Baptized in Frigid Waters

I tried to write something more practical and light-hearted, I really did; but I just couldn't find the words. Instead, I've included excerpts from my recent writings. If you're looking for something to happen, watch the news; nothing happens in this blog. If you're looking for a life update, here it is: classes are going well. Grad school is a breeze. My job is challenging and interesting. I'm making friends slowly. I climbed El Capitan in 14 hours and hope to write about it in the future. I spent five days taking a wilderness medical certification in the mountains and camping by myself. I'll be in Houston for Thanksgiving, Indiana for Christmas.

As I said, this post is comprised of my random musings. Several of them make it sound like I'm depressed. I'm not. It's just how I write. I'm really enjoying my time in the L.A. suburbs, the people I've met, and the challenges that meet me daily. I'm looking forward to seeing some of you in the upcoming months.

All images were stolen without permission.

b

L.A.

November 5th, 2012

I’m floating in a sea of buildings—a massive flotsam of shingles and greasy orbs.  It curls and rises with the heat, coursing blood-red metal and men along its veins.  It is even now pulsing steadily in the dark, a phosphorescent ooze splattered against the globe like gum.  Orange haze rises driving back the night, attracting helicopters like flies that glare down spotlights on criminals and lone wanderers.  I’m floating, riding the tectonic waves that shiver through the slab.  Crickets, my fellow passengers, they chirp unperturbed by the raucous gang of clattering air conditioners.  The tree in my shared yard, it shivers and sheds leaves like a dress; they fall in a discrete circle at its feet and gleam there proud for a day and are erased and are digested by machine.  I am floating on a sea of buildings beside the hulking ocean.  The water sits silent and strong against the bay, mysterious and huge, ready, at the command, to swallow my haughty raft, to send up great steaming wisps of cloud in place of haze, to uncover and unsmudge, to recede back into its sleeping form and paint anew the stars upon its back.  I’m floating in a sea of buildings and the date is November 5th, 2012.  It is Monday and the windows are dark--dark and speckled with pieces of twinkling streetlight.

November 17th, 2012

It’s been three months in L.A. The first real rains started yesterday.

November 16th, 2012 

(an excerpt from a letter to a friend)

It’s a cold day today, not so much in temperature as in mood.  The clouds have swung low, uniform, grey, brooding.  The soft pressure they leverage down on everything makes it hard to move.  When I go outside, I’m in a diving bell moving slowly, breathing slowly, sending prayer-filled bubbles warbling up to the surface.  I’m tempted to go back to sleep, to find a book and weather this day like a storm, to just hold fast until tomorrow when the sun returns and the birds come back.  

An underwater diving bell used for bridge construction

The day smells of chopped leaves and small engine exhaust.  These two aromas combined with cold, damp air contribute to the pressure of the day; they act as a time warp, a drug, a vortex that propels me immediately back to the bank of my parent’s pond.  I’m standing there under similar clouds, under naked cottonwoods, smelling the mower and the leaves and the damp.  Something presses in on me.  I feel sick.

November 10th, 2012 

(written in the back of my truck on a snowy evening in Idyllwild)

Someone recently admitted surprise at a remark I made about being lonely in certain circumstances.  I felt suddenly more alone even as I listened.  Of course I am sometimes lonely.  Wrong or right as it may be, loneliness sometimes drives my actions.  When I flee to solitary places—to my truck on a snowy evening—it is because the loneliness of the setting seems to match the state of my own heart.  Often, when I’m truly lonely, I seek solitude, separateness from society based on the fear that human interaction will only make more apparent the misunderstanding we have of one another, based on the steady hope that God understands myself better than I do.  I go to God, and I go to the trees that whisper in the darkening breeze.  I read once that trees are the only ones who were taught the word for loneliness, they say it once a year and the utterance takes them all winter (The Brothers K, David James Duncan).

November 5th, 2012

Silhouettes of leaves travel across the window when cars pass.  They’re accompanied by a hushing sound, like a wind in the trees but more uniform, a steady crescendo and a symmetrical fall.  I’m sitting at a table that is antiquated and borrowed from a friend of a friend.  The chairs too, are borrowed, as is the coffee table and the night stand and the recliner and my time on earth.  A stained yellow rag is in the sink fraternizing with soggy crumbs.  The conversation of a bible study is playing out before me in the living room.  My headphones are their privacy.  And the cars keep coming.  The leaves keep rolling.  The hushing continues.  They are freshman, the bible study goers, and I read no skepticism in their faces.

November 16th, 2012

I struggled to find emotions towards God today.  They were surfused, I think, by the weather, and by tiredness.  I am floating down a river, groggy and swollen.

