Celebration: Loose Chains

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.
--Acts 16:25-26

I thought myself to be in a particularly deplorable place when I came upon this familiar passage featuring everyone’s favorite persecutor gone Jesus-lover, Paul. I’m personally a huge fan of the author of history’s most widely circulated letters myself. However, after giving it a considered read, I was a little resentful. Why? These men had just been flogged for all they were worth and thrown into prison after commanding a spirit out of a slave girl in Jesus’ name. And behold, imprisoned, cuffed, feet fastened in stocks, probably naked and bleeding—essentially two fast-incubating cases of tetanus bound in chains—Paul and Silas still offer up praises to the Most High.

Contrast to the conditions under which I was reading the passage: recently showered, acceptably clothed for a 90-degree day, maybe a few horsefly bites from the last weekend’s hike but devoid of any novel infirmities, fed but the coffee level of my cup waning, seated in the comfort of my well-lit kitchen on a Friday morning. My own less ear-friendly a capella renditions of Josh Turner and Grace Potter that frequent the acoustic-friendly quarters of my own home summer-round had gone from infrequent to extinct in the course of a single week. I’d say I was having a rough go myself, but I’d only stalled because I was jaded and self-absorbed.

I wanted to be joyful. Really I did. I wanted to believe that I hadn’t been acting outside of God’s will only to walk into a dead-as-a-doornail end. I honestly wanted to believe that people could still be blessed in my presence in spite of my inner turmoil. No matter how much biblical truth I could cite pertaining to my situation, no feeling was penetrating my heart. Reading Richard Foster’s repeated identification of Jesus as “our present teacher” in Celebration of Discipline only agitated my sense of desertion—I rely on the Word of God for my daily bread and wouldn’t change that, but I felt like He had been pretty quiet for some time and I was missing His voice. And what’s more, now I was at point blank with two excellent followers of Jesus who default to rejoicing when they’re faced with hardship. They sure showed me up. I didn’t think back to this passage until later after reading Foster’s insight on the discipline of celebration:

The decision to set the mind on the higher things of life is an act of the will. That is why celebration is a Discipline. It is not something that falls on our heads. It is the result of a consciously chosen way of thinking and living.

I had been of the persuasion that Paul and Silas were admirable strictly on account of being God-fearing men who genuinely enjoyed singing in prison after getting beat to a pulp for proclaiming Christ. Foster made it very clear that such was not the case. In fact, to assume that they first resorted to thanksgiving in their circumstances belittles the Holy Spirit’s ability to beget character from discipline. They weren’t idiots. They knew corporal punishment for their advancement of Jesus’ ministry was not of the Lord. Paul and Silas made a conscious, willful decision to sing hymns and offer God praise in spite of their dismal circumstances. And for those of you who are rusty or unfamiliar with the story, they were eventually released and a few believers were baptized and added to their number because of it. So was fulfilled what Paul would write to Timothy during a longer prison term:

Watch you life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

--1 Timothy 4:16

Now I think Paul and Silas’ case poses an opportune place to present a distinction that Foster makes:

A popular teaching today instructs us to praise God for the various difficulties that come into our lives…In its best form such teaching is a way of encouraging us to look up the road a bit through the eye of faith…In its worst form this teaching denies the vileness of evil and baptizes the most horrible tragedies as the will of God. Scripture commands us to live in a spirit of thanksgiving in the midst of all situations; it does not command us to celebrate the presence of evil.

But Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, shows us that a thankful spirit will do much to give us the ability to recognize what’s within God’s will:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

--Philippians 4:4, 6-7

Our hearts and our minds will be guarded, and because of that, those chains that bind us from rejoicing in the Lord always break loose. So maybe I hadn’t been feeling that “peace of God, which transcends all understanding” much lately, but I’ll also be the first to admit that I had been skipping a vital step in Paul’s counsel here: thanksgiving. I’m just as aware as the next guy that God’s sovereign over everything. As such, I tend to fall into a “that’s what you get, like it or not” attitude because I’m perpetually aware I’m not entitled to anything. Still, that doesn’t negate any reason to count our blessings and show God that we recognize the good things He’s sent our way.

