Day 79
Reverse
I’ve never seen a Porpoise swim in reverse. I’ve said and done my share of things in life I wish I could reverse. God created the human species with the ability to move backward. With Porpoises, He didn’t. This caused me to think about the concept of reverse a lot more than most folks probably do. Reverse has the same letters as the word reserve. I guess God reserved reverse for humans instead of Porpoise.
Let me explain.
Today, we have terms like reverse engineering, reverse mortgages and reverse psychology. Humans are equipped to change direction. Imagine parking your car and being unable to put it in reverse to get out of the parking stall. In other words, you would have to wait for the person parked in front of you to show up before you could exit. They’d need to have Police in every parking lot in the world to monitor the chaos. Thank God for reverse!
I despise moving, although my family has done it on numerous occasions. When you rent a truck to move your stuff, they have a governor on the engine so you don’t go too fast. I always feel sorry for the folks I pass on the interstate freeways who are ambling down the road at no more than 60 MPH. It reminds me of all the stuff associated with moving that is so painful and burdensome.
I guess God created humans to be particularly mobile. Think about all the creatures on this planet. We humans are the only one’s who can stand perfectly still, sit, walk, shuffle, skip, dance, run, swim, fly, dive, float, ski, and surf. Yet, God knew we would also trip, stumble, crash, sink, lose our bearings, become bewildered and confused, to lose our way.
Within the mobility of our existence lie momentum and velocity. Momentum is like the wind that fills the sails of a sailboat. You may not be able to see it but it’s the essence of what propels us forward. Velocity is speed at which we are moving. The difficult part for me today is recognizing the degree to which my mobility is being determined by the momentum and velocity of life. We seem to assume that moving along day by day, we’re somehow making progress.
When I was about 10 years old, I went on an early morning, summer fishing trip with my grandfather. While standing on the bank of the Skykomish river in the Washington State, I gazed out on its’ expanse flowing before me. As far as I could see, there was a wispy cloud of mist floating a few feet above the surface of the river. I turned to my grandfather and said, “Grandpa, what’s that?” as I pointed out toward the mist swirling above the water. He said, “Well Billy, that’s the tears of the fish rising from crying during the night.” “Why are they crying Grandpa?”
He paused, straightening his six feet four inches above me. While looking out over the river, he said: “They cry because their numbers are dwindling. Because the living environment they were accustomed to has changed so dramatically. It took a lot of time for their environment to change for the worse, to the condition it’s in now. It’s happened gradually, over many years. These changes just don’t provide the level of nutrition and oxygen necessary to sustain the number of fish that used to live in the river.”
“Who did this Grandpa?”
“We did son, man did. Not intentionally. We thought that dams and housing developments, and dumping waste into the river wouldn’t hurt anything, that it was necessary for ‘progress.’ I asked, “What’s ‘progress’ Grandpa?” “It’s what man does out of a need to improve things, whose unforeseen consequences make the fish cry at night.”
I said, “Too bad fish can’t talk Grandpa.”
I really didn’t understand what my Grandpa said in that last line until I got older and recognized the mist over mainstream Christianity in America. The water is murky. It’s confusing. Many have become lethargic. Some fish are crying. Most are just going with the flow. Many have fallen out of the mainstream. Some are floating belly up in the current.
I’ve been contemplating the reasons for the mist over mainstream Christianity in the western, developed world from the perspective of one fish in the river who weeps over questions like: What’s wrong? What are we doing? Are these the sort of results we intended to produce? What have we become? Why have some of us become lethargic while others have become arrogant and aggressive? Why are our numbers dwindling?
I believe we have the opportunity to change our present predicament, as well as the future of our species. My gut tells me we need to dive beneath the surface of many impulses, intentions and behaviors that seem to guide our present course. We’re going to have to jump out of the water to get a glimpse of the terrain up ahead. We must consider the possibility that we have been misled, driven by our natural instinct to stay within the comfort of our own school, and spawn to reproduce our own kind. Perhaps we’re swimming in the wrong stream, swept along by a strong current that has carried us to a precarious position we never intended to occupy?
This line of thought brings up questions like: Where is the current that will lead us to the stream we’re supposed to be in? How do we rewire widely held, basic instincts that have guided our behavior for so long? What are some of the mileposts along the way that will indicate that we are headed in the right direction? What is my role in all of this?
