Saturday, January 31, 2009

Mountaintop grace

Mountaintop Grace

Amos wanted his life to be a story worth telling. That was about all he knew. And he was terrified of wasting his life doing something meaningless. So terrified that, rather than fail his own proud self image by pursuing the wrong path, he’d become stalled here at a dead end. At the end of the last public beach. At the end of the road west. At the end of his childhood.

Not a bad place to end up. He was in an idyllic rain forest, ocean side oasis, living off the fat of the land in a bubble of time that, like his youth, couldn’t last. The fall weather was coming. Even in Vancouver’s temperate climate it meant rain, rain, cold and colder rain. Urban camping was fine for the summer but he’d have to find four walls and a roof in that concrete city sometime soon.

Amos managed to cadge a shower every few days at the Jericho Beach Youth Hostel. He figured the staff were onto him – they knew he wasn’t checked in. But since he fit in with the young crowd traveling cheap, they looked the other way as he strolled casually by with soap and towel in a bag.

Urban camping wasn’t alot different from being homeless. He had a home of course. Back in his parent’s basement in Ontario there was a place for him. But he was here to find a way forward. To go back would be a defeat. This was something he had to do on his own. What that “thing” was seemed just beyond his reach – out there in the ocean somewhere. He was hoping it might wash in with the next tide.

Amos walked the beach. He read and read and read. Jung and Castenada and Neitsche. He cooked meals over a Coleman stove on a picnic table in the public park where he parked his Dodge Dart. At the Canadian Tire, he bought fiberglass and body putty and spent hours sanding down and repairing the rust holes in the body of the Fleshmobile. It was far from a professional job. It was more of ritual than he knew. He was patching up the holes in his heart. The salt on the slippery road of adolescence had eaten away at his defences. It needed working over – a new face. Working with his hands got his mind settled and focused and he started developing a plan for the new man.

He jotted a few things into a notebook but would doze off before he got anywhere into it. He wandered the downtown streets enjoying feeling both stranger and tourist - feeling like, as a Canadian, this was his city. He belonged here. Both strange and familiar. Familiar like the feel of the wheel in his hand taking corners at high speed. Strange like what was going on inside him – spinning out of control. It was a confusing mix of heroic aspirations and the brutal realities of his limitations. He dreamt of doorless concrete walls that shut him out.

A few weeks went by like this and things were getting thin. Amos was getting concerned about his quickly dwindling treeplanting stash of cash. He located the Provincial government’s Social Services office and sat patiently waiting most of a morning to talk to an intake officer. The middle aged woman had her hair pulled back so tight it looked like it was causing the pain in her face. She took in his story as if she’d heard it before. Amos was getting the impression that maybe he wasn’t the only lost soul on Vancouver’s doorstep.

Homeless, jobless, injured back, no place to go. He was looking for a welfare cheque to get himself a place to stay. She told him to get lost. Not a touch of motherhood in her. Wouldn’t even start a file on him – without an address he didn’t qualify as a resident.

Leaving with his tail between his legs, it was a blow to his balance. It felt like he’d lost his footing. Canada had rejected a favoured son. He’d put his pride away and held out his hand for some help. Getting it slapped down was harsh. He thought he had a place at the table. They pointed him to the dumpsters in the alley and told him to help himself.

Leaving that cold glass and steel office tower, he had a sense of why there were thousands of angry people protesting in the square outside the building. Something about cutbacks the new government had imposed. He listened to a speech or two. It wasn’t hard to connect with the anger. It felt like the vibe of a punk bar. Fun stuff - but his time for such theatrics was short. It would take him nowhere fast. He needed to find a footing before he could dance.

In that punch-drunk state, Amos almost called up Christine. He thought about trying to patch things together again – get back to familiar ground. Then he remembered that she’d be going back to college and getting into that circle of friends and he couldn’t stretch his imagination far enough to see himself in that circle.

Not that they’d be all that different from his circle of friends back in Scarbro. They were a little younger than him and still mostly passionate about enjoying life. They were living within the security of their family’s wealth. Homes with full fridges, cars to take them to the next party, cottage playgrounds to run away to when responsibilities got to feeling heavy. The difference between his suburban pals and these Vancouver rich kids was only that they had much more of the same. Their luxuries came with spending money and no need to work at crappy summer or afterschool jobs. Those rich kids would have to get jobs eventually. But they knew it was just a matter of stepping onto the next stone in their parent’s country club pond.

