37

Tags

37, birthday, celebrity death trio, college, conspiracy, hoax, numbers, suspicion, Tigers

The story of how 37 became an anchor number in my life is short and only slightly surprising. It is, however, appropriate today, July 1, 2009.

I had a few friends in college who were mostly crazy. They had a bit of an obsession with the number 37. The moment I found this out, I was determined not to care a lick about it. My stubbornness contributed about 96 percent to this decision. I played like 37 was white noise to me for weeks, but was alarmed at increasing intervals of the number without warning. I kept its visits hush-hush, much like my brand new, and reluctant, affinity for The Office.

I slept through most of my classes freshman year in college. Sometimes woke up for tests, most of the time, talked my way into one-time allowances of grace with my big mouth. After a few weeks of this, I realized that I could talk my way out of just about anything. So I quit setting my alarm all-together. Two days in a row — I remember because one was my organic chemistry final — I woke up to no loud noise or rousing roommate, but stared at 11:37am on my clock. One day after the next. Two days isn’t a lot. Three is what makes things certain, but I was spooked because all I ever heard about it how that number shows up everywhere. And it was starting to penetrate my ignorant front.

The alarm-less clock was only the beginning. It was the number of a campus room number when our Spotlight meeting was moved. It was twice in the phone number of a girl I’d met at Campus Ministry. It was Brandon Lyon’s number of the Detroit Tigers and I knew someone who was his sister’s boyfriend, or something. I even saw it etched into a tree trunk on a run with the soccer team. Too weird.

Late in the academic year, I gave in to the number 37. I quit pretending I didn’t notice the coincidences, and even ordered soccer jerseys with my new 37 number for the club season. I guess I kind of retired 14 with competitive soccer, anyway. I shared with unsuspecting friends and acquaintances about how 37 shows up everywhere. They started out as skeptics like me, but soon I received photographs with them pointing to the 37 million jackpot on the lottery sign.

It’s much like the hoax of celebrity death trio’s, but harmless. You can find almost anything if you keep your eyes wide for long enough. I quit looking years ago, but a 37 surprise always elicits a chuckle from me. Yesterday I passed exit 137 on my way to the tattoo parlor. A new trip that was added to my brochure project suggested raising $3,700 in support. And I can’t wait to get back to the page 37 that I dog-eared in my new novel. Now that you know about 37’s agenda, you’ll notice it just about everywhere. Especially if today is 37 years from the day you were born, because you’ll be under the spell until at least this day next summer.

Colorado Heat

Tags

Chicago, Colorado, Colorado Springs, heat, hiking, summer, sun, weather

The warm weather is not unbearable here. At home, the ninety degree weather is the talk of all the social and profesisonal circles. It’s such a popular tag to conversations, that you realize where the satirical “talk about the weather” jokes came in. I hear customers, even late in their entrees, remark about the heat, glad to be in thecool, dark building. The humidity in Chicago pushes me to beg my boss to turn up the AC. Usually he says he will, but never does. It drives children that should be on swingsets in the backyard to the cool carpet in front of the television. It makes popcicles all drippy and hands far too sticky, even for the summer.

But the heat here makes me antsy inside. I want to be out in it, feeling the orange-red sun beating down on my face through closed eyes. I take my lunch breaks outside, I sit in the park and read a novel, or I hike the waterfall trail under raw Western sunlight. The other day, I read a book cover to cover in a combination of the grassy park across the street from my house and my patio backyard.  It wasn’t short, took me hours and many glasses of water where the ice melted before I was out of the house.

You can guess how my skin responded.  I put sunscreen on with maybe an hour of midday sun left a few chapters from the end.  It didn’t stop my shoulders from flushing pink and touching tender for the next three days.  Or my shins from flaking dry, sensitive skin and refusing to chafe under the long legs of my jeans.

My roomate went on a trip for a few days, meeting her Mom at the airport on the last day of her venture.  She left a post-it note on my sunscreen in response to my whining about my sunburnt skin and I laughed so hard, my cheeks weakened when I tried to smile later in the day.  The Colorado heat is dry and inviting, but it still burns.