To accomplish these objectives, we must swim out of the school that populates the mainstream. We must share what we have observed and heard from those of you who seem to be just fine going with the flow. As authors Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch put it: “By duplicating a failing system, we are digging the same hole deeper in our attempt to dig somewhere else.”[i]
When fishing would get really slow and boring, Grandpa would prop his pole up and take a seat beside me on the riverbank. This was the time when he would be available to answer any questions that might come to the mind of a ten year old. We would both be laser focused on the tips of our fishing rods, securely anchored to the shore by a pile of boulders around their handles. I would interrupt him every few minutes with, “Look Grandpa, I think I’ve got one…a big one!” He would check my rod and assure me that, “it’s just the current Billy.”
I would regularly ask, “When are we going to catch the big one
Grandpa?”
“Well Billy, everyone goes fishing to catch the big one. You might get one of those in your lifetime: Maybe not. The one’s you and I will be happy to catch and take home to Grandma will be the other ones. It’s the ordinary fish that really matter Billy.”
At that moment, a huge lightning strike flashed in the heavens above us. KABOOM! Thunder exploded seconds later and rain began to pelt the surface of the river. Thoughts began to ricochet through my mind: Am I safe? Is Grandpa OK? I wanna go home! Pictures of my family start bubbling up in my head. I start to question my dream to be a fireman. I wished my dog was here. I begin to wonder if I really liked this fishing stuff anymore.
Just as the tears began to emerge from my eyes, the familiar, loving arms of Grandpa wrapped around me, as he sat down and pulled me into the security of his lap. He said: “Don’t cry Billy. Those KABOOM‘s make all of us think about the stuff that usually doesn’t come to mind.”
“What does it mean Grandpa?”
“It’s just a reminder Billy. God created us. He’s reminding us that He is the Creator of it all. Every raindrop falling on the water out there comes from Him. We wouldn’t have a river without rainfall. Without water, there wouldn’t be any fish, or any fishing for us to enjoy together. He’s shouting that He loves us. He’s telling us that we need to be reminded what we people need to be very careful about what we do out of well-intentioned efforts to improve things in this life, whose unforeseen consequences make His creations cry. We make God cry sometimes Billy. We’ve missed something. ”
The deluge stopped as quickly as it began. I extracted one arm from beneath Grandpa’s embrace and wiped my eyes. Out on the river, the warm summer rain caused a fresh, misty vapor to begin rising a few inches above the surface, right in front of us.
“Look Grandpa…the fish must be crying again.” Grandpa didn’t answer. I turned in his lap and glanced at his face. His eyes were all watery. A tear tumbled from one eye. I turned back toward the river and said,”I’m glad you’re here Grandpa.”
In the distance, another flash lit up our surroundings and a KABOOM! rumbled from the passing thunderstorm. I melted back into Grandpa’s lap. He strengthened his embrace around me. I heard Grandpa whisper, “Yes, Lord…progress. We’ve missed something.”
Today, Grandpa is dead. I’m as old as he was at the time of this story. I have grandchildren. We fish together. They ask questions of me. I don’t have all the answers.
The unanswered question for those who claim the name of Christ remains the same: “What’s ‘progress’ Grandpa?”
Here’s where I’m at, as expressed by author Donald Miller: “I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and on authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is thehardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. Theproblem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing thatlives in my chest.”[ii]
With an estimated 3 billion people who live on less than two dollars a day, perhaps it’s time we that we begin to question our collective momentum and velocity.[iii] Porpoises can’t reverse this trend. Man can. We must. What’s progress going to look like for us, the people of faith?
NOTES
[i] Frost, Michael and Hirsch, Alan The Shaping of Things to Come – Innovation and Mission For The 21st Century Church, Hendrickson Publishers – Peabody, MA Copyright 2003 by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, p. 18
[ii] Miller, Donald, J. Blue Like Jazz – Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, Thomas Nelson Publishing, Nashville, TN Copyright 2003 by Donald Miller, p. 20.
[iii] Sider, Ronald J. Rich Christians In An Age of Hunger – Moving From Affluence to Generosity, W Publishing Group, A Division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Copyright © 1997 by Ronald J. Sider, p. 2.