It wasn’t his family’s pond Amos was interested in. Working in a church seemed a worse fate than becoming a corporate hack. It was good work he knew, but he couldn’t get his head around being good himself. The effort involved in being a good person - that others would look up to – just didn’t feel like him.

So here he was facing the Pacific Ocean gathering courage to swim his way into the future. His guts told him he had to step out from under the shadow of the large trees in his family. The branches of his clergyman family – father, two uncles, older brother all hung over his head. The lack of daylight was stunting his growth. He’d grown tall fast reaching for those heights - for a place in the sun – achieving in the academic skills it takes to compete with those tall trees. But his trunk was still narrow.

Instead of growing slowly and steadily – developing the breadth and width of experience that would give him the weight he needed to pull off the art that was in him – he was top heavy. Full of knowledge and no wisdom - he was only just wise enough to know it. The fruit that was waiting to spring from within needed a good heavy trunk to deliver the juice up out of those deep roots. He was gonna step out into the sun. If it’s possible for trees to step. He was gonna feed on pure sunshine and brave the westerly winter storms unprotected and alone.

Lost my shape
trying to act casual
Can’t stop
I might end up in a hospital

Changing my shape
I feel like an accident
They’re back
to explain an experience

I’m still waiting
I’m still waiting

The feeling returns
whenever we close our eyes
lifting my head
looking around inside

The island of doubt
it’s like the taste of medicine
Working by hindsight
got the message from the oxygen

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don’t do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them

I’m still waiting
I’m still waiting…

“Crosseyed and Painless” by Talking Heads
from the album “Stop Making Sense”










He was free. Or so he thought.

He was free. Free to do and be as he pleased. He’d dropped the heavy pack of expectations of family and friends on the shore at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Passing on a place in an Ontario law school, he’d cut the ties to a future designed to please and impress.

But Amos was finding all this freedom to be a troublesome friend. Free will is God’s greatest gift to us human kind. It’s also God’s greatest burden. As free and unentangled as Amos had worked to become, he still was haunted by devils and saints who kept after him with their bantering questions. Somewhere in his psyche was rooted the idea that his life was a gift. And from that root in his tree squabbling crows sat in the branches – trading questions and answers …
“how will you spend your days?”
“it’s a free gift – enjoy it to the fullest!”
“will you waste them?”
“it’s all yours – you can do whatever you want”
“who do you think you are?”
“you won’t know it ‘til you taste it – to experience is why we’re here”
“are you a leech or are you a lion?”
“don’t worry, be happy”
“unto whom much is given, much is also expected”

One great find in Amos’ life so far was that he’d discovered one place –maybe the only place – that he could truly feel like “me”. Deep in the midst of nature he could hear himself think. Wind, water, rocks, trees, sky - ocean islands, mountaintops, woods, rivers, lakeshores, meadows – took him away from the mirrors those saints and devils confused him with.

He saw mirrors in the eyes of everyone he met. Caring too much about what others thought of him weighed him down, tired him out, sapped the creative fruit juice right out of him.

So, scrambling up from behind his beached logside bed with the pre-dawn light only just crowning the mountains in the east, he threw his bed into the back of the Fleshmobile and headed for that light. He’d asked around a bit and was told about a mountain trail just up the Whistler highway a bit. Reportedly it offered a mountaintop lake and enough of a hike to keep him walking all day.


The parking lot was at the foot of a spectacular waterfall – a roadside picnic spot. The sun was shining. There was a cool breeze blowing. No humidity in the air. Amos couldn’t have ordered up a better day from a menu. Out of the car’s back seat, he pulled out his pack with a bit of food and water, sleeping bag and tarp, and found the trail entrance. A sign-board described what the hike was like but he walked right past it. That’s why he was here – to find out what the hike was like. He could read about it in the city.

The process of walking up a mountain for Amos was like taking a walk down into his soul. Climbing up from a boulder strewn meadow into a steep-banked forest, he was already thinking through the worries of today and getting into the memories of yesterday. People would pop up like visitors in a dream. People he hadn’t thought about in years. People he thought about all the time. In the conversations he’d have, hardly noticing the trail, new ideas would come up and old questions would get tossed around.