And I think this is where I got tied up. When the joy wasn’t filtering in automatically as it often does when the Spirit dwells in us, I assume there’s nothing I can do. God had good reasons for suspending my own fickle sources of security—the things that were barring me from putting myself at His mercy entirely. And had it not been for the circumstances, it’s any man’s guess how long they would’ve gone unaddressed. Nonetheless I had definitely been remiss of my obligation to be grateful in all circumstances, and I think that honestly put a chokehold on the Holy Spirit. With that insight, I can imagine God’s response to my complaint about Him being too quiet as something to the effect of, “yeah, ya don’t say? Why d’ya reckon that might be?”

And even being thick of skull and dim of wit as I am, I can’t deny that from experience that celebration really can be a “fake-it-‘til-you-make-it” thing. Many a time I’ve gone into a recreational or fellowship setting determined to appear only grave and profound. Being completely honest with myself, I think the underlying motive behind that is to incite pity for how “dreadful” my circumstances are while putting up some “noble” façade of composure based on the pretense that God undoubtedly wants me to appear stoic and sober. Then, like clockwork, things like dancing, jocularity, and ridiculous games always seem to ensue, and all too quickly my premeditated labors to boycott joy amount to null. Foster challenges us:

So poke fun at yourself. Enjoy wholesome jokes and clever puns. Relish good comedy. Learn to laugh; it is a discipline to be mastered. Let go of the everlasting burden of always needing to sound profound.

When we keep the right company, the spirit of celebration will inevitably get a hold of us. This is one among the many ways I’ve decided God has the world rigged in His favor: He’s always giving some Christians somewhere something to be excited about, and our own problems and momentary worries dissipate when we catch wind of it. And for times when that’s not the case, we quickly find that that’s all really superfluous anyway when we realize that willful thanksgiving begets joy. Among Paul’s repeated insistence that we embody of spirit of thanks are these words addressed to the Colossian church:

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly…singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

--Colossians 3:13-15

I had been inspired to write on the topic of celebration before it even occurred to me that Becca advertises her photography as “images celebrating life.” So appropriately, I included some of her favorite images from the past few months in this post—after all, interesting subjects and good art—though simple, and often taken for granted—are still gifts of God to be relished and enjoyed. As Richard Foster advises:

…if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.

Lame Bison & Lightened Loads

July has been a month of highs and lows. Just over midway through, Thursday July 18^th, Becca and I caught up to three bison on a morning drive through Blacktail Plateau—certainly not a momentous sighting in and of itself in the habitat for somewhere around 4,000 bison. One was a good-sized bull, but two of the three were lame and probably the most skeletal of their kind I’d ever seen. The frailest of the three had a hard time walking more than 20 yards at a time before gingerly laying itself down to feed on whatever vegetation was in reach from a resting position.

I realize the beings God has created in His own image occupy a psychosomatic realm of their own relative to the rest of creation. And I’m aware that Christ’s blood wasn’t meant to atone for Billy the Buffalo’s adulterous ways—there’s little time to factor in the moral value of monogamy when survival hinges on reproduction. Nonetheless, I’ve walked away from some of the more grave days in the park with an increased appreciation for the unique place we, as humans, occupy in the order of creation. We’re provided for. We’re freethinking beings. We have capacity to know the God who made us. We don’t have to breed as soon as we’re capable of reproducing. We have the capacity for complex emotions unlike any other creature. It sounds like we got it made, but even when we’re most well meaning, these things often interplay to do just the opposite of enhancing our communion with our Creator. In fact, they often become the very subjects of anxiety.

