So much has been crowded into our past week, that last Sunday seems to have been several weeks ago. Following the trustees meeting and U.M.W. mochi demonstration (which produced the high point of the trustees meeting), the four of us, Kikue, Kenneth, Aidan and myself, headed south on I-5, toward our destination of Bend, Oregon. We almost lost our way getting onto Route 26 from I-205 east of Portland. But good fortune was with us. Despite the signs warning us that we should be carrying traction devices (which we had forgotten) we travelled the pass south of Mt. Hood with no difficulty and arrived in Bend at our projected time of 9:00 p.m. Barbara and Eric and their dog Doppler welcomed us.
The next morning at 7:00 the three of them pounded on the door of our motel room. We were still moving quite slowly, but they insisted that the best thing for us would be to climb a small mountain with them before breakfast. It sounded like a great idea. Kikue and I talk about the need to hike every morning, but often find the pressures of scheduled obligations stand in the way of doing more than talk about it.
The seven of us drove to the east side of the city and parked at the foot of a conical hill that must have been an ancient cinder cone. A paved road spiralled up the hill. We set out at a good pace, but the road kept curving to the left, out of sight beyond the slope of the hill. The road gradually spiralled in toward the top of the hill. We could feel the four thousand foot altitude in our gasping for breath, slowing our pace and stopping briefly several times to look out over the surrounding scene. The most densely built up part of the city was to the west, but as we climbed around the mountain, we saw recent and new construction of homes, apartment complexes, storage buildings, and businesses. A public school was not far from the beginning of the road. As we neared the top, high schoolers began to overtake us. They were making the hike as a physical education assignment. They had to check in at the top to receive credit for their climb.
A plaque of arrows embedded in stone marked the direction of the major peaks visible. Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, Washington, Three Fingered Jack, Black Butte, the Three Sisters and Mt. Bachelor were marked, although Hood was invisible in the clouds. It was a view of a city and its environment that was unusual. We spent some time identifying the location of places in the city that we already knew. We saw cinder cones scattered to the south of the city against the background of the large mountainous mass. (I have forgotten its name.)
The clouds over us were threatening. Snow was predicted for the passes by late afternoon. We were planning to head west by noon over the 5000 foot pass to the west. The weather was rapidly changing, in contrast to the seemingly frozen geology of the world of mountains and high rolling plains about us. The skyline might appear much the same a thousand years from now, but we knew that changes were constantly taking place. The human world showed faster change Clearly this small mountain was being encircled by human activities. The trip to the top was an exhilarating way to gain a vision of the whole of that city and its setting on the eastem slope of the Cascades.
Although, in seminary, we were told that "you shouldn't preach theology on Sunday morning," yet on reflection I was impressed with the way in which this climbing a mountain in a city was like using theology to gain a vision of one's own life and its setting. It is quite unusual to have the kind of perspective on a small city that we had from the top of that hill. It is almost as unusual for us to stand "above" the details of our daily living and see them from a more inclusive point of view. This is one of the useful things that theology can do for us.
For example, throughout the Bible it is affirmed that the one and only God is the creator of all things and living beings. Throughout the Bible we also find it being said by spokesmen for this God, "It's important that you never forget this! It will make a great difference." The difference that it can make is a little like looking over the city and its environment from high above it, and then thinking about what that says about your life down there among those buildings, or as an unnoticable speck under the trees in a park, or encased in a metal box on wheels moving along a roadway.
Different minds will find different points of importance in this comparison. Some will see human beings disappearing to insignificance in the perspective that a little distance gives. Others will see the passage of human life, the constant aging of humanity and its works in contrast to the comparatively "eternal" hills ringing the horizon. To the east of the hill is a mortuary and crematorium, sure reminders of the temporary state of all individual physical life. What impressed me in thinking about that viewpoint on human life was the dependence and interconnectedness of life with life and life with all things living and non-living. The scientific world view also tells us this. But the ancient Hebraic vision tells us this world is our home, a "house" for which we have responsibilities of upkeep, simply because we live here with our human capacities and gifts. The Hebraic vision also says that we have much to learn from our creator about how to maintain and live in our world-home, day by day. The discovery of the ways of living, laboring and learning is our ages long task which presents us with continually changing demands to meet changing life conditions, and the need to cope with our own discoveries about the nature of the world in which we live.
We descended from the mountain-in-a-city to celebrate some of our interconnectedness with other persons and other life by indulging in an overabundant breakfast at the IHOP near the shopping mall where Eric currently works at Sears. Eric had taken time off to help his parents move from their home near San Francisco, and he would be leaving Bend about when we planned to drive west toward Salem. In a few days Barbara would begin a new job with the county in water purity control management, her field of technical expertise. In the meantime, she would have time for reading and spending some time on her old job in a framing shop, a job she had completely enjoyed.
We visited Aidan's great grandmother Ruby at Rose Villa in Milwaukie later that afternoon. Kikue says I slept most of the way there, taking advantage of Kenneth's driving skills. After supper we drove west on highway 26 to the coast route 101, then south to Cannon Beach where we stayed the night. Kenneth wanted especially to again see the coastline and offshore rocks from the Ecola promontory, and simply enjoy the meeting of sea and shore, rocks and surf, winds and pine that is still vigorous this time of year, but we hoped we would not face the full power of winter weather.
