unqualified clientele to the top of the world's highest peak.

"I was glad to see him once more before he died," Aaron said quickly.

"Yes. It's convenient that you were here when he did," Ghode paused again and eyed Aaron carefully.

"Why is that?"

"Dawa has left you an inheritance."

"What?"

"He was a frugal man with no family. After Aapti died, he had no one. His family was his fellow climbers…your father among them. He leaves you four million rupees."

Aaron was blank. Why would Dawa leave money to him? Out of guilt? A buddhist penance? And how on earth did Dawa Lob-sang have almost forty thousand dollars?

"There is something else; the secret," Ghode said.

"Tell me."

"Dawa was not there the day your father died. Your father climbed alone. Dawa refused to leave high camp that morning. There was weather and—"

"Bullshit! Dad would never have climbed alone. What the hell are you talking about?"

"I know it is hard to hear, Aaron," Ghode's tone was slower but no softer. "But it is true. They fought. And Dawa thought that Robert would not climb without him. Dawa thought he was calling a bluff. But Robert wasn't bluffing. He attempted to summit alone."

"Where are you getting this bullshit?" Aaron was standing now, looking down at Ghode with his arms crossed and his head canted aside. The light bulb lit his jaw and the steep slope of his chest, but left his eyes dark. "Who's telling you this? And why now?"

"Dawa told me on the day of Robert's funeral. He told me so I would allow him to work, but he swore me to secrecy in order to protect your father's name as a climber."

"That sonofabitch let my father die! He killed him! He made up a story so he could keep his job and you believed him?"

"That sonofabitch saved half his salary every year from that to this and has left it in an account in your name at Rastriya Banijya Bank. I have the account number," Ghode produced a slip of paper from a zippered vest pocket and laid it on the table.

"There were witnesses, Prenesh."

"Two. Trevor Turner and Sherpa Tonsing. Tonsing doesn't work for me. He refuses to discuss that day with me or anyone else. And Turner is…" Ghode looked at his unscuffed boots. "also not talking."

"And you've asked?"

"Not exactly."

"Because he's Western?"

"Kiwi. It's not wise for me to make trouble, Aaron."

"I see. Bite the hand that feeds you and all that, huh?"

"Something like that."

Aaron took his seat again and let his arms hang from slumped shoulders. He stared toward the window and fingered the tip of the ice axe still leaning against his chair.

"What, exactly, are you saying? Turner and his sherpa lied to cover Dad's ass?"

"I don't know their motives. And I don't know what happened that morning," Ghode said. "I just know it happened without Dawa Lob-sang. And I'm giving you four million reasons to believe me."

"So what am I supposed to do now?"

"That's up to you. You don't have to do anything, Aaron. Take your money and go back to America. I'll cancel your climb this year." Ghode wrestled himself out of his chair and put a hand on Aaron's shoulder. "But if you want to know how your father died, you'll have to ask Turner."

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 2

Aaron watched his dinner companion drink the poison, but it brought him no joy. Six years of plotting and seething were over. He had succeeded. And it was over so quickly, so casually. Just another drink like so many passed around the tavern that night, raised to smiling lips, drunk with hungry forgetfulness. Just another dead old man like so many others. Just another day in the shadow of the Mother Goddess like millions before.

The tavern was little more than a windowed closet on the upper floor of a dusty brick rowhouse along a narrow street. On the floor below was an office of some sort where men wore ties clipped to short sleeved white shirts and did their best to appear "professional" and "developed" despite the frequent sound of fistacuffs from the market across the street. It didn't matter, Aaron thought, looking down at the street through stained windows, trying not to watch too eagerly for the oncoming visitation from death. No one in the "professional" or "developed" worlds was paying attention.

The poison had been easy to get. The Nepalese version of the DEA, if there was such a thing, was apparently unconcerned with a myriad of mood-altering drugs being sold openly in bodegas, in street markets, and on street corners by bleary-eyed teens carrying their inventory in plastic milk crates on the back of scooters propelled by black smoke. It didn't take many quesions to lead from dealer to supplier to producer who could provide a drug that would alter more than one's mood. It was risin, or some Himalayan version of it. The druggist, whose shop occupied a cinder-block hut which jutted into the alley behind a butcher shop, had said it was odorless and tasteless.

Aaron's dinner companion sipped his tea slowly at first, blowing and casting stern looks across its surface as if he wasn't sure of its quality. But as the tea cooled, his consumption sped until he was gulping and calling for a second cup.

"It is so good to see you, Mr. Aaron. I am so glad you are here in Nepal. So glad to sit and have tea with Mr. Mann again, eh?" He raised his cup. "To your father."

Aaron felt a twist in his gut at the mention of the man whose death he was avenging, but he raised his cup and smiled. "Yes, to my father."

Aaron's companion was Dawa Lob-sang, a sherpa of legendary longevity with twenty-five ascents of Chomolungma to his credit, if anyone asked, which no one ever did; summit ascents were counted and congratulated by white men. Dawa was toothy and thin. His balding head shot forward from his torso and his shoulders were slender, bony and hunched. They looked pressed together as if some invisible giant were constantly squeezing him in an unwelcome hug. His face was vacant and joyful, punctuated by China teeth and a permanently-raised brow that made him look as if he was constantly expecting a punch line.

"I miss him," Dawa Lob-sang said, wiping the poisoned tea from his lips. "Your father was a good man."