I think it’d do us some good to keep in perspective that to a degree, we’re on an equal footing with those lame bison—we’re both created beings. The knowledge and rational capacity reserved for humans was intended to be a blessing. As C.S. Lewis describes in Mere Christianity:

Why, then, did God give…free will? Because free will…is…the only things that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

Contrast what C.S. Lewis is saying here to the cumbersome task reserved for trout every July: they undergo a treacherous, involuntary upstream journey to spawn, and for many that’s often the last thing they ever do. I’m obviously grateful to God that He had something so much better in mind for us when He created us. The kicker is that all creation—the bison, the fish, and man in particular—can’t measure up to what God had in mind. It’s a bleak reality, but that’s just the nature of living in a fallen world. I know Jesus did away with that chasm we put between God and ourselves once and for all. But for me, I’ve found that knowledge so often seems to catapult me into this frenzied, irrational need to please God to a degree that I’m incapable of pulling off. Not that anything I can do will alter the way God feels about me or anybody, but the more acquainted I become with grace, the less sense it makes, the more generous it seems, and the more indebted I feel toward God. In the process, grace, the very concept that nullifies any hint of retribution inevitably spikes my sense of indebtedness to God.

I don’t think God ever wanted our capacity for free inquiry to become so vicious cycle as it has for me, and I think that just goes to show that we’re just not wired to handle insight responsibly. We have one-track minds, our emotions are independent of each other in destructive ways, and our head knowledge about God’s character and truth are rarely accompanied by our heart belief in what we know. This was the corner I found myself backed into when I came upon Isaiah 29:14:

Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.

Among that neglected stock of knowledge that my attitude and actions would suggest I’m ignorant of is the fact that worldly knowledge is transient and the foolishness of God shames the wise. So it’s no wonder that my load was getting heavier with each minute spent studying and meditating on scripture. My priorities were all wrong. I sought insight on His word, and since God can’t betray His own nature, He granted it (2 Timothy 2:7), but insight in and of itself does neither God nor us any good. Richard Foster says it best in his chapter devoted to the discipline of study in Celebration of Discipline:

Note that the central purpose is not doctrinal purity (though that is no doubt involved) but inner transformation. We come to the Scripture to be changed, not to amass information.

Three of Paul’s letters addressed to different churches speak very poignantly on the power of the Word and Spirit of God at work within us. Paul suggests in Colossians 3:10 that our new self is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. In 1 Thessalonians 2:13, he tells us that the Word of God is indeed at work in you who believe. And he claims in Ephesians 3:20 that God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”

I’ve deviated so far from a posture of understanding that Christ isn’t served by human hands. He’s over all and in all (John 14:20). Isaiah 66:1-2 reminded me of the futility of my efforts and my position relative to an Almighty God:

“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?”

To put that into perspective, we’re smaller than a blip on the radar of the footstool of God. All we have at our disposal to please Him are things He made Himself. He merely serves Himself through us and we’re served in the process solely because He loves the work of His hands, and that’s all we are. He holds us to no tall order; he merely calls us to be submitted to His sovereignty that prevails with or without our acknowledgment.

Appropriately, Richard Foster’s chapter on study that I referenced earlier was followed by a chapter on the discipline of simplicity. Foster describes how the clutter of our lives that’s meant to be security against anxiety becomes the object of our anxiety. I’d seen this narrative play out when I caught myself laboring toward scriptural insight rather than God’s kingdom and naturally, my load just felt heavier and I definitely noticed. It’s like God’s rigged this system to get our attention when we’re overlooking what’s really important.

If Isaiah 66 is accurate, and God has already built and furnished everything according to His pleasure, then it’s only a matter of maintaining what’s been put into place…unless of course, we’ve all been cluttering that space with superfluous articles as I have been. I like my hammocks and rocking chairs as much as the next guy, but I’m finding there’s hardly need for half a dozen of them, especially when guests prefer the patio set anyway. Aiming to please God is good, but as I’ve discovered, if it’s causing anxiety, it is probably not the elementary cause of our unrest. If we count it anything short of a blessing to be as we are—instruments for God’s work in the world—and contrast that to the roles assigned to the beasts of the field and the fish of the water, then it’s probably time to self-examine and clean house for the causes of our anxiety that are probably serving no essential function in there anyway. Paul gives us a good visual in 2 Timothy 2:20-21:

In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.