Playing with Rattlesnakes

Tags

adventure, Colorado, Dorothy Falls, hiking, mountains, Queen's Canyon, rattlesnake, Rockies, snake, waterfalls

I had heard about rattlesnakes. I read signs around here that talk about how they come out in the summer. There’s a warning on an office bulletin board about how to move slowly once you’ve been bitten. It says that they’re not typically deadly, so don’t freak out.

I’m still a tourist hiker – I hardly bring anything with me. I can’t even keep track of my sunglasses when I hike, so it’s probably better that way. But I’m learning that people carry half a day’s food and snakebite first aide kits, both of which sound sustaining and very important.

I’m hearing all this detail as I tell “native” (no one is really native here) Coloradans that I touched a rattlesnake on one of my hikes the other day. Their faces are slack and wide-eyed. I stand face to face with people who’ve just been surprised by a man with a knife in a pitch black room, or who turn left at the intersection and witness a three car pile-up. It’s right about then that I reconsider my course of action post-rattlesnake.

Here’s a video of the little dude, sitting on his rock, basking in the sun and the spray from the waterfall. Initially, I jumped back in terror and surprise, when my hand leaned on his rock, and my fingers encircled his scaly body. But after my breathing returned to normal, I took pictures and dropped leaves around him, unaware that he’s able to spring himself off the rock and latch onto my face. For some reason, he didn’t – though he might have been thinking about it with that black split-tongue sliding out of his mouth.

Naivety is less of a gift than I once thought. Ignorance is not bliss, like they say. After watching dozens of Coloradans listen to my rattlesnake adventure in disbelief, I decided to get educated and try to muster some fear for the slithery little guys. Thank you wikipedia and $4.95 snakebite kit at Target.

Creating Chaos

Tags

adventure, Colorado, Dorothy Falls, Glen Eyrie, hiking, pinecones, Queen's Canyon, sunglasses, The Glen

My sunglasses have been a source of chaos on these hikes. The sun starts to think about setting in the late afternoon and the shades perpetually travel back and forth from my face. When they’re not grabbing the backs of my ears, they search for lint in my pants pockets or tug on my neckline against all modesty.

On today’s Glen Eyrie hike to the Queen’s Canyon Waterfalls, they fell into the tortoise of a shallow river. It was more of a brook speeding through the space cushions in a three-lane rush-hour traffic of fallen rocks.

The shades greeted a few submerged stones and twirled inside out in a gentle whirlpool behind a boulder. I snatched then up, shook them dry, and sent them in search of pocket lint. The sun soon slid out from behind a crag and when I reached down for my sunglasses I realized they’d jumped ship again.

I don’t need them, my squinting eyes said. Most of my needs, in fact, can be bait and switched for wants – but I’d welcomed the change in pattern that they brought to my travels. The unexpected creates little one-act comedies just for me. So I picked up a pinecone and stuffed it half in my pocket before hiking on.

So happy to have my sunglasses back!

Update: I found them on the way back down!

Misunderstanding and Messy Spirituality

Tags

apologetics, Christ, Christianity, church, creation, evolution, Genesis 1, God, Jesus, The Reason for God, Timothy Keller

Who can blame me, it’s what I was taught. Thriving through science courses, it’s all I knew. I thought I had no reason to question it…no one asked. Just like so many people I love. No reason or care to question it. Some so adamant about its truth won’t even enter a conversation that has a “Christian” overtone. It may [gasp!] mess with evolution. But the truth is: I know how they feel, I was hung up on it too.

I was hung up hard on evolution. Skepticism was a by-product not half as attractive as it sounds. I distinctly remember sitting on the bed in Chandler’s dorm room one afternoon. Kelly and I both had huge biology textbooks open on our laps. And the questions came for hours.  Not all honest and curious, either.  Some were scathing and accusing – as if the chasm between the two beliefs was Chandler’s fault.