Aaron Mann seethed at the guile of his father's killer. The innocence of his manner only made his feigned allegiance more vile. Aaron wondered if Dawa had been this calm when he cut his father's rope, or when he raided the tent, or when he created the cover story about a micro-blast. "A good man," Aaron repeated studying Dawa for a tick or downward glance that would betray his guilt. None was there. He turned again to peer through the grime on the window. In the street, one of the office workers was leaving loudly, shouting at someone in the office below and holding high two middle fingers.

A Mountaineer Who Wants To Kill - Part 1

Steely Dan was almost loud enough to drown out the deadening hum of the Airbus A320's engines. Aaron Mann adjusted his headphones and tried to close his eyes and see his father. This had been Dad's favorite album. He could see the elder Mann wobbling his head in rhythm with Walter Becker's guitar and the washboard road under the tires of their mud-caked 4Runner on the way to another weekend ramble through the mountains. Dad. And Steely Dan. And that rusted blue 4Runner stuffed full of rope and harnesses and a dutch oven with a broken handle. And the hum of the road like the hum of jet engines, only softer. Less angry. Less violent.

Aaron moved his hands to his lap to give Bill-the-accountant-from-Atlanta a turn with the armrest. He let his head fall to his shoulder and peeked through the window at the jumbled landscape below. The cataclysm punching those mountains toward the sky must have been enormous. The chain stretched beyond his view from forty-thousand feet, through Myanmar and into China. It was a squalid terrain where nothing living was allowed to stay, scraped by glaciers stained brown like the skid marks of nature, dotted with bitter peaks that threatened to claw the belly of the airliner. Up here, Aaron thought, it was all blues riffs and armrests, the dull drone of engines and sun-lit memories of his father. Below, it was all icefalls and tallus and spindrift.

And murder.

A Son Who Wants Love

When he was six, Sean held on to his dad's pants while the men talked and smoked in the dark on the front porch before they would all get into one car and drive away. Sometimes, his dad would turn aside toward the light of a window and check the roll of cash in his front pocket, squinting through cigar smoke while he counted. When his mother put Sean to bed on those nights, she would pray for her husband with a special earnestness that Sean didn't know what to do with besides notice.

---

When he was ten, Sean held a basketball in the driveway waiting for his dad to come home. He had promised to be home in time to practice before Sean's game. The ball felt heavy and useless in his hands. He realized he was afraid to bounce it, as if it would break into thousands of tiny orange pieces. He stared at it for a long time, wondering if it really was a basketball, realizing that the ball was growing larger and heavier and uglier, until his mother shouted that it was time to go. His father wasn't there. He wasn't at the game either.

---

When he was twelve, Sean held the door to his room closed while his father raged against the other side. He was asking about money, about where Sean's mother had hidden the cash. He wasn't drunk — Sean had seen drunk before — but he was panicked. More than once his voice broke. Was he crying? Who cries and begs for money at his son's bedroom door? Who was his father becoming, Sean wondered. Who was Sean becoming?

---

When he was sixteen, Sean held out his brand new drivers license for his parents to see. His dad seemed both proud and preoccupied at the same time. Sean wondered how a human could combine those two affectations at once. At worst, his father hated him; at best he was ambivalent.

His father asked him to go for a drive and Sean was more than happy to oblige. Maybe this was a turning point? Maybe the truth would come out? While Sean backed out of the driveway, triple-checking his blind-spots, his dad seemed overwrought. Sean expected him to make some kind of announcement.

"Sean, you're mother and I are splitting up..."
"Sean, I have to go away for a while…"
"Sean, you're a disappointment to the family and I never want to see you again…"

These are the fears of a boy on a drive with his unknown father. But all his dad said was, "I'm glad you got your license son. A car is a lot of freedom. I hope you don't misuse your freedom."

After that, they drove in silence.

What did that mean? Was that some kind of code? Was he supposed to know how to interprets dad-speak like this? Was it something every other teenage boy came by naturally, but he was missing somehow? Were other teenaged boys driving around with their dads, getting the same cryptic messages and knowing in silent understanding?

He started to ask, but his father said, "Let's go home. I don't want your mother to get worried."

---

When he was eighteen, Sean held his diploma in his right hand and swung the tassel across his cap with his left. He scanned the audience for his father, but didn't see him. Maybe he was in the back. Maybe he was proud of him even if he wasn't there.

---

When he was twenty-three, Sean held his bride's hand and smiled for the cameras. He felt sick. He almost wretched when he heard the photographer say, "Ok, now let's have the happy couple with the groom's parents." His mother stepped dutifully forward, and they smiled for the camera.

---

When he was twenty-six, Sean held Benjamin who weighed seven pounds, one ounce and measured nineteen inches long. Everyone said he had Sean's eyes. His mother said they had said the same thing about Sean having his father's eyes. He posted photos on Facebook. Three days later, his father liked them.

---

When he was forty-six, Sean held eight tickets to Paris. They were a family of six now; Ben had three sisters. He handed two tickets to his mother who said she would do her best, but he really shouldn't have spent the money already.

"Mom, you know as well as I do that I wouldn't have gotten a commitment from him. Besides, I'm a partner now. We're doing fine. I'm willing to take the risk."

It seemed a foolish risk though, another in a lifetime of risks taken, of putting his neck out or his hand out or his heart out only to have it ignored. His father had always wanted to see the Mona Lisa, his mother said. Maybe it would work out.

---

When he was sixty-seven, Sean held his father's head off the pillow so he could sip through a straw. The pale pink sippy-cup seemed an ignoble detail, but hospitals aren't places to worry about things like dignity. He lowered his father's head and sighed. There was little hope — for the cancer or for their relationship. Sean rocked on his heels a little, waited a beat in case there was anything else, then started to gather his things. The nurses had been adamant about a ten o'clock bed time.