Wandering in the Fold

So the week between the 17^th and the 21^st was just a super swell time to be in old Jellystone. The logbook:

Monday, June 17^th

Bring-a-buddy day on the job! Roped in my dear friend, Emma for 5am banana pancake breakfast to bring on the road. I think Jack Johnson would've given us an A+ for putting a solid weekend-like spin on such an unseemly early Monday. The nanner-fueled morning turned out to be the preface to what became a 7-bear day when all was said and done (9, if you count the 2-year-old kick-outs we saw twice). After a solid viewing of a mature female badger at her den about 30 feet from the road in the Specimen area, we also got a quick glimpse of its kits right before its mom peaced out to hunt.

Tuesday, June 18^th

The badger kit finally came out to play in all its clumsy glory. Was about as active as its mother for the morning.

Wednesday, June 19^th

Spotted a mature mountain goat and its kid along the rock walls of Golden Gate. Just a few more minutes down the road, we came upon our first griz of the season crossing the road at Swan Lake Flats. Heading toward Sylvan Pass, we liked what we were seeing so much that we ended up driving well past the East Entrance all the way to Wapiti, WY. In step with the narrative of fortunate flukes that constituted the days before and after, gas was 22 cents cheaper per gallon in Wapiti than Gardiner. On our way back through Sylvan, we saw about 10 rams coming down the roadside snow banks, which definitely got me nostalgic remembering when I used to see the rams regularly between Gardiner and Mammoth as a kid (like a human kid, not the young of these fellas' close relatives). Before heading back into town, we lunched with a few marmots on the shore of Yellowstone Lake.

Thursday, June 20^th

Finished my last post, “Have Salt, Be at Peace.” Check it out if you haven’t already!

Friday, June 21^st

Although it was a chilly afternoon, we capped the week watching two adult male otters playing and fishing in Trout Lake, then watching two pronghorns chase off a coyote in Lamar on the return trip.

Clearly, I reserved the longest description for the 19^th, which I think would be best summarized as a serendipitous day. I was particularly enamored with the drive between the East Entrance and Wapiti. Subtract the mountain backdrop from Paradise Valley and add a hint of Arches National Park, and that's essentially the drive along the North Fork of the Shoshone River.

While driving through, I informed Becca that I wouldn’t mind disappearing to a ranch out there for a long summer season. I meant it when I said for the second time in 24 hours, “that sounds like the life.” Rewind to the day before: the company was partially to blame for such a notably enjoyable experience watching the badger and its kit. In that mix was an Australian man named Leslie, a frequent visitor to the Park along with his wife. I asked his expert opinion on the proper way to go about an extended stay in Australia. His considered response started with the question, “Ranches out here, a thousand acres is considered large, right?" I verified the statement. "In Australia we’re talking millions of acres.” This wasn’t entirely Greek to me: I’d seen the contemporary flick about the place with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. But Leslie elaborated that ranches in the center of the continent are so remote that the nearest town's usually about a two-day drive, and a “town” might consist of a pub, a gas station, and a post office. I said out loud, “that sounds like the life. Where do I sign up?”

I guess it’s just been a while since I’ve stepped back and done some self-evaluation because I was a little shocked at this apparently acquired taste for the obscure and remote—I guess my Yellowstone and Montana pedigree has been breaking me in for it all these years. I can imagine the sense of security in disappearing to the greener pastures of Wyoming--namely the two national parks that have graced it with their permanent residence. However, I never thought I'd have an earnest desire to disappear to a part of Wyoming that actually looks remarkably like the less temperate majority of Wyoming, nor can I articulate any consolation in such a decision. I suppose I've already done the whole new-place/nary-a-familiar-face thing my first year of college, but doing that within 2 hours of Washington, D.C.'s nothing like deliberately distancing yourself from civilization. It seems as though I've relapsed into the same rolling-stone syndrome that I contracted some time before graduating high school, except now proximity to developed society agitates the symptoms.