November 5th, 2012

I took a walk last night on my favorite maze of streets which rests darkly in the absence of streetlights.  They did not take long to find after moving here, but it took several weeks to be satisfied with them.  I leave my wallet at home even though they are not in a bad neighborhood.  Security lights blink on behind me as I stroll and an occasional dog will bark from behind a fence or screen door.  Once, I hopped a fence and trespassed into a school yard.  I climbed a tree to the very top and spread the branches apart to watch planes and helicopters fly against a backdrop of stars.  It’s not true that stars don’t exist in the city; I’m convinced that most city-dwellers just don’t know to look for them.

November 16th, 2012

Thanksgiving is coming soon.  It’s an easy holiday to celebrate at this stage in my life.  My loving family is still mostly intact; I have very few woes to distract me from all the things for which I can be thankful.  God has chosen to train me slowly.  I’m thankful for that too.  Through my family and friends and health, he’s been gentle with me, like a skilled player of the game “Jenga”, beginning me as a solid and whole structure, removing boards gently, the easy ones first; I have barely noticed any wobbling yet.  One day all will be taken, my knees, my elbows, my tendons, my family, my wife, my words.  It’s likely they’ll be taken slowly, but he may choose to sweep me off the table--to scatter me across the living room floor all at once.  If they’re taken slowly, I’ll piece by piece, void by void, learn to trust his steady hand, his deliberate deftness rather than the physics of boards upon boards, of relationships upon relationships upon activities upon pleasures.  At each Thanksgiving I’ll be more and more holy, fraught with hollow vacancies, but shining (I hope) with joy ever brighter.  But if he takes them all at once, in one sweeping movement, I’ll be baptized in frigid waters and raptured awake into light and fresh grass--to trees swaying in the wind and the intoxicating smell of adventure on the air.  I think that’s how he’ll take me--slowly rather than quickly, but I wonder if he’s ever tempted.  Sometimes I hope he is.

Just put this here to lighten the mood...thanks for reading!

3 Miles Up, 135 Out and 18 Hours on a Bicyle

The short of it is I rode the Whitney Classic, from beginning to end, in one, long, eighteen-hour push.  The long of it is what follows.

Sunrise and ten miles left to the finish line

Friday was a hectic day.  We all know what those days are like with their impossibly long lists of last minute tasks.  A last minute oil change, a last minute grocery run, a last minute self-administered haircut, you know the drill.  I finally hit the road at 2:15pm only to realize I had forgotten my bike.  That gave me a good laugh and I hit the road again with my bike and my two trusty SAG drivers, Blair and Whitney.  We missed a turn east of L.A., got back on track, and rolled into the shadow of Mt. Whitney around 6:30pm to the greetings of many friends from my previous life in the mountains.  I ate the biggest, greasiest burger I could find in the tiny town of Lone Pine, spent some time singing praises to God, then nested a little home into the back of my truck just like I used to.  It’s pretty quiet out there and my brain was still whirring with anticipation, so after my normal bed routine I sat on the tailgate listening to the moonlit pastures swish in the breeze and staring towards Death Valley.  As usual, I couldn't sleep even when I did lie down.  I lay with my eyes closed for some time, eventually drifting into unmemorable dream.

Managing my morale

Say what you will about endurance athletes, they’re fat kids at heart.  A big event like the Whitney Classic is just a great excuse to eat as much as one possibly can.  I had my first breakfast at 7am and my second at 11am and never stopped eating throughout the ride.  Five ham sandwiches, an arsenal of gel packets, another arsenal of Cliff shot blocks, Luna bars, chips and salsa, potato chips, chocolate covered espresso beans, rice-crispy treats, chocolate chip cookies, coffee, pulled pork, bacon, sausage, eggs..I ate them all over the course of 24 hours and was glad of it before the end.

My only hiatus from eating was during the couple hours before the start of the ride.  I didn’t want my body to be generating any extra heat from digestion during the first desert stage.  After a safety talk, some photos, and a prayer, we departed Badwater at 3pm.  Badwater is a pond of naturally poisoned water at the lowest point in North America and record-holder for the world’s hottest temperature.  It’s painful to imagine the first prospectors in 1849 stumbling across the pond in the deadly heat only to find more death in the saline and mineralized water.

Through the heat, which stayed at a cool 110 degrees, my SAG team kept me hydrated with electrolytes and douses of water.  My friend Erica and I decided to stay together as long as we could during the ride which helped the first 50 miles to roll by quickly.  By 9pm we were through the first of three mountain passes.  It was dark when we rolled over the summit and a full moon was peering over the rim of mountains.  I hit 50 miles per hour on the backside of the pass, my jacket flapping like a flag in a hurricane, and coasted into the sand dunes below.  As one might expect, the desert comes alive at night when the temperatures return to a sensible level 

(mid-eighties), and the moonlight helps one to take it in.

