I remember the expression, “mountain top experience”, which means a spiritual high. That life could not be a spiritual high. I wonder about that, why can’t life be a spiritual high? Remember the movie “Point Break” where the guys chased the perfect wave? Why not do that spiritually, chase the perfect wave spiritually?
I always figured that the people who didn’t expect a spiritual high all the time were simply depressed, when did Jesus hit the lows? Jesus, I mean, what was his deal? How did he always seem to be in the zone? The zone, the sweet spot. Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson. Guys that lived in the zone. I have in my fat head the thought that what separated these heroes from those with equal athletic abilities is the ability to live in the zone. Whole realms of studies are devoted to the zone, or at least one study, sports psychology. Why can some people find this zone so often and others can”t?
What about spiritually? Is there a spiritual zone? If there is, why can’t I find it?
I am sitting here in the doldrums. My thesaurus says I might also be: depression, melancholy, gloom, blues, dumps. I don’t have a dictionary, and Linnea laughs that we are carrying a thesaurus, but I am tired of my own writing.
After all this time, I seem to be stuck in the doldrums. If I remember correctly, the doldrums has to do with the ocean and the wind not blowing and a ship just sitting there, not moving.
I think of the mountain top. Where does that lead a man, thoughts of the mountain top? What do I love about the mountain top?
Solitude. I love to be on top of the world, alone. Quiet. Thinking. Pensive (what does the thesaurus have to say about that? sadly thoughtful, meditative, contemplative, reflective, introspective, musing, dreaming, wistful) I love to sit over a view, alone. Puts me in the mood, you know? to pray. God, its me again, remember? me? thanks, again, this time will be different.
Sometimes I think the only way to feel spiritually successful is to avoid others, avoid challenging situations, avoid failure. Solitude.
Then we live in community. We travel around the world, trying to follow the early church model. I have always lived in community, what with all the foster kids and church and sports teams. My first job as an adult was in the moving industry, working and living in community with a team. North American, you have seen the red white and blue trucks, they are everywhere. I grew up, became a man, was initiated, the day after I turned 18, carrying stuff, no wasted energy, no empty handed trips, get it? You on your way to the truck? Carry something, every step counts. Furniture, boxes, whatever the shipper asked, firewood? sure. Travel for a couple weeks? Of course. The east coast, North Carolina, the heat, full days learning as we go and isn’t that what life is, learning as we go? Work like a man, drink like a man. Miller HIgh Life. Ten bucks for a thirty pack, a couple of cheeseburgers and we sit in the trailer or we fold pads and I am learning to be a man. We fill our bellies with Taco Bell and Paul MacGilvray and I sit and talk.
Whatever our team is, we sit and talk, and as a boy becoming a man we sit and talk and we learn what we can discuss during the job and what we need a beer to talk about, some discussions simply require a beer and a man learns that unless he was raised in the church and had his balls cut early, then he learns simply, never talk about jack crap.. Men talk about life and feelings and all that crap over beer. I spend my nights with exconvicts, as they smoke whatever they have in their tin foil packs and we talk about life, we talk about life, dammit, life. And this is more real than any thing I ever learned in sunday school. Only Ken Ings ever kept it real for the church boys, and keeping it real means more than anything that our churches or schools could ever manufacture.
After all the false life, all the fabrication that being a baptist had for me, time with the movers, the truck drivers, the ex-cons taught me more than sitting me arse in a pew ever did. My whole life, a lie. Off to Liberty University where they are raising an army of people who deserve heaven. Wear socks. Shave. Keep my dorm room clean. Don’t pee in the sink. Only Christian music will do. Southern Baptist, and worthy of heaven.
I can be real, or I can be religious. What the heck is that? We argue about what it means to be a christian, what a christian can or can’t do, and we do it anyway and say we are a bad christian. We have this ideal of what a christian is. An image we worship, a personal holiness project, a personal tower of babel, and we fail. This person we think we can be, if we only tried hard enough. Tell you what, it is a lie, we can’t be that person, and the world doesn’t care anyway. Most of the time we act like christians to impress the christians we know and it never matters in the scheme of things. Seems weird huh? Doesn’t make much sense, and it doesn’t seem to be working…how effective is our christianity? Are we bearing fruit? Or just trying not to swear and we are attending church and taking notes and attending the small group and not making much of a difference anywhere. We argue and complain and we listen to the hottest album that CCM is promoting, we know all the Hillsong and we read all the greatest christian books and we hope that it matters.
We headed out on this World Race, knowing I had a lot to learn (I knew that Linnea also needed to learn a lot, but she is so far ahead of me spiritually and all that), but never knowing just how much I had to learn. Ignorant, unlearned, illiterate, lacking knowledge, unschooled, unenlightened, naive, unaware…the list is long…. We knew this would be a crucible, a forge, an education and an experience, but I had no idea just how big. As I sit here, in the doldrums I think about life.
I think about the mountain top. I think about the Appalachian Trail, which Linnea and I still dream of hiking together, and I think about my Odyssey in 2001, the thousand miles I walked alone. My travels, my travails. The nights all alone, the cold, the moonlight and the sounds of the woods. The damp and the wind and the hail.
Coming off the ADD meds, cold turkey, the hallucinations, the sound of sirens and voices and the faces in the knots of trees and the roots becoming snakes under my feet, the shadows which were bears and my heart pounding with fear. I think about the hours alone in my sleeping bag, the days I never wanted to walk again, miles from civilization, the friends I missed. I think about the days I was not at the mountain top, the days I was out of food, and I remember, reminisce, recall, recollect, hark back on the days that I did not care about anything, and that was the doldrums. Days of fog and rain and cold, ache in my joints and only oatmeal in my pack. Eat it raw, because I did not want to bother making a fire. Raw noodle ramen. Yum, mmm, yummy. Does anyone care? Alone with my thoughts, the doldrums, Ecclesiastes, meaningless. None of it matters anyway, right? The man with a thousand wives says life sucks. What then is the point? Is there a point to life?
Years later. I am sitting here typing, one month left on this World Race. In the doldrums. Spiritual lethargy. Languor, lassitude, apathy, indifference, torpor, stupor, sloth. How, after all this time and all this experience can I feel this way? Where is the mountain top? My wife and I.
Days on the trail, days on the ridgeline, days at the mountain top and days of lethargy. The world race, days of the peak, the pinnacle of christian life and still days of doldrums, yesterdays miracles are gone. Accumulated experiences of God, like the Israelites in the wilderness, what have you done for me lately, God?
People ask, and I wonder, what have I learned on this journey? What did you hope to accomplish? How has this changed me?
I would have told you that I was a fairly experienced guy. I have done all kinds of neat things. But I was narrow. Narrow, slender, attenuated, restricted, opinionated, isolated, dogmatic. The words go on. In all my experiences, my religious understanding was narrow, I still don’t have a clue. Do I even realize what I don’t know?
I sit here, at the mountain top. Living from peak to peak, push on to the next peak, the next summit. Tired at times, not recognizing how blessed life is, hike on, press on, there are mountains still to climb.