"See you tomorrow," Sean wished. He wasn't sure his father would see tomorrow, and he wasn't sure he could bear to sit with him in meaningless silence again if he did.

His father grunted and shifted his weight.

Sean walked through the door and away from his father finally. The elevators were at the end of a long passageway lined with half-opened doors through which Sean heard wheezing old people and clicking machines. He punched the button and waited for the ding.

"Mr. Calvert? Excuse me, Mr. Calvert?" It was a nurse coming behind him down the hallway.

"Mr. Calvert, your father wants to see you."

"I just came from there."

"I know. I think he pushed his button right after you left. He's calling you back."

Sean wondered if that had ever happened before, his father calling him to his bedside. He looked the same when he got back to the room.

"What's up?" Sean said. He stood near the door.

"I want to tell you something."

"You told me before, dad. You don't want a ventilator. They aren't going to put you on one."

"Close the door and come here."

Suddenly, Sean was eight again, taking orders form his old man, hoping he wasn't in trouble. Hoping he would hear something that would give him footing, that would steady his little-boy world full of school yard bullies and enigmatic girls and unnoticed successes.

"Joseph is a fruitful vine,
a fruitful vine near a spring,
whose branches climb over a wall."

Sean looked at the monitor above the bed and checked his father's vital signs. He must be delirious. Didn't they say his mind might go in the final moments? He reached into his pocket for his phone. He needed to let his mom know.

"Those were some of Jacob's last words to Joseph."

"Who?"

"Jacob and Joseph. In the Bible. I read it this morning."

Sean chuckled and put his phone back in his pocket. "Since when do you read the Bible?"

"Since I've started dying, or at least started dying faster."

"Dad, you're going to be fine. Now go to sleep. I'm going to get in trouble for—"

"Jacob loved all his sons," his father said. Then he coughed and caught his breath. "But he loved Joseph most."

Sean couldn't respond. He wasn't sure what his father was trying to say. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. He just didn't want the end to be any more painful than the middle had been.

"But Jacob failed his sons. He was a terrible father. Absent. Angry. Scheming." He coughed again.

"Look Dad. I appreciate your trying to get right with God and stuff, but I don't really want a Bible lesson right now—"

"Shut up, Sean. Give me a minute. I'm trying to do something here."

"What, Dad? And don't tell me to shut up. I'm a grown man. What the hell are you trying to do?"

"Bless you. I'm trying to bless you, Sean."

There was silence and for the first time in his life Sean saw tears in his father's eyes.

"I realize a lot of things now. This bed has made me see a lot of things. I've realized my regret can't change anything; it never has. I've realized you're a good son. I've realized you're a successful man, a terrific husband and a helluva good father.

When I was a boy, people used to talk about a beautiful death. If someone died peacefully at home with their family around, that was a good thing. If they fought death and cursed, that was undignified. I've realized I'm not going to have a beautiful death. Hell, look at all these damn tubes. And I've realized an old man's dying words aren't worth a lot but they are the only thing of any value I have left."

The old man lifted himself to sit up with a grimace so that he could meet his son's eyes level.

I was never sorry for failing you, Sean. I thought it was your mother's job to raise you. I was too busy trying to earn a name for myself than to think about giving you one. But now I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't give you a better start and that makes me more grateful for the way you turned out.

I'm proud of you, Sean.

And I love you."

---

When he was sixty-seven, Sean held a hymnal and looked up a stained glass window he had never seen before but seemed oddly familiar. The preacher had never met his father, but he told some recycled stories he had heard from the family the evening before, and did a well-enough job of paying such respects as were due, as due to all men, as due to an enemy killed in battle or an outlaw gunned town in the wild west or an inner-city crime statistic who never knew his father.

There were thirty people in the chapel, most of them hardly knew his father. Those who did were probably mourning a lost debt as much as a lost friend, Sean mused. There seemed a lot of regret in the room. But Sean held the hymnal and sang, "Twas blind, but now I see." And he smiled at all that regret, hanging about the room, draped across his father's memory like the flag of belligerent army. He smiled. And when someone asked him how he was doing after the service, he said, "I'm blessed."

Move Over, Bacon

This morning I read the account of Jesus casting demons into a herd of pigs. It was recorded by a first-century Jewish tax collector and it reveals something amazing and perplexing about Jesus.

When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”

Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.”

He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.

The thing that struck me this morning about this story wasn't the exorcism or the gory scene of dozens of pigs splatting, splashing and drowning in the water. What struck me was what happened next. The very next verse says,

Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town.

That's it? He sailed all the way across the Sea of Galilee and then turns right around and sails back because the pig farmer asked him to? Wouldn't you expect him to press a little? Shouldn't he explain how the loss of their pig rancher's herd is less important than the salvation of these men? After all, he went there to preach, right? His leaving means there are lots of people in that region who won't hear the gospel because the pig farmer told him to go. This isn't exactly "setting his face like flint" to bring his message to the Gadarenes.

Is Jesus really so passive that he abandons his crusade the first time he meets with a disapproving audience? Or is he really so cavalier with the souls of people as to give up on reaching them so quickly? What about his rights? Shouldn't he be allowed to speak and let the marketplace of ideas decide whether he's the messiah or a swine-hating Jew out to destroy the local economy?

Jesus, apparently, rejected all of those aphorisms and simply sailed back home.

Maybe he knew the outcome. Either by divine revelation or common sense, maybe he could tell that his message wouldn't be well received and to deliver it would be a waste of time. Or maybe the whole exercise was to make a point about the antithetical nature of capitalism and gospel community, or Jews versus Gentiles, or those rich in wealth versus poor in spirit. We don't know.