The next pass was much steeper than the first but proved less of an obstacle.  At this point, my spirits were high and Erica and I stopped often to take in the night and even play a song on the ukulele.  The wind picked up as we snaked our way up another 5,000 feet. 

As the temperature dropped, so did my frame of mind.  After summiting the second pass, sleep deprived and growing weary, Erica determined that I was weaving too much on the road and needed to do something to wake up.  The best remedy for drowsiness is, of course, caffeine which I took in the form of yet another gel packet, but the second best remedy is silliness, which I took in the form running through the desert, hopping bushes and squawking like a pterodactyl.  This sort of thing and the lights of Lone Pine got us to the foothills of Mt. Whitney at around 5am where we choked down some oatmeal and coffee at the second to last checkpoint. 

At Lone Pine we had already ridden 122 miles and gained over 10,000 ft. of elevation.  We had only 4,600 feet left to climb in the final 13 miles.  We turned north at the stoplight to head out of town, and as we creaked our weary way up the final stretch the early sun’s rays reflected off our backs.  Though my morale rose with the sun, with a mere four miles lying between us and the finish line, I found myself dry-heaving in the bushes along the side of the road at the brink of the steepest miles.  I leaned against my truck and suckled a gel packet.  I knew that suffering awaited me and if I proved unable to ride them, I was prepared to take off my shoes and walk my bike the few final miles.  This, however was unnecessary.  Being most inspired by ideas, I had typed up a few of my favorite quotes and given them to my SAG drivers to read to me if ever I needed it.  As I leaned against the truck and stared down at the pavement I heard Blair’s voice reading from one of my favorite books.  Something, I’m not sure what, changed in me.  At the words “…it is not danger I love. I know what I love. It is life,” I mounted the bike again and began climbing quickly.  I found that my legs had more strength than I realized and a long section of road was soon behind me.  I don’t know how, but the final mile became as easy as the first.  Like the flip of a switch, I suddenly felt utterly assured and completely content.  I was at peace and no longer feared the pain of enduring.  I could laugh and smile and talk while riding.  All doubt had been wiped from my mind.

A group of strangely devoted friends who had stayed up all night at check-points,
decided to run the final miles with us.

Though I awoke early and went to class, by the end of the tedious lecture I was feeling sick enough to excuse myself and go home.  At the beginning of class, my quads and hamstrings were beginning to realize what I’d done to them—by the end of class they were in utter revolt.  So, as it turns out, I’m learning a bit of practical physiology.  Even though they don’t appear active, bodies in recovery continue to require copious water for days after endurance events.  Though I was very hydrated during the ride, I woke the next night with dry lips, a head ache, and urine like lemon Jello mix.  After class, I shirked my duties, left my gear piled on the floor, and spent most of the day in bed.  When Ibuprofen had worked enough magic to get me up and moving, I trudged over to Starbucks to begin typing this account.  But that was a week ago now, and I’ve returned to finish this draft. 

The final mile

“There are certain things which can only be learned at the brink of one’s potential.”  That’s what I wrote in my donation request and it’s proven true.  There are things I learned though 18 hours on a bike that I would not have learned from normal life.  I've relearned how strong friendships are forged in the fire of suffering.  I've learned that just as nutrition is important to manage, morale management is just as important. Low spirits can end an event as quickly as dehydration.  Surely this applies to many aspects of life.  But these things could probably be learned elsewhere than on the brink of one’s potential.  The strongest and truest lesson I've learned, the one that could not have come from elsewhere, is less of a lesson than an alteration.  The slightest transformation.  It’s just this—I am more confident.  I can.  I hit the glass wall, sent shards of glass flying every which way, and persevered.  Of course I relied on the loyal support of a team in order to succeed.  I was not autonomous but interdependent, but no one else could make me keep going, it was my choice.  And that continued choosing, choice after choice, is what I was seeking, what was used as a tool to change me in the subtlest way, and what could only be learned on the brink.
Concerning the fundraising for Summit Adventure, it was very successful. Generous donors gave a staggering $81,000 during the event which will go far in coordinating transformational adventure courses.  Through the support of friends and family I was able to contribute $410 to the ministry, which was not quite my goal of $700.  If you are interested in helping me finish my fundraising, your help would be extremely welcome.  Just donate at http://www.summitadventure.com/store/donation and mention my name in the comments section.  Otherwise, I'll be robbing the local 7 Eleven and making my getaway on a bike (just kidding, I'll probably make the getaway in my truck).  Seriously, thanks for your support during the Whitney.  It was a great experience for me and I appreciate your contributions (and those that are yet to come).  Hopefully I'll see you soon.

b

Whitney Classic: Raising Funds

Dear friends and family,

You may have heard that I’ve decided to ride the Whitney Classic bike ride, a fundraiser for Summit Adventure.  Well, it’s true, and this is the donation request to prove it.