His attention would get momentarily pulled back by the stream he’s gotta cross or the view that greets him from a break in the trees at a turn in the path. Amos pauses and lets the beauty sink in a bit – the difference between waking-sight and inner-sight slowly melting away.

A good view always made Amos lonely. He knew it was natural to want to share something beautiful - but he also didn’t really mind being alone. Amos was a dreamer. Since childhood he’d loved to get lost in stories – especially stories of adventure. The hero must suffer many pitfalls and setbacks that test his resolve and push him to the edge of surrender. The quest makes it all worthwhile for he values it more than his life. A damsel, or a dame, is always involved, but the goal for the true hero is even greater than bagging a babe. The goal is peace and prosperity for all; the holy grail – a return to the Garden, Camelot, etcetera, etcetera.

To see himself as the hero of a story was to be awake for Amos. If he didn’t feel that he was a part of an emerging story, he’d get lost and confused. If a song couldn’t be written about his day – it was a day when he’d lost the trail. The greatest thing for Amos about driving a cab – he’d spent last winter driving in Toronto - was picking up the storylines of people’s lives. Some would spill them out to you in a blog of passion to tell you who they are. Others would make you guess –dropping hints with every word and laugh and sigh and expression captured in the rearview mirror.

Walking up that mountain, Amos was looking for a plot worthy of his own efforts. He was like an out-of-work actor killing time. And it was killing him to not know where or how he would play his part. He needed a part with drama and challenge and a good dose of the impossible all through it. The quest - that seemed to defeat so many valiant souls - was to live well.

To fail, was to fall into the fearful pit of becoming “normal”. Settling for a life of wife and job and kids and the accumulation of stuff that told you were a success seemed a ruse. It was the seduction of a witch with a head full of snakes that seemed so strangely desirous. But the hero knew that ruse would turn you to stone within a few short years. Amos was terrified of looking back from a future waking and discovering that he’d been seduced and his time stolen; quest sidetracked and forgotten. Only a mirror could defeat the witch – and he was afraid of mirrors.

Fear, as always, was the enemy that had him confused. Somehow, Amos instinctively knew, that walking up a mountain –just him and his fears – that he’d sweat out the answers he was looking for.

The sun had peaked and was already heading for Hawaii – giving up on him so soon. The path was getting steeper and the woods thinner. There were larger patches of sky appearing with each turn of the switchback trail. The turns were getting tighter and more often. Amos was feeling like the day would end with him no closer to thinking his problem through. How would he make his way? What profession? What path? How to begin? Back to Law School? On to Journalism? Just start writing his guts out? Butcher, baker, soldier, spy? It was weighing as heavily on his mind as the dinner in his pack. He was hungry and tired and the courage was draining out like a slow leak in his water bottle.

Each step was heavier and slower. His breathing was quicker and deeper and his heart was making itself known. Of course, these were all signs that the peak was just ahead. So he kept on. With each plodding step it felt like he was repeating the question over and over. “Which way to go? Which way to go? It got chopped into a mantra “Which – foot up - Way – foot down. Which – Way? Which – Way? …Which - … ”

Just before Amos reached the top - it was only a turn or two away, the hairs on his necked bristled . From behind, so close that he could hear the flap of wind beneath wings, an eagle swooped over.

“Whoa!” It stunned him – as if an angel – suddenly, surprisingly – had dropped in with an announcement. He was a rabbit instantly frozen as talons sunk and lifted. The power of something sacred pierced deep.

Stopped in his tracks. Breath lost with surprise. He waited for the other shoe to drop. But it was gone. No message. A mirage.

With a heavy breath in and a sigh out – he kept on. His step was just a bit lighter. There was an afterglow still. The air was thinner. The wind lifted.

Reaching a peak is always a holy moment. Going from the view of one side of a mountain – as spectacular as those views can be – to the view of all the valleys surrounding and the peaks beyond in every direction you turn – is to transform from a human’s to a bird’s-eye-view. Like an epiphany, suddenly you see what God sees – how God sees the world; the big-picture perspective, the long and the short of it. You see how small and limited your day to day view of the world can be – only when you get a glimpse of just how expansive the curve of this planet really is.

And on this peak, not only did Amos get a bird’s eye view – soaking it up like a sponge – but he also got to view a big beautifully awesome bird soaring in the winds that rose up off the cliffs. There it was – that eagle angel. His gaze followed it intently. His aching body left behind, Amos became only eyes and sighs.

