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.