Registering for this ride was a bold decision for me because I have volunteered the past two years and I have seen the ride take its toll on friends, most of whom were unable to finish.  Also, I have never been much of a cyclist, and, until only a few weeks ago, had never ridden more than thirty miles in a day.  The Whitney Classic, on the other hand, is a 135 mile ride that gains 15,300 vertical feet.  It starts in the heat of Death Valley National Park at the lowest elevation in the United States (-282 ft) and crosses two major mountain passes in the Mojave Desert before ascending up the lower slopes of Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower United States.  In order to minimize the heat exposure, riders endure through the night, passing 12 checkpoints which provide food, water and technical support along the way.  Of the solo riders who finish, most ride for 15-20 hours.  A few of them continue on foot to the summit of Mt. Whitney. 

Picture taken by a friend as I was volunteering at the 2011 Whitney Classic

Like I said, it was a bold decision for me, and, to be honest, I’m not sure I will be able to finish the ride.  But that’s part of the appeal—uncertain outcomes are part of the definition of adventure, and, I think God made all of us for adventures of one sort or another.  There are certain things that can only be understood on the brink of one’s potential.  But it is not only the hope for personal growth that inspires me to ride, I also am glad to be raising money for Summit Adventure, an adventure-based ministry I have worked with the past five years.

Summit’s mission is to facilitate transformational learning that strengthens relationships, builds compassion, and deepens faith through Christ-centered adventure, service, and experiential education.  They serve a wide variety of people from wealthy families, to persons with disabilities. 

During my time with Summit, I was often impressed with the transparency and humility its employees showed which created a safe atmosphere for beat-up and doubt-riddled Christians.  I have seen Summit act as a haven for wounded people who were unwelcome elsewhere, some of whom are now my closest friends.  Personally, Summit equipped me with tools for conflict management and interpersonal communication that I would not otherwise have discovered.

One of my first training rides

In order to raise money during the bike ride, Summit Adventure requires riders to raise a minimum of $700.  However, due to the intense logistics involved with the ride, Summit doesn’t raise a significant amount unless riders bring in far more than $700 per person. 

You can support me many different ways including prayer and encouragement, both of which are much appreciated.  If you want to financially support me, you’ve got a couple different options:  1)  send a check to Summit Adventure at the address below and make sure to note that it is for Ben Speicher’s Whitney Classic fund. 2) Pledge to give a certain amount based on the number of miles I ride, for instance, if you pledge one dollar per mile, your maximum commitment is $135.   Either one works, just make sure to let me know.

As much as I would appreciate sponsorships, I don’t necessarily expect them.  Give if you want to—don’t give if you don’t want to.  I understand either way; and either way, thanks for reading this letter.  I hope you’re doing really well.

Ben

Please send donations to

Summit Adventure

PO Box 498

Bass Lake, CA 93604

Donations over $25.00 will receive a tax donation receipt.

You can also donate online at www.summitadventure.com.

Just include “Ben Speicher: Whitney Classic” in the comments.

The Dust of Discontent

“I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that wherever you go, the least plant may bring you a clearer remembrance of the Creator—one blade of grass or speck of dust is enough to occupy your entire mind in beholding the art with which it has been made.”

-Saint Basil the Great

These writings are my still.  Here, the superfluous evaporate, the memories condense and clarify.  This is the process of accuracy acquired, chapters edited, experiences distilled. The dross is being lifted.  The lessons remain.  Mountaineering has made the distillation process clearer to me.  Step onto the snow and ask a mountaineer what his experience is like and he will mention the wind, the cold, the stars and maybe even the fear, but if he is honest he will also speak the word misery and how some large part of him wishes to be home with his family.  Ask him the next day after he’s crossed from the snow to the sun-warmed rock, and his answer may already have begun to change.  He may speak of a glory born from stars, of a pride born from fear, of a pleasure born from discomfort.  Sometimes, the world will stand out sharper to him.