It soared with wings outstretched. Without effort - held aloft by mountain winds. And then, with a simple dip of one wing, it turned and circled down in long wide arcs that pulled along his attention like a good story. Until, when it seemed like it was over, the bird found a current that lifted it up, up, up, up again.

Amos couldn’t look away. It was like the bird had snatched his soul in its talons and was stealing it away. It rose up higher than the setting sun. Up over the mountain peaks, he watched it climb - his head craning back and jaw slack with wonder. This time it dipped the other wingtip and, with a little more speed but still without effort, spun in an arc in the opposite direction. He followed its twisting path down, down, down, almost out of sight until – a new draft was discovered - and up lifted the great bird as if by a great hand - to begin the story all over again.

It repeated this game of wing and wind over and over and over. The sun dropped behind the horizon and Amos watched until the wings blurred past stars appearing. His soul was gone. Or, what he’d thought of as his soul. Amos realized now it was only an earthbound imposter. In it’s place there was a vast emptiness – deeper and wider than even his huge ego could contain.

Like a feather dropped at his feet, the angel had delivered its message. God had told Amos as clearly as if he’d read it in the Psalms. “You are as free as my eagle. Whatever direction you choose, I am already there; with you, before and behind you. Wherever you go, I will use whatever you offer.”

Amos had thought he was gaining freedom by ditching his past. Now, his future offered him a freedom that finally lifted the weight from his heart. The burden of choice that had made his own free will a troublesome friend was now a gift. The Maker had assured him that the choices he would make and the directions he would choose really mattered very little in God’s big picture. God would use every dip of the wing, every decision – good and bad - to create opportunities for life and love abundant. Instead of a troubling responsibility, his freedom was a creative opportunity to play. He’d found the path back to the Garden. Amos was on his way.

Before darkness set in, he followed the path down the other side of the peak. The trail led him around and up another rise and just beyond that was a clear grassy spot overlooking a small mountain lake. Bigger than a pond it rested in the midst of a ring of hills. It’s surface was calm. In the night’s dark it mirrored the galaxy’s shining stars. And those stars seemed closer than they ever had before.

Amos started a small campfire, cooked up some grub and boiled water for a brew of mint tea. He stretched out and gazed over the dim dark outline of the lake. With bites and sips, he chewed over the gifts of the day. Sleep began to sneak up on him. The dreamlike quality of that day was drifting towards the dreams that lived at the bottom of that mountain lake.

Whether he dreamed it or not, he wasn’t sure. A glow appeared just beyond the peaks across the lake. As he watched it, it slowly grew in size and intensity. Amos wasn’t sure at first, but the glow seemed to have a green hue to it. To his surprise and amazement, a giant full moon slowly rose from behind the hills to totally bathe Amos and the lake and the hills in its mirrored light. It was as green as grass. If the moon is made of cheese – it had gone moldy that night.

Mold, of course, is new life emerging from the decay of yesterday’s food. For Amos, it was a sign; the advent of an adventure. It peered down from the sky, and also looked up at him from the lake. It was like two great monster eyes were regarding him sideways – amused - wondering - what will this small hero do?


Standing at the crossroads,
trying to read the signs,
to tell me which way I should go to find the answer.
And all the time I know
- plant your love and let it grow

let it grow, let it grow
let it blossom, let it flow
in the sun, the rain, the snow
love is lovely, let it flow

Time is getting shorter
and there’s much for you to do
only ask and you will find what you are needing.
The rest is up to you
- plant your love and let it grow

let it grow, let it grow
let it blossom, let it flow
in the sun, the rain, the snow
love is lovely, so let it grow

Eric Clapton’s “Let it Grow”



Back in the city, the next day, Amos invested the last of his cash reserves in a course to become a Vancouver taxi driver. He bought a can of dark brown metallic house paint and a roller and just like the guy in “Black like Me” gave himself a new colour of flesh. As he slapped the paint on the Fleshmobile in the beach parking lot in the late afternoon sun. A car whizzed by with a kid hanging out the window who let out a WHOOP! It sounded like ridicule. It sounded like a war cry challenge. Amos dipped the roller into the paint and kept at his crazy transformation. There was no turning back now. He was going native.