Why is it that we think: In order to understand Christ, we must allign with what we see as His “rules and regulations” before chummin’ up with Him? Who tells us these lies? I believed it.  Believed every word of it, and it made my humble path to understanding a messy pile of spiked hurdles. But let me share two quotations with you. The first is simple: “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints”.  Cheesy, yes – but you act like all the folk in the hospital should be well. That they should be decidedly “nicer” and more “charitable” than you.  What a misunderstanding.

Do you believe that the messy, mistake-ridden Christians that you know are alright? Or are you sitting back with your arms folded, waiting for them to get it right, and choosing some other foggy belief over Jesus until you SEE them get it right with your own eyes? I know someone who’s sitting like this right now, waiting for me to figure it out. Good luck to both of us.

And here’s the other. Timothy Keller says, “What can we conclude? Since Christian believers occupy different positions on both the meaning of Genesis 1 and on the nature of evolution, those who are considering Christianity as a whole should not allow themselves to be distracted by this intramural debate. the skeptical inquirer does not need to accept any one of these positions in order to embrace the Christian faith. Rather, he or she should concentrate on and weigh the central claims of Christianity. Only after drawing conclusions about the person of Christ, the resurrection, and the central tenets of the Christian message should one think through the various options with regard to creation and evolution” (94).

Why have you let yourself be distracted?  Your search was courageous and true.

Writing is Going Digital

Tags

Bible, computer, digital, genre theory, memorization, unbundled age, verses, writing

The economy’s crashed, everyone’s poor except the 1% of the world’s population that’s been hogging most of the dough all along, and print media is dying.  If you write, if you read, or even if you only know how to do either – you know that print media is far beyond stage 3 of drowning.  Victims asphyxiate at stage 5.  All five stages happen in under two minutes, and everything ‘print’ is going down fast.

And this is a bummer, you see, because I sort of expect my livelihood to have a foundation in words.  Usually words are for reading.  And it’s always been on a page.  But the big question facing publishers, authors, and a whole host of other word-meddling folk is the effectiveness of those words floating in cyberspace and reading so impermanently from your computer screen. 

NavPress just released an online verse memorization tool in the spirit of “going digital”.  Since so many spend so much time on the computer, the tool is compatible with this intangible desktop/laptop lifestyle.  Seems brilliant, and one of only a handful of alternatives.  Magazines are going out of print by the day, books are twitter-based and lack hard copies, and without these little innovative tricks, publishing could go down with the whole mess. 

My professor, three years ago, called this the “unbundled age”.  It’s the time when genre is moved to a season of its existence where things are reader- or listener-chosen.  The consumer wants the most control she can have.  If it’s on itunes, she wants to choose only the songs that she wants to choose – one song at a time, compiling her own listening library.  If it’s a book or magazine, the whole thing is having trouble selling – but pieces of it will go with ease.  Links to 1500 word stories eat up maybe 10 minutes of Internet time, more manageable than the week of piecemeal hours it takes to read a book cover to cover.  Three years ago,  I wasn’t quite sure what to think about all of this unbundled-genre propaganda.  But, as we turn the page *er*, as we open up new browser tabs, his theories are proving to be prophetic.

First Lines

Tags

draft, first lines, prompt, story, words, workshop, writing

Which ones are story-worthy?  Compelling?  Curious?

The sweatshirt I wore that night must’ve gotten mixed in with a box of old winter clothes. For years, I’d thought it was gone. Or maybe I’d hoped it was so I wouldn’t have to show you all my scars.

Truth is, I’d rather wait tables.

It was because I fell in love with a man from Fort Collins, Colorado. Though, the story I tell is that I used to have a friend and we used to live baseball lives together. Both are true in their own regard.

I know today’s the day you drive West.

I’m hiding in the woods on this Northern Michigan lake, but your letter found me yesterday.

Vegas is flashing lights and fountains.  It’s selling myself on the strip.  Vegas is America’s cardboard cut-out for fun.  And I’m fun only about sixty percent of the time.