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We always look forward to hiking down the foot path that descends to Crescent Beach several hundred feet below the promontory. This time, that was impossible. Winter storms had let loose land slides that had torn out long sections of the trail to the beach. That way to the beach was closed, but we should at least be able to safely make our way out on the promontory by holding on to the railing. When we arrived, the wind and driving rain drove us to retreat to the more sheltered cove of Indian Beach for a half hour, so that when we returned, just the wind and scattered pellets of rain were being thrown at us from the southwest out of the skies over the ocean. |
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However, the wind in the parking lot was no indicator of the gale that met us as we approached the edge of the cliff facing the wind. Kenneth shouted over the howling of the rushing air, "I have never been in a wind this strong!" I glanced his way, to see him standing easily at about 40 degrees from upright into the wind. We decided not to try the path along the cliff edge, but to take another way to the end of the promontory that provided more protection. But we found that way to be closed off by the park service, with evidence that they were beginning to build a new raised platform toward the end of the promontory. Then we could see that the rocks where we had stood in apparent security in earlier years were gone. The winter storms were slowly but inexorably eating away at this seemingly indestructible rock.
We were faced with a strange mix of images about the world in which we live. The wind, which is simply air in motion, and in itself is one of the most inconstant and insubstantial features of our world overwhelms us as a persistent irresistable power. On the other hand, rock, which we take to stand for the indestructible bulwark protecting us from threatening forces, is in truth, crumbling before us, being reduced to the sand and pebbles of the beach. For some unaccountable reason, a verse from the Psalms came to mind, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" In the eighth Psalm this verse is a response to a vision of the sky, the day time sun light, and the moon and stars of the night evoking an experience of overwhelming vastness and majesty. The verse can be read in two ways. It can be read as conveying the experience of the smallness and insignificance of the human individual. Or the verse can be read as words of wonder at the special capacities and greatness given to human beings.
To my mind, this world of overwhelming wind, pounding waves and gradually crumbling rock that was undoing the works of man lifted up the second meaning. Why? Because in the midst of this tumult, human beings might adjust to the forces they faced, but they didn't abdicate their interest in access to these places of natural beauty. A new promontory overlook was being built. I expect that considerable planning, energy and expense will be given to restoring the beach path through the deep gashes made by the land and rock slides. It will continue to be a place of beauty and delight during the summer months. This is because human beings are "discoverers of possibility," ever trying to make desirable possibilities actual.
This is a clue to the relationship between human beings and God. If God is the source through whom all things are created, then God is at work when human beings are at work making possibilities real, or putting an idea into action, or making a choice. God presents possibilities to us in such a way that as we choose what we want to put into effect, the results of our actions are consistent with this world in which many different changes are continually taking place. God is the Lord of possibilities. All life uses the possibilities that are presented to them. Human beings have the capacity to discover possibilities that are hidden from those without the capacity and training to perceive them.
We drove north from Ecola and stopped to have lunch at a favorite restaurant in Astoria. We were seated at a table from which we could look out on the waters of the Columbia with a view such as we would have from a boat. I could almost imagine that we were rocking on the waves. We were all soon engrossed in the river life that chose to put on a show outside our window.
Out on the river we could see two flocks of birds. At times some of the birds would seem to disappear. If we looked away for a few seconds, when we next looked they would all be there again. Slowly the flocks moved toward us, with that pattern of disappearing and reappearing. They were small black birds, quite different from the gulls or grebes that would occasionally come by to check out what they were doing. At first we had wondered if they were cormorants, but as they came closer, it became obvious that they did not have the long necks and bills of cormorants. They were black, but their bills were broad and short. They were ducks at work getting their lunch.
We ate our lunch more slowly than usual that day, watching the way these ducks dined. The group of about twenty five birds floated, bobbing on the wavelets of the river, looking this way and that, then suddenly a couple of the birds would duck their heads and disappear. Then other ducks would do the same, until the whole flock except for two had disappeared. These two ducks would remain in their places, almost motionless, for what seemed to be a long time. Had most of the flock swum away and come up for air somewhere else? Soon we had the answer. One by one, little black ducks popped up into view, and after disposing of excess water with a shake of their heads and perhaps a flutter of wings would settle down, looking around them with quick motions of their heads. Soon the whole flock would be again on the surface, slowly drifting with the river current, or moving as a group against the current.
Then a large black head appeared out of the water between us and the ducks. The ducks paid no attention to it. About ten yards behind, another head broke the water. The broad head of the first went under water, and then the arched back rose and then slid under the water. Sea lions! Perhaps they were Hershel's cousins. We were glad that they had not been invited up to the Ballard Locks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
We had stopped here close to the river for lunch. We had not expected the ducks and the sea lions to gather outside our window for lunch, but we were glad that they did. It was an unplanned meeting to dine at adjacent tables, ours over the water, theirs under the water. This meeting was a kind of unintended but basic communion, as these three forms of life, birds, sea lions and human beings took sustenance for their lives.
These were three events that revealed the interdependence of our lives with other life and the things of the world about us. You don't need to travel to such places, or even to have those kinds of experiences to have the world speak to you about the interdependencies of your life. God the Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer is in all things and in all beings, and is always ready to speak to us about our lives within the community of life and being that is our home, this wondrous world.
Charles M. Rich
WHITNEY MEMORIAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH
Tacoma, Washington April 21, 1996