What we do know is that Jesus, in wisdom, humility, courage and faithfulness, made a decision to honor someone's request to their own detriment and others'. Jesus was willing to be rejected. He was willing to take "no" for an answer, even when doing so affected others unfairly. And he was willing to do so without bitterness or slander.

What do you think of that? Does that sound like the Jesus you know? Does it sound like Christians you know? What more can we learn from this story?

Reflections On Reflecting

I'm such a product of my environment. I think we all are. I've been catching up on Breaking Bad recently and suddenly chemistry seems really interesting. I know this is not true. I know that chemistry is not interesting. It is, in fact, the spawn of evil science professors looking for a way to send students back home to live in their parents' basements. But, as Jesse Pinkman might say, Mr. White gots me trippin' yo.

The same thing happens to me when I get into a good novel or start studying any compelling story. I'm prim and proper when I watch Downton Abbey, restless and cold when I read Hemingway.

In a way, my soul is like a computer. I was in high school when computers were like Michael Bay movies: big, dumb and clunky. I had classes in "computer" where we learned a programming language called Basic. The fundamental principle I remember from those classes is this: garbage in - garbage out. That was a mantra to remind us that computers just do what you tell them to do. The code has to be clear and clean. If you write code poorly, you get poor results. I know humans are infinitely more complex than the Apple IIe I learned Basic on, but in some ways, we're not so different.

That reminds me of another computer term: icon. The Septuagint calls humans "eikons of God". We are meant to reflect his glory. But we are free agent eikons; we reflect whatever shines on us. If we expose ourselves to the light of scripture, we reflect grace and truth in our relationships, our work, and our daydreams. If we expose ourselves to the travails of a cancer-ridden-chemistry-teacher-turned-drug-lord, we reflect something different.

There's a balance here, of course. We aren't called to abstain from culture. We aren't all called to be monks. But I have to remind myself that I am always reflecting something — always showing forth what shines on my soul.

A Swimmer Who Wants Freedom

I want my writing to improve, so this summer I've been doing little exercises, sort-of creative writing calisthenics. I've been reading about the elements of story and I realized that the only two things you need to get a story going are character and ambition. So I devised a drill. I wrote down as many characters as I could think of — a butcher, a mom, a CEO, a killer, a pirate, a doctor, etc. I filled a page with them. Then I did the same with ambitions — power, love, escape, rescue, pleasure, revenge. Now I just play "spin the topic wheel." I ask my kids to pick a number and then I write about the character and ambition associated with those numbers — a son who wants love, a pastor who wants rescue, a mountaineer who wants to kill, etc. 

This blog isn't normally about fiction, but I'm posting this as a way to improve my writing and invite feedback. I hope you enjoy a few of these installments. 

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He topped sixty seconds for the first time in middle school. He did it on a dare and he nearly passed out. In high school, it became a sort-of parlor trick. 

"Hey Jimmy! Do it in the lake!" 

"Hey Jimmy! Do it in this plastic bag so we know you're not faking." 

He did it every time because it meant prestige. It was a platform for getting dates. Of course, he swam too. He wasn't the strongest body on the swim team but his ability underwater was unmatched. But it wasn't the girls or the letter jackets that drove him to do it; it was freedom. 

Jimmy started holding his breath when he was six. That's when his mom stopped living. They didn't bury her until he was eleven, but by then she was a ghost. She had retreated from the land of the living via pills and People magazine. She ate in her room. She slept in her room. Jimmy's dad didn't. One day, less than a year after she came home from the hospital looking grey and reduced, Jimmy realized he had gone a week without speaking to her. He had only seen her in glimpses through the bedroom door when she had called for pills. He topped one hundred twenty seconds sometime his sophomore year.

Jimmy's dad had parlor tricks too. He drank with sour men who raced miniature motorcycles in Jimmy's back yard and shouted obscenities over the whining motors until the neighbors called the police. Jimmy didn't trust his dad's friends. Once, two of them came to blows and the fight ended with one of them sitting on the other's chest with a handful of hair working it up and down until the back of his opponent's head was gooey and there was a little stream of blood on the driveway. The loser of that fight never came back to drink with Jimmy's dad again. Jimmy wondered if he had survived, but he was too afraid to ask. 

It started in the bathtub. Underwater, he was free from the noises his brain stored up during the day to torment him with at night. His father shouting. Doors slamming. Bottles clinking. His mother moaning. Glass breaking. Engines revving. The TV. The neighbor's dog. The whispers of hunched and white-haired old ladies whose dresses were pressed stiff to make up for the wrinkles in their furrowed faces at First Baptist Church where his father would drop him off on Sunday mornings on the way to the horse track. Underwater he was free from the noises, from the pressure, from time and disappointment. 

A month after graduation, he went with his high school friends to the lake. Most of them were leaving for college in a few weeks. Jimmy was staying behind. They were drinking Keystone and jumping off big rocks into the lake. The higher the rock, the deeper Jimmy sank, and the longer the silence lasted. Deep in the green nothingness, he was free. There were no sounds, no restrictions. Nothing to see or hear or do. By then, he was up to one hundred eighty seconds. 

For two months after that, Jimmy worked at a scuba shop renting equipment to people going on vacation, people with the means to leave their circumstances behind. He stole opportunities to assist dive instructors in the pool, but the little square tiles on the bottom of the pool grew more and more worrisome. There were the same little squares in his parents' bathroom, the room he never saw any more, just past the room where his mom was dying. Floating over those squares, the quiet was deathlike. He saw himself floating over his mother's domain, like a specter. He didn't want to haunt his mother and so he didn't want the job. He stole a weight belt and stopped showing up. 