And other times not.  Sometimes, he will leave the mountain and be finished, set as firmly as the mountain itself in the peace of never returning.  But either way, the lesson is clearer afterwards.  The experience continues to happen, to ripen, becoming easier and easier to summarize and relate to others.  But the process needs to begin somewhere, life must be distilled; so the problem at present is the present, and this is my still.

at high altitude in Ecuador

I’m supposed to be moving out of my house even as I type this sentence.  In place of sheets, my naked bed lays populated with lonely, misfit items.  And the boxes stand outside my door, towering, stacked at attention.  Books and boots—tools and tents—poles, clothing, and ropes— the boxes will swallow them all.  Indeed, with the proper practicality of a bachelor, some items have never left the open mouths all year in anticipation of tomorrow when they will again slide into the truck, and I will take my place above them to sleep each night.  I have been asked several times if I am dreading the exchange of a king sized bed for a truck bed, a house for a log cabin, privacy for constant community, but to the surprised questioners I have responded most quickly that I am not.  There is nothing like a conclusion to help one appreciate a beginning, an impending change to help one appreciate sameness.

School is coming fast, and with it civilization: traffic, housemates, computers and the like. When can I even hope for an end to such civility?  When can I hope to sleep again in the dust or holed up in a vehicle like a weasel in his den?  It will not be long until I am accustomed to falling asleep to traffic noises rather than crickets.

Dirtbagging in Yosemite

I couldn’t sleep again last night.  I’m not sure why, but I lay there for some time with my eyes closed, thinking.  Eventually, spontaneously, I crept out of the window barefoot and shirtless and stood beneath the night sky, gazing up into its brilliance.  It was littered with glowing dust discontent to remain only in the sky.  It spread its radiance into the trees and the cabin and my hands outstretched in front of me, turning them all to blazing silver, softening every edge.  It reminded me of the sand at the lake, which is laced with so much pyrite that one’s hand emerges from the water covered in golden flakes.

I expect that some part of me will continue to revel in, rather than despise the dust from which we were made—to remember the experiences I’ve had and to be resilient against the cast of culture.  And I hope to be my own, walking the cities and suburbs awake and wide-eyed with wonder, aware of the omnipresent glory that lies thick on the world—not just on peaks and meadows, forests and caves, but on people and cultures and cities.  Eyesight like that is rare even among the wise, even among the mystical and emotional.  Where it is most common, I guess, is among the thankful.  I hope to stake my claim with them.  If I can take these mountains, crickets, and wildflowers with me, if I can remember and preserve the swifts whistling by my head, the grass that falls upwards from El Capitan into the sky, the water drops that hover like tiny galaxies in the updraft, if I can carry them straight into the heart of the city and cup them in my hands as a flame, then maybe I can give thanks for the opportunities I’ve been afforded, and maybe then I can give thanks for the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.  I’m crossing from the snow to the sun-warmed rocks.

El Cap

I expect to see the mountains more clearly than ever as I squint through the Las Angeles smog.  After all, experiences don’t run perpendicular to the line of time, sparking at the point of intersection and sailing on into oblivion.  Just ask the mountaineers.  They run parallel with us, chasing us like cars and nipping at our heels.  One experience happens and changes us, then continues to happen and affect us so long as we remember it—maybe even if we don’t.

A friend recently told me that life, more so than any mountain, is the biggest adventure.  I agree with him…and yet, there it is, I already miss the dust.

Let's face it.  This is in here just because it makes me look cool.

For those of you who haven’t the frame of mind for such emotionalism and philosophy…

It is already August.  After five years of well-run courses for a variety of families and students, I am finished working with Summit Adventure.  I move into my new house on Sunday.  On Monday morning I’ll start my new job as the graduate assistant for Azusa Pacific University’s Outdoor Adventure program, and I’ll be taking classes full time.  I’m also hoping to ride the Whitney Classic bike ride at the end of September.  135 miles.  15,300 ft of elevation gain.  It’s a fundraiser, so you’ll probably get a letter from me asking for donations.

As always, thanks for reading.  Sorry I haven’t been in contact much this summer.  Hopefully this entry is a step in the right direction.

Ben

Between the Mouse and the Giant

Quito and Cayambe

It’s always difficult to start these things.  It’s always been a little overwhelming.  Not that I live an overwhelming life, it’s just that relating one’s life can be difficult.  I conjure up ideas of scenes to portray, or, sometimes, just a memorable picture.  Like a student sitting on a bed with his eyes half closed.  When I look at him, my headlamp illuminates his body and the raggedy bed on which he sits.  When I look away he’s in darkness.  Around such pictures one can construct a scene which portrays a fragment of what one’s lived, and with such a scene one can reach out to others and say “This is what I’ve lived.  Perhaps it hints at who I’m becoming.  Maybe you know me better now.”  And that last part, I’ve found, is the heart of the issue.  The reason for writing.  To be known over vast distances.  This way, when I come home and apparently have nothing to talk about, when I sit like a mute man across from you, when you ask me how Ecuador was and I mumble words inscrutable, at least you’ll have these bits, these selected images to know.