Accidental Adventures

Tags

adventure, Colorado, downpour, hiking, mountains, rain, Rockies, thunderstorm

It was a simple loop trail on the map. Walk behind the castle, ascend a set of railroad ties masquerading as stairs, and hike in a clear half circle that’ll take you back to the main road. Simple and sunny, so I took my books along to stop and read maybe halfway and put my iPod in to listen to the stories of Mike Birbiglia and Dan Savage on This American Life.

It had been about twelve steps before I was pausing for a water break. The main road was steeper than the 2-D map showed, but every few minutes I’d get a good laugh from the podcast, so I pressed on to the Queen’s Canyon Outlook sign and took off down a skinny path of mixed stones and earth. I hiked past a series of caves and past an overlook of the actual canyon, where the segmented lines between different types of rock were clear and impressive. Hike, hike, hike.

I rounded a corner in my hiking innocence and my heart quit beating and hid behind my shoulder for a second. There was an overturned car smashed into a dead tree, pushing the tree into a dangerous lean with its weight. I’ve seen an overturned car only once before, right as it was flipping. I was driving with my girlfriend, Kelly (during which, I always fear for my life) from Lake Michigan Drive onto I-96 at the S-curve, just South of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. Two cars crashed at the merge and the smaller one rolled over twice and landed on the roof, with two people inside and hurt. When we called 911, there were already authorities on the way. Searched the paper for a few days to find out how things turned out, but to no avail. Regardless, the image of the people trapped in the overturned car was branded in my mind on that day.

My steps toward this car in a similar position were slow-motion steps with a soundtrack of screams and splintering metal. The trunk was crushed and open, the bumper mangled about 6 feet from the car, the airbags had gone off and hung limp and punctured inside open doors. My imagination couldn’t have construed a story of the crash because the summit was hundreds of feet up. And there wasn’t a road system up there. It was a weird conclusion to hold, but whoever drove this car off the cliff did so on purpose.

The thunder started while I was at the car wreck. With no clue as to my position on the path, I guessed that I was more than halfway and hiked on. In only a handful of minutes, I came to a spiky fence and no discernable trail in any direction. I stood there in the approaching thunder for too long, trying to choose a route. Back was the smartest way to go, but it couldn’t have been the fastest. The thunder rumbled loudly, drowning out even the music in my ear-bud headphones, so I ran. I ran for fear of getting caught in the rain, for my books in my bag to get soaked and ruined, and for the likely possibility that I would be struck by lightening on this mountain and decompose for days until they found me. The faster I ran, the more plants I ran into, all of which held little puddles of water in their leaves. I was soaked before the downpour started, but the downpour started just as I could see the main road, about 15 minutes before I could get to it at full-out-of-shape-7,000-foot-elevation-sprint.

The path had looked so simple. Next time I’ll ask for a 3-Dimensional map for better planning. I don’t seek out these adventures, these gambling games with my life and belongings, but they find me with ease. All I wanted to do was hike a few trails and here I was walking to my car, soaked and surely breathing out of one collapsed lung. Then the rain stopped between blinks, but my jeans were wet for hours.

I Could’ve Died

Tags

adventure, Colorado, Echo Rock Canyon, Glen Eyrie, hiking, mountains, rock climbing, Rockies, Rocky Mountains, The Glen, west

The trail went confidently both ways and there was no sign. The three wooden steps to the right were a signal for safe trailing, but I’d surely come down those before. In pursuit of adventure, down the wide, red gravel road I hiked. I hiked as it narrowed and gained elevation, water-bottle in hand. The road became a ditch, shoulder-high on both sides, the wayward roots of the trees grabbing at my belt loops, and I hiked. The ditch became a tunnel as the shrubbery bent low to roof me in. Hike, hike, hike. What looked to me like a trail came and went in the overgrowth. I crawled in and out of the ditch, which I began to think was a dried up river and not necessarily meant for me. If it rained, the rush would float me back to where the road first diverged. But I kept hiking.