The weight belt was for the lake. He was timid at first; he kept it tied to a rope that stretched out to a tree on the bank. When he couldn't last any longer, he would drop the weight, swim to the surface, and then retrieve the belt with the rope. He reached two hundred seconds. And he did it alone. No one was there in the blind greenness. No one was within miles. 

It was a late summer afternoon when Jimmy made his final escape. It was premeditated, but not in a hopeless or dramatic way. It was just the next step in his journey. A final step away from the haunting, a last step toward freedom. The shadow of the tree where the rope used to be tied stretched far out from shore. The afternoon light danced on tiny waves inviting him below where they would gently rock him to sleep. He stepped into the familiar, murky green, but it was clear. Everything was clear for Jimmy. He lasted three hundred seconds that day. 

And then he lasted forever. 

Eternal Community

My seven-year-old came home from church on Sunday with lots of new information about heaven. He told us he knew just what heaven was going to look like — gold streets, gates made out of pearls, no sun, no ocean. In fact, he was pretty accurate. Kudos to our friend Joy McDonald who teaches his small group.

One thing my little Bible scholar didn't mention, however, was heroes of our faith who would be there. Peter and John, Paul and Barnabas, Moses, David, Joseph, Abraham — it seems none of them were in his lesson about heaven. Doesn't that seem like a significant omission? Wouldn't you expect any description of heaven to include some mention of its inhabitants?

Imagine you're writing the heaven scene for a Hollywood production — the resolution where all the great men and women of the story are saying good-bye, or possibly hello, forever. Think of Luke and Han getting their medals from Princess Leah. Think of the newly-crowned Aragorn and Arwen kneeling with Gandalf and Legolas and all the others to honor the unlikely hobbit heroes.Think of Arthur and Lancelot and Galahad taking their seats at the round table. If you're writing these scenes, you include each hero. You appreciate each victory and each scar. This is their moment. They are the resolution. They are the characters who endure.

There is Legolas with his bow and Aragorn with his crown. There is little Frodo with his bare feet and his heart of gold. There is Gandalf in his beard and gown and wry, knowing grin. There is Chewbacca growling and Gimli glowering and Indiana with his whip and Forrest with his blissful smile and Atticus with his law books and William Wallace in face paint and Huck and Jim on their raft and a shirtless, bloody Rocky still wearing gloves.

But when John gave us the clearest glimpse of heaven ever recorded, he didn't write the scene that way. His Revelation isn't a Hebrews 11-style parade of who's who. In fact, there are no names mentioned, only a faceless multitude of worshippers. Even those smaller groups who are described in detail aren't identified. The four creatures and the 24 elders aren't named. Are they patriarchs and apostles? Angels? We aren't told.

What we are told is what those unnamed heroes are doing — worshipping. The glory of the One who sits on the throne so overshadows the heroism of any of our stories that John can concentrate on nothing else.

But there's another lesson here besides our relative dullness in the presence of God. In Revelation as in Acts, we common creatures have all things in community. Scot McKnight says of Revelation, "Alongside such visions, of course, is the obvious: humans themselves are joined in fellowship with one another. One is not treated to a blow-by-blow account of 'who sits where' and 'who gets to sit next to whom,' which was the foolish question of James and John. Instead, eternity is so corporate that individuals simply are unrecognized…"

The worshipping throng is so healed of its self-consciousness, so united in humility, so unconcerned with any sort of hierarchy that even the greatest heroes among them blend into the crowd.

I expect (and don't ask me to prove this) that we'll know David and Peter and all the rest when we get to heaven. I hope to spend many a sunset dinner listening to their stories. But I'm also grateful that heaven won't be an eternal episode of The Apprentice, jockeying for attention from the Big Guy. We will be equal with our heroes, not in elevated honor, but in unified humility before the throne which, my son will tell you, has a rainbow around it.

Unity and equity. Worship and joy. I'm so glad my seven-year-old is giving me a clearer picture of heaven.

Relational Eikons

How does your small group relate to Adam and Eve? This morning, I was reading some thoughts from Scot McKnight about the story of God and our place in it. Genesis 1:26-27 says this:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

The word for "image" in those verses corresponds to the Greek word Eikon. We were created in the image of God to be icons of him — incomplete but faithful reflections of a bigger, grander, more perfect being. But what parts of our being are Eikonic? That is, which parts of us reflect the nature of God, and which parts are just baggage? Just so much blood and tissue? And is it even possible to separate the divine from the carnal? Here's what McKnight says about that:

To be an Eikon means, first of all, to be in union with God as Eikons; second, it means to be in communion with other Eikons; and third, it means to participate with God in his creating, his ruling, his speaking, his naming, his ordering, his variety and beauty, his location, his partnering, and his resting…To be an Eikon means to be in relationship.

Of course, Genesis 1:26-27 is followed closely and mercilessly by Genesis 3. That's when conflict entered our story. That's when our enemy attacked everything it means to be an Eikon — our relationships with God, with one another, and with his kingdom reign. Now we are cracked Eikons. We offer inadequate reflections God's glory to a world at odds with his reign.

All that made me think of small groups. Our mission in Small Groups at IBC is to grow deep relationships that advance the kingdom of God in dark places. We are to be on mission together to restore little pieces of our universe that were ruined in Genesis 3. And it occurred to me this morning that those relationship we're building are, themselves, the kingdom. If being Eikons means being in relationship, and if what was cracked in the Fall was relationships, then the Missio Dei can be defined by restored relationships. To the extent that we bring light and health to our relationships with other Eikons, we are helping restore the kingdom reign of God in the world.