Illiniza Norte with a group

I’ve worked with three different groups of North Americans so far and I believe I have seen God at work—not in obvious ways like physical healings, but in subtle ways easily mistaken for the normal flow of life.  When the steady, wide flow is slowly etching the banks of humanity into a more beautiful form, more kind and empathetic and others-centered, that’s when I assume God is in the water.  Take, for instance, a big-time farmer from Idaho who changes his opinion of his Latin-American community.  Or consider the 15 year old with the tear-streaked face, who says the highlight from her time in Ecuador was visiting some of the poorest homes in Quito.  Or take, for example, a woman with renewed hope for a Christian community based on love and respect.   Or think of the woman recovering from an eating disorder who was able to healthily exercise for the first time in months.  It’s difficult to describe the contagious happiness that emanated from her in the mountains.  My point is I think there is a point to all of this.  The mountains are beautiful and fun and scary.  The city is interesting and intricate and different.  But people are changing for the better.  And that’s the biggest thing to celebrate.

A participant enjoying taking in the mountains over Quito

Each of these abstract examples happened on the first course, but before I move on, let me tell you about that part of the course which will stick with me for a long time, maybe until I die.  I walked with a social worker from a local church visiting various homes in a poor barrio.  I looked past the group in front of me, through a damp corridor of plywood, to a man scrambling around his home.  He was rapidly plucking papers, debris and sharp tools off his floor.  When he looked up at us, bent over with his hands full, I noticed his upturned, anxious eyebrows.  I also noticed his left eye was looking in a wildly different direction than his right.  His face was kind, nonetheless, and his unruly hair waved in the air as he nodded his head at what the social worker was saying.  She was asking him why his home was so dirty and unkempt; I understood that much.  When he looked at me, I sensed a submissiveness which made me uncomfortable.  I sensed it in his tone, when he asked if I spoke Spanish.  There was vomit on the front of his shirt, but, all in all, he looked much cleaner than his wife and two boys.

I’ve got to be honest, I’m tempted to continue describing this face of poverty with all of it hideous expressions, with its scabs and urine, mud and cardboard, cinderblocks and metal, but I’m not sure that pages of adjectives and analogies and personifications will be of any help in understanding all of this.  The only thing I claim to understand about that situation is that it is not supposed to exist.  People, immortal beings, are not supposed to live like that.  So I’m going to move on.  I’m moving into the abstract, into that which is less entertaining.  The story’s over, the moral is beginning.  I apologize in advance for my philosophizing, but I’ve been considering different perspectives on poverty and want to share these thoughts.

A muddy home, scabs, urine, cardboard—so begins the struggle between sympathy and empathy for one privileged white man.  I’ve come to believe that sympathy is man inflated.  It’s you or me injected with air until we are forty-five foot giants looking down on equals.   With sympathy, we smile and pledge to think of the poor often out of the benevolence that overflows our blown up, holy hearts, or we cry and highlight the suffering of others, but in sympathy we very seldom commit—not in a real way. Sympathy helps us ignore the poor by feeling badly, but it requires little action.  It patches our spirits by giving the false sense of helping others. 

A participant helping a blind man go for a walk at an "Old Folks Home" for the poor in Quito

I don’t have a good word for the opposite of this sympathy, found sometimes in the poor.  I guess one could call it “hyper-admiration”, basically, a deflated image of one’s self or an over-admiration of one’s equals.   It is shrinking one’s self down into a miniature mouse-person looking up to equals as superiors, not believing that one’s value has nothing to do with possessions or position or your child’s learning disability.  I view this “hyper-admiration” and sympathy as equally distant from what I believe to be the truth that all men are equal in one, important way.  God rejoices over all of us.  None should look either up or down to equals.

 For me, the desire to scoop up the poor in inflated arms can be emotionally appealing; but when I look at my arms, they look just like those of the man with vomit on his shirt.  I want to bend down and pluck families out of the muck (probably in a way that requires little sacrifice on my part), but I find myself instead staring eye to eye with them, standing in the muck also, not knowing what to do.  Such realizations bring one closer to empathy.  Empathy is the perspective I’m choosing to aim for.  Empathy knows that God prizes the urchin and the philanthropist equally.  Empathy empowers.  It sees eye-to-eye.  It speaks the truth of who we are as humans.  It may cry, but it does not pity.  It may celebrate, but it knows the struggle will not be finished in this lifetime.  Empathy educates.  It doesn’t give hand outs.  It recognizes potential and tries to grow that potential. 