The landscape changed at a bend in the river: a wooden wheel, a monster truck tire buried in the dirt, an overturned wheelbarrow. I emerged the trail of trash obstacles into a sort of grove where the only ways to go were up or back. The dried up river had lost its glory, the thrill of adventure reduced to chapped lips and heavy breathing and I had no intention of returning the way I came. Up, then, was the only way to go.

Too quickly, the “up” was uncertain. The dirt was loose. The protruding logs were deceiving, they pulled easily from the ground when I grabbed at them. The holds in the rock, a trick, they crumbled in my grip and disintegrated under my feet. Three risky steps up the decaying rock, I’d changed my mind. It was time to turn back, but my footholds had broken off the mountainside and fallen into the grove below. I was stuck and all I had was up.

I sliced and scraped my hands in desperate attempts as maintaining my elevation, ripped my jeans in two places, saw a snake that decided not to bite me, but not a person for miles. I don’t know how I made it to the top. No idea. I thought for sure I’d have fallen. I was wheezing and dizzy when I finally scrambled to the top, laid on a boulder at the summit in a messy pile for thirty minutes, thankful to be anything but a carcass in that grove.

I turned to the mountain I scaled and saw the dried trails of sliding dirt running paths through the grass. I saw the falling, thin rock broken off in jagged edges. The grade was the steepest I’ve been close enough to see in Colorado. It must have been a runoff, where the water pours down like a fall in a thunderstorm, drowning the route I desperately climbed up. It’s why nothing takes root, why me feet kept slipping, scaring the something right clear out of me. I’ll go the three-step way next time.

Dawson Trotman and Me

Tags

Billy Graham, Dawson Trotman, faith, feet, God, hiking, Jesus, spirituality, The Navigators

It’s possible that Dawson Trotman and I have started off on the wrong foot.  There’s a small chance that he feels disrespected by the photo shoots for which I made his gravesite a studio.  My smiling, leaping, joyful self might have benefitted from a bit more somber demeanor or a few devotional verses as I romped up the path to the grave site of Dawson and his wife, Lila. 

 

See, I’m not a hater.  I quite respect his story as I’ve learned it thus far.  Dawson Trotman (they called him “Daws”) is the founder of The Navigators.  He built quite a legacy as a solid man of God with a deep heart for discipleship.  He died, I think, by drowning as he was saving someone else’s life.  Seems appropriate, the way this guy sounds like he was wired up. 

I understand that he was tight with Billy Graham, the “Great Evangelist” that we all know so well.  The fascinating thing about their friendship, their ministry partnership, is that Billy did the fishing and Daws did the follow-up.  They were a perfect pair, according to their giftings.  It’s kind of wonderful how God paired the two up to do His work. 

I particularly dig Daws and his passions ’cause they overlap with and enrich the things I’m growing to love.  I’ve never really been too head-over-heels with the evangelism side of things.  Not because I don’t care about Kingdom things, but because it breaks my heart to see people get fired up for God, jump off a bridge for a relationship with Jesus Christ and then be left all alone in this big,messy world of untruth.

I wasn’t one of those kinda fish.  I was cared for and networked, introduced to people, given a foundation for months and months.  And even afterwards, I was deposited into communities and under solid, Biblical preaching.  My brothers had huge hearts for the unlovable (of which I was one) and deep passions for discipleship (of which I was a recipient).  Without their love for the King, let’s just be honest, I’d likely have been a backslider long ago.  I loved my patterns from before Christ.  And I thought I was good at them.  Somewhere along the line, God did some backwards work on me through my brothers in Christ, and I came to love Him more than the things I gave up.

Sorry for trampling your area, Daws.  I was just so thrilled to be in the beauty where you did much of your work, where you planted your feet.  You can understand that, I’m sure.  I was praising the only One capable of giving me the teachers that were perfect for me as long as I’ve known Him. 

May my feet go to the most needy places.  May those places match the loves in my heart.   May I always keep the foundations given to me, and never forget to give glory where it’s due.