One other thing McKnight emphasizes is that this Eikonic restoration is prosecuted by the Holy Spirit. He is leading our charge — opening opportunities for us, revealing the cracks in our reflections, sending us to serve the broken world, calling us to deeper love. Our success in our mission does not correlate to our church attendance, the quality of our training, our allegiance to pastoral leadership, our copious sermon notes, or our agreement to any model of group life. Our success in the mission of God depends on our following the Holy Spirit's lead.

We may never bring Eden back, but if we'll allow the Holy Spirit to deepen our relationships, we can bring light to darkness, joy to despair, health to illness, and the kingdom reign of God to dark places in our world.

Rescuing Andy

My friend Trey did some work for this website called Yonder Journal which looks like what would happen if National Geographic met Field & Stream in an Alaskan hookah hut near the end of a long winter night that had left them both a little raw and vulnerable and … well … you know. In other words, it's awesome. I recommend it.

Reading through some of the stories there made me want to write about other adventures. I don't have many such stories to share (I live in Dallas for crying out loud) but here's one that's fun to tell.

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In the autumn of 2011, I climbed a Colorado mountain, sat on the ground with my back against a log, and stayed there for nine hours in the snowfall watching for elk. I was camped with four other men — my father, brother, uncle and cousin. We were on a seven-day hunt in an area called Unit 80 near South Fork. We camped just below 9,000 feet and my predawn hump had taken me well up toward tree line. I watched for movement along the remains of a long-forgotten logging road and whispered a dozen prayers of thanks that my brother was still alive. Twenty-four hours earlier, that had been in doubt.

Unit 80 is a jagged swath of public land between South Fork and Wolf Creek in the Southwest corner of Colorado. Two tributaries of the Rio Grande descend steeply through its pines below sweeping meadows of alpine tundra.

My brother's name is Andy. On the evening before our first day of hunting, Andy had scurried to the point of a little rock outcropping not far from camp with a pair of binoculars. From there, he could see the length of a deep valley stretching at least five miles toward the south. Several parks on the far side of the valley looked like good places to take a stand and glass big chunks of land. That night around the campfire, Andy claimed his hunting grounds. Come morning, he was headed across the valley.

My father's name is Bary. That same morning, he and I left camp in the opposite direction via truck, toward a cirque at the top of the same valley. We had plenty of room. Our 10-mile radios couldn't always  span the distances we created; messages had to be relayed through Uncle Lynn who had stayed behind as camp cook. We stayed out all day. When it was too dark to shoot, we started walking back toward the road, and we started to hear radio chatter.

"Andy dislocated his shoulder," Lynn was saying. "He's stuck on a cliff."

7:45 pm
I catch up with Dad less than a mile from the pickup. He's standing at the apex of a bend in an abandoned logging road, holding up his handheld radio, trying to hear Uncle Lynn clearly.

"He did what to a cliff?" Dad is shouting. "You say he fell off a cliff?"

We get the message that Andy is safe for now, then we hustle back to camp for the rest of the story. Here's what happened:

Andy's descent to the valley floor that morning had been treacherous. He had to scoot down much of the slope on his butt, and that was with a good view for wayfinding. When he returned in the evening, it was nearing dark and he had trouble finding the same route. He knew he had descended somewhere in a narrow gorge cutting into the west side of the valley, but the farther he walked into the gorge, the steeper and more narrow its walls got…and the deeper became the shadows. He spotted a place where he thought he could scramble to the rim of the gorge. It was a climb of about 100 feet and it would be a challenge carrying a day pack and a rifle. He made good progress but then, 30 feet from the top, his right foot slipped. Because of his stance at that moment, most of his weight fell against his left handhold in a violent jerk. Andy has a bad left shoulder, an injury from high school basketball, and the jerk was enough to separate the ball from its socket. Frozen by pain and an awkward stance, Andy radiod camp and asked Lynn to send help. Then he waited, legs locked against narrow footholds and his good arm
— clinging  to a ledge above his head — quickly falling asleep.

Over his shoulder, Andy sees the valley below giving way to shadow. The sun is well below the horizon now. Twilight is fading. And Andy realizes he can't ascend the last 30 feet of gorge with his shoulder out of socket. He will have to set it himself, but he can't maneuver to a position to do that.


8:00 pm
The fifth member of our party is Whit, Lynn's son. Whit is 22 years old, six-foot-two, lanky and athletic. He is just arriving in camp when Andy's first radio calls for help come through. Whit had seen the gorge where Andy said he was going to descend that morning. He drops all his gear in the tent and races into the forest to help. It takes him only a few minutes to find the canyon rim above Andy. What he does next is remarkable. (Later, when the search and rescue team is unpacking ropes and harnesses to descended the same cliff Whit had, they are more than a little skeptical of his story.) Whit manages to clamor to a ledge just above Andy. From there, he lowers a length of "mule tape" which is, providentially, the only provision he happened to bring with him, to Andy whose clenched calves and forearms are shaking and weak with fatigue. Andy isn't sure he can hang on to the mountain much longer. Whit pulls him to the ledge and then hustles back up to the rim, but this time when he lowers the mule tape, Andy isn't biting. He tells Whit he doesn't think he can climb the remaining section. So Whit sits down to mark their position and wait for more help. Andy finally unshoulders his gear and goes about setting the socket. There is only the faintest blue light in the western sky.