Wendy

In applying these thoughts to my situation, I find that sympathy is tempting for a privileged white boy like myself, more tempting even, than guilt.  I find myself asking questions and making assumptions.  I wonder how they continue each day, if they are planning escape, how any of this could possibly end well, and I picture their frustration piling with each day, with each child, so that the tiniest straw of complications could crush the fragile hope they hold.  And then what?  Where can they go?  I have wondered how these people, with their physical needs barely met, continue.  But who am I to comment on the resilience of man, the resilience of the blotchy-faced woman with no bathroom and no job?  I know precious little of resilience, mainly stories, and it’s yet to be seen whether these stories are seeds planted in a fertile heart, ready to grow into a life that produces more stories and more seeds, or whether they are hollow echoes in a stony canyon.  Furthermore, who am I to doubt the existence of hope?  It may be hard to see, but I have to believe that hope exists for everyone, in all circumstances.  People will still die, the poor will persist, but so will hope, sometimes in the form of you and me and the sharing of our gifts.

John and Lisa, form Idaho, who decided to help Miguel (center) go to school at Remanso de Amor.  Miguel's parents live in the Amazon.  They put him on a bus for Quito one day where he lived on the streets until teachers at Remanso de Amor took him in.  Until John and Lisa came, he was going to have to leave Remanso due to a lack of funds.

So, as always, I come round to the conclusion that I must trust in God for my own sake and for the sake of the poor.  I don’t believe there is hope for myself or the family in the mud apart from him.  He knows of physical needs and commands us to address these needs in the world.  He knows we’re not acting like the people we were made to be and he knows that he is our only chance of changing.  But for all our dependence, he demands action.  He wants us to be his fingers and his feet.  He wants to cultivate us into loving beings, but he demands that we step out.  He places calls on us, calls without an audible voice or a strange emotion, calls that don’t seem like calls at all.  He equips us to serve by giving us tools, for me these are a loving family, a good brain, the opportunity to travel, gainful employment, and with these tools I am obligated to act.  With our given tools, we are all obligated to act.  Perhaps proper action with these tools is the fertilizer God is waiting for.  So act we must, or at least try, with whatever we have, however meager, and in whatever location we find ourselves.  For me, my current location happens to be close to a family who lives in the mud, but even closer to white people just like me, inflated, confused, and needing help in different ways.

Chilling with some Old Folks in Quito during the holidays 

Well, I intended to write about wind, snow, and adventure, of which there have been plenty, but I’m not sure what happened except that I was lured in by the bait called “why?”  I don’t know if there is anything to be learned from any of the above writing, but if there is, I hope you find it.

I’m looking forward to coming home on March 20^th.  Thanks for reading.

Ben  

To Consistency and Back Again

Mechanical issues on the drive to Cayambe

At each new step, I intended to capture my progress in writing.  However, at each new step, I found myself too concerned with the next to relate all of the previous.   Such has been the past six months.  In order to write, one waits, I suppose, for an unexpected and unclaimed pocket of time.  Here, nestled in the barking, honking concrete of Quito, I have found it.  The tea is murmuring in the kettle, rain is peppering the window, and the sky is as blank and unwritten as the page before me.  I’ll begin with the present.

Quito at night:  the Panecillo

Clouds are overflowing the eastern valley, rolling like great cotton balls over the wet rooftops of Quito.  Under one of those rooftops is my home, and indeed, here, at last, I feel at home.  Quito, the city of the clouds.  When it rains here, the frogs are unmuted, and rather than chirping, they pop like a chorus of pickle jars being opened at once.  Six months ago, I did not expect the affordance of living here again, neither did I desire it.  Six months ago I was squinting uneasily into the future, trying to discern a viable path to stability.  I was praying hard and running hard so that when the door was opened, I limped into it with much gratefulness.  I began working for Summit Adventure full-time, settling down into the comfort of a routine, of consistent community, of church on Sunday mornings and a bed (not a truck bed) to sleep in each night.  The insatiability of the human appetite is amazing, but for the past three months, I have often been content.