8:45 pm
Dad and I arrive at camp with a lot of questions. Lynn has already called search and rescue. There is much debate about sending one of us (probably me) through the dark to find the other two men. Whit left without a coat and now that the temperature is dropping, he's getting cold. Luckily, he also has a radio. We eventually decide to wait for search and rescue, but since we can't risk losing their position, we tell Whit to stay where he is and tough out the cold.


9:00 pm
Andy settles in, sets his shoulder, and makes himself at home on the ledge. It's about the size of a sheet of plywood; if he sits with his back against the mountain, his feet dangle over the edge, but he can lay prone if he turns sideways. We radio Andy that a search and rescue team is on the way and Andy decides that's enough reason to give up on climbing. He won't test his shoulder again; he'll wait for the cavalry.


9:45 pm
A Rio Grande County sheriff's deputy arrives at our camp. His name is Russ. He seems only mildly perturbed at being called out late on a Saturday night. He cheers up considerably when offered a cup of coffee and some of Lynn's venison chili.


10:15 pm
Rio Grande County Search and Rescue is a volunteer organization and our campsite is remote. It takes almost two hours for the first of the team to arrive. Slowly, several others trickle in. One of the first to arrive is Bill, the group's leader. Bill steps over to a folding table under a tarp and lamp where we've spread out a map. Andy has given us his longitude and latitude which his GPS can pinpoint to within 15 meters. He has also given us a verbal description of his location. He has the same map we're using which is also helpful. Bill is impressed. Andy might have been foolhardy to attempt that climb, but at least he was prepared and he's managed to keep his wits. He's cracking jokes about helicopters and insurance over the radio which, it's obvious, is new to Bill's search and rescue experience.


10:45 pm
As his crew arrives and the rescue nears, Bill assumes command of the situation. There's another abandoned logging road that circles nearer Andy's position than our camp. Bill decides that's a better place to start the hike toward the gorge. The team members all get back in their vehicles and head to a rally point on the road. There are more than a dozen of them now. Bill turns to me and says, "I need you to come with us. I want you to be our radio contact with Andy. He's comfortable talking to you. We'll relay all of our instructions through you."

We leave Dad and Lynn at camp. I ride with Deputy Russ whose classic rock Sirius station provides a bizarre soundtrack for the whole bumpy drive.

The team stops at a wide spot in the road while Russ and I drive farther east. If we're right about Andy's location, we should be able to drive to within a quarter mile of him. We're hoping Whit will be able to spot the light bar or hear the sirens from Russ's truck. Russ and I drive until the road gives way completely to forest. No luck. Whit never sees us. He can hear the sirens but can't tell which direction or how far they're coming from.

This is bad news.


11:00 pm
The senior members of the rescue team gather around a map laid out on the hood of a Tacoma pickup. They are debating whether we have Andy's location correct. It's colder now; the other members of the team build a small fire and stand around it rubbing their hands. Somewhere to our east, Whit builds a fire too. He's wearing only insulated pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. But the wind is fierce across the rim of the canyon and Whit worries about losing control of his little fire. He puts it out and shivers.

11:15 pm
Our plan was to have Whit walk out to the road, then turn around and lead us right back to Andy. But now the plan isn't so simple. We ask Andy to fire a shot while we all watch and listen. The report seems to come from the direction we expected but it sounds much farther away than we thought. There is confusion among the team about where Whit and Andy are.


11:30 pm
Bill asks me to tell Whit to walk uphill to the north until he hits the logging road.


11:45 pm
Whit has walked for 15 minutes and seen neither us nor the road.


Midnight
Whit still hasn't found the road. He has no provisions save the radio — no water, no flashlight, inadequate clothing. It begins to dawn on the team that we now have two rescues to execute.


12:30 am
Whit appears. He gave up on finding the road and started heading west toward us, fighting blindly through thick brush and steep terrain. When he appears in someone's headlamp beam, he gets hugs and handshakes all around, from people he has never seen before. Whit probably saved Andy's life when he pulled him to the ledge. And he certainly saved himself; before he appeared, the rescue team was at a loss as to how to find him.


12:45 am
Andy is relieved to hear that Whit is safe, but there is bad news to follow the good. Bill leaves his huddle around the Tacoma and walks out into the dark where I'm chatting with Andy on the radio, trying to keep his spirits up.

"I've made a decision not to go after Andy tonight," Bill tells me. "I need you to tell him that we're delaying the rescue until daybreak. It's too risky for me to send my team out there in the dark if we don't know where we're going."

I can hear something in Andy's voice when I give him the news. Maybe it's fear. Maybe frustration. Maybe it's some of the self-recrimination that kept popping up and I would have to beat it back and tell him he made an honest mistake and we needed him to keep his head and not descend into despair or panic. His voice cracked and he asked about another scenario, but he knew Bill was right. Within seconds, he recovered and said he could tough it out. But when I suggest that we turn off the radios to save battery and just check in every hour on the hour, he responds with, "How about every half-hour?"


1:30 am
When an emergency call goes out, all the available volunteers are expected to respond. Tonight there are more volunteers available than usual. By the time Bill calls it, there are 17 of them stomping their feet around the little fire on the logging road. Bill selects four of them to perform the rescue and tells them to be at our camp at 6:00am. The rest he dismisses. Two of the select crew — a boyfriend and girlfriend who had driven all the way from Del Norte — head home to get a very short night's sleep. Bill and the other two accept our invitation to crash at camp. One of them takes my bunk, another takes Andy's, and a third sleeps in his truck. I lay a sleeping bag next to the campfire but only spend about 30 minutes in it that night, none of them asleep.


2 am
Andy has plenty of water and a little food. He has firestarter, but no fuel on the rocky ledge. He has the radio and GPS both with plenty of battery. Most importantly, since he has been out since early morning, he has warm clothing. All-in-all, he is well-outfitted to spend a night outside, which is good because the forecast is chilly. October at 9,000 feet is never balmy. I tell him the low will be in the teens, but no precipitation is expected.


2:30 am
Andy checks in. He has an update on his gear and the temperature. It's windy on the ledge.


3 am
Andy checks in. Doesn't say much.


3:30 am
I can't raise him on the radio. When he checks in he says he dozed off for a few minutes.


4 am
One or two words about the cold.


4:30 am 
...


5 am
Coldest part of the night. I remind Andy that we're an hour away from assembling the team.


5:30 am
Two of the guys wake up. Andy sounds more lucid.


5:45 am
The couple from Del Norte arrives early, which is remarkable since they couldn't have slept for more than two hours.


6 am
There's a faint light in the sky. Lynn is up making breakfast but no one is interested yet. Bill takes another look at the map and decides not to drive down to the logging road. We'll walk from camp following the route Whit took when he ran toward Andy the evening before.


6:30 am 
Seven of us set out — five rescuers, Whit and I. It's a relatively easy hike and we take it fast. Eager.

7 am
The sun has broken wide and warm over the mountains across the valley by the time we get to Andy. It takes the rescue team less than 15 minutes to rope up, rappel to the ledge, put a harness on Andy, and help him to the top. There are deep sighs and a few tears. We send the news back to camp via radio and Lynn invites the whole crew back for biscuits and gravy.


8 am
The couple from Del Norte are both uber-fit marathoners from Wisconsin. They have never had biscuits and gravy. Lynn shames them for this and piles their plate with enough calories to take them to Kona and back.

Andy is effusive. The team soaks up the gratitude as quickly as the biscuits soak up the gravy. Then we pose for a group photo, shake hands all around, and say good-bye.

/// \\\

No one got a shot at an elk that trip. Andy didn't hunt very heartily after that. On the afternoon of the day Andy was rescued, it started to snow, and by the time we broke camp, Unit 80 was buried under three feet of it. We sloshed off the mountain with broken gear, wet clothes and wasted elk tags, but grateful that the weather held, that Andy kept his wits, that Whit turned adrenaline-powered-mountain-goat for a few minutes, that God seemed to be watching over us, and that Rio Grande County Volunteer Search and Rescue comes through in a pinch.

Agency

In this story we are telling, we have agency. God calls us to be his intimate allies, his ambassadors in the world. But allies and ambassadors aren't just lackeys; they think for themselves. The common Christian self-image of a sheep, a servant or "clay in the hands of the potter" is incomplete.

Sometimes our churches work so hard to encourage obedience to law of God that they leave little room for intimacy with the Spirit of God. This week, I was reading Thomas Merton's treatise on spiritual direction for religious and came across this sentence:

We should not flee from responsibility, and we should not make such a fetish out of spiritual direction that, even though we are mature and responsible clerics, we refuse to move an inch without being "put under obedience" — in other words without someone else assuming responsibility for us. 

We have agency. It is not usurping God to use it; it is glorifying him. Like a son, it disappoints God when we don't rise to opportunities to reflect him well without being told.

For a nice, clean-cut church kid, this can be a hard lesson to learn. If you make a habit of obedience, you can also make a habit of acquiescence. You can live half your life without making a hard decision — college, major, job, home, even spouse can all be chosen from "approved lists", from a pattern of living up to expectations. How many coming-of-age stories have we heard about this? How many more must we hear to realize the importance of claiming agency?

The story worth writing — the Christian who is serious about his commission — takes initiative. He leaves Ur, risks death in the face of the giant, sails to Cyprus, dances before the ark. He takes actions that are his own idea and reflect his unique identity and calling.

It is not the mark of a mature Christian that he must always be told what to do.

Tour de Life

For most of this month, I was among the few Americans who paid attention to the Tour de France. On Sunday, I watched the 100th tour speed to its colorful finish under the iconic Arc de Triomphe, the sprinters hammering their pedals with superhuman strength and balance to win the final stage while the overall winner coasted smoothly across the finish line with his hands on the shoulders of his teammates, the yellow jersey spread proudly across his narrow chest.

The Tour de France is never won on the final stage. There are no buzzer-beaters on the Champs-Elysees. This year, at Briton named Chris Froome won. He did it with a victory on Stage 8 on a relatively obscure day to a seldom-visited mountain called Ax-3 Domaines. He did not win the Tour on the final day or on the iconic, pressure-ridden climbs of famous mountains like Alpe d'Huez or Mont Ventoux. When he peddled his heart out in Stage 8, he didn't know he was winning the Tour de France; he just knew he was doing his best.

I like that because I think that's how life is. We don't count it a beautiful or successful life if someone hangs around and goes through the motions for eighty years and then literally throws up a Hail Mary just before they run out of time. Life is won or lost in the middle, in the day-to-day, on the weekdays, under the weight and pulse of breathing and working and loving and eating and cuddling for a few minutes before you tuck the kids in.

This year, like almost every other year, the final stage of the Tour de France was more of a parade than a race — a victory lap with lots of smiles and photos and handshakes and champagne and pats on the back. That's how I want to finish. I don't want my last years to be a race to make up for lost time. I want to put in the hard work now, to win in the millions of little peddle strokes that happen in the mundane and obscure, so I can finish my ride with peace and celebration.

I'm a cycling fan. Thanks to Lance and the rest of the dope-heads in the pro peloton, I sometimes feel like I'm the last one on the planet, but I still love the sport. And I think it still has something to teach us about teamwork, fair play, and life.