Curt, my co-instructor, looking out on the city from our rooftop

 There I go again, lost in the abstract.  When I say I was praying hard and running hard, here’s what I meant, taken from a journal entry:

“Around that time, with the summer drawing to a close, I became anxious about not having a job for the next year.  I started running.  For some reason, I tend to consider myself lazy if I’m not experiencing discomfort as I run, thinking I can’t possibly be improving without pain.  So I would strap on my headlamp (thanks for the headlamp, Dad!), and run into the coolness of the night up a steep mountain trail and back down again to Bass Lake.  I would swim through the star-strewn reflections on the water then run back, huffing and wobbling on numb legs.  Perhaps running to the point of discomfort does make one a better runner, but it also makes one injured.  I developed tendinitis in my achilles.”

The humility provided by the physical weakness of a tendon can be powerful.  Weak tendons tethered me securely to civilization—to roads and seats and offices.  Mountains became nothing more than images representing adventure.  But in this time of waiting and healing and thinking, I began to know the mountains in a different way.  I gained the perspective of the inhibited, of the elderly or lame, to whom mountains remain mysterious.  Previously, mountains had become to me a workplace only.  I had allowed familiarity to strip them of their glory.  But as I waited for healing, pacing in my apartment, my perspective was changed.  I began to know wonder, of which mountains are full.  I saw them not for what they could offer me, but for what they have offered everyone since their creation.  Humans have populated them recently like fleas, but for thousands of years prior, God alone sat among them and said they were good.

The Mt. Whitney Portal, 6am on a September morning

 It would be hard to describe to you the joy felt when I broke free from my injury-prison one night and limped with my haul bag up to a cliff.   It’s the joy of watching sparks fly from my hammer into the night—of the full moon staring over my shoulder—of the absolutely wild and untamed look the mountains have when dusted with snow—the comfort of curling up in a sleeping bag to watch the stars spin through the night--knowing that I reside on one of their own, an errant star.

But I’m ahead of myself again.  When I last wrote, I was only partially finished with another summer of work with Summit Adventure.  It would be a shame not to mention my privilege to work with persons with disabilities.

Among the treasure chest of jewels which comprised that course for those with disabilities, I will select only one to give you.  Michael.  Michael was about forty years old and this is how our conversations went:

He would be in his wheelchair wearing his wolf sweatshirt.  I would be helping the others help with dinner.  Michael was scruffy from not shaving and he would inevitably be staring down at the forest floor.  I would notice him lost in his thoughts and go over to him.

“Michael!  What’s up?”

“Ooooh,” he would sigh, “nothing much.”  His voice was a little higher than you would expect and he sighed a lot.

“What are you thinking about?”

He would look up at me with a cocked head and raise one eyebrow.  “Ooooh.  I’m thinking about what I’m going to do next month.”

“Wow.  What are you going to do next month?” I said, astounded.

He would sigh again as if were still debating in his head, then say, “Well, I’m going to watch some movies.”

Maril and Michael

Michael’s main disability was anxiety.  I related to his struggle with anxiety, but still found it hard to imagine the burden he carried daily.  The heaviness of this struggle made his prayers fervent.  The single most poignant memory I have of that course is Michael praying.  He would pray in the sweetest voice you’ve ever heard, starting each prayer with the most deliberate and reverent salutation:  “Dear…Lord…Jesus…Christ”.   The gap between each word was gargantuan.  I will never forget the way he said those four words.   Note: I’m not saying this for the sake of drama, and neither do I say the next sentence for dramatic effect.  After every course for persons with disabilities, I walk away wondering whether I or them have the greater disability.

So you’ll see what’s happened so far in the story?  First the course with Michael, then many other courses, then I injured my achilles, then I started working full-time for Summit Adventure.  That’s the order, not that the order of this particular story matters much.  But I’ve left some things out (as is likely to happen when one writes every six months).  I’ll fast forward through the two weeks of driving around in a rental car visiting colleges; through sleeping in the rain on the shore of Lake Michigan; and I’m tempted to fast-forward through Christmas, for it is difficult to comment honestly on something which any of one’s readers may refute.  The temptation to bend one’s perspective, to match the reader’s expectations, is great.  I suppose all I will say is, “I think the heaviness of the holiday was surpassed by something which shone through it,” which, I imagine, means little to anyone but me.

And I’ve found myself in Ecuador again.

Really, there is too much that has happened here already to comment on it in this post.  So, give a sigh of relief.  Whatever obligation pushed you to read this far is almost fulfilled.

The cotton balls have burst, and the frogs have much to say about it.  The city is wet and quiet and dark as it prepares for the bustle of Monday morning.  It is getting late, so I suppose I'll join it in it's preparations.

Thanks for reading.  I always appreciate your prayers as well as your prayer requests.  I know, as well as one can, that God is at work down here, slowly re-etching people into his image.  I hope you can say the same wherever you are.

Thanks again.  Ben.