While out running Wednesday afternoon, John Butler Trio’s Red Rocks performance of "Peaches and Cream" came on. Since the band formed in Australia, I thought again about this ranch thing and asked God just what the heck had come over me. In searching out the answer, I realized this was much different than my passing fancies of old. I know I like human history--there's plenty of that in Australia. I know I thrive in conversation and contact with people who live drastically different lives than me--that's true for pretty much everyone and their dog on that continent. I also know God's given me this uncanny ability to leave strangers with memorable impressions--doubtless due to my number of loose screws--there's a whole country worth of strangers there. Then it hit me that my fancy for Australia actually has roots in kingdom purposes. All those traits and interests only come out as a fruit of the Spirit. My natural inclinations are introversion and aloofness--the impressive version of me only tends to come out around people when my motives are selfless (because, let's be real, my socially-induced euphoria usually entails me making a fool of myself).

I can tell my heart's desires are more in sync with the will of the Most High as things that pique my interest seem to need less of an incubation period before they come to fruition. It's as though I'm met with less resistance--internally and externally--and I think it's because my flesh is putting up less of a fight and the Spirit's finally kicking some ass in the perpetual, post-Fall Spirit vs. flesh showdown (Galatians 5:17). 1 John 5:14-15 seems particularly descriptive of the confidence we derive from asking and acting within the fold of God:

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

I think this indefinite brand of resolve about doing things that sound reckless or senseless on the surface is also being fueled by a dwindling care and confidence in my own ability to provide for myself. Moreover, I'm running out of things to credit to my own capacity for rational decision-making. I find myself citing Proverbs 20:24 pretty much every time somebody asks me how I ended up in Virginia for college:

A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way?

Of course, Proverbs is chock-full of this kind of wisdom, and when we finally mean it in saying, “Thy will be done,” we can expect God’s sovereign direction of our lives to take effect over more than just where we go to college.

Thy will be done. Since actually developing a hunger for that to be so, it seems like new, bizarre ambitions have been surfacing constantly. From a worldly perspective, "disappearing to Australia" is just code for frivolous gallivanting with no long-term value except maybe bragging rights to some peculiar life experiences. But isn’t wandering responsibly within God’s fold what we sign up for when we say "Thy will be done"? I always reference James 4:14-15 to support that YOLO is a biblical concept:

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. In stead you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

This whole wandering thing’s worked swimmingly so far. I went into JMU declared as a “Writing and Rhetoric” student not even really knowing what that meant though I was banking on a lot of writing.  Little did I know, rhetorical insight—pretty much the product of sociology cross-breeding with composition studies—excites me unlike anything else. Moreover, landing a gig writing for a photographer required little hunting on my part—I just dropped in a local restaurant to say hi to Becca when I was on my way home from a run last June and she offered me a job. Then by Christmas break of this year, I found out I could get my internship credits working for her. That’s all to say, the past few weeks have been teeming with one existential self-questioning moment after the other: “Just what the heck am I doing with my life?” But it’s never accompanied with feelings of restlessness. Whenever people ask me what I want to do with my degree, they usually venture a few boring occupations as guesses before I inform them that I don’t really care—I just plan on living life. So I guess mission accomplished for now, because that’s essentially what my work with Becca has allowed me to do. I get to meet interesting people, I’m compensated for doing a more in-depth rendition of what every Yellowstone visitor comes to do already, and it brought me back for another summer of play in paradise.

I remember the Monday morning we spent at the badger den when the female surfaced to a volley of camera shutters and stifled gasps of excitement. Behind her lens, I heard Becca say at least three times, “I love my job!” followed by “thank you, Lord!” From past conversations about her professional life behind a camera, the art is undoubtedly her God-given passion and she definitely has a gift for capturing God’s hand in the natural for others to see. What simpletons call a Kodak moment and she would call a Canon moment (welcome to the modern world: that’s what we shoot with now) makes her euphoric—she becomes insensitive to everything else going on and is overcome with joy. I feel like that’s the end toward which we labor in this wandering process: what am I going to find out I enjoy a heck of a lot that God actually intends to use to consistently make Himself known until I'm called home? Fortunately, the vehicle used for this stage of the process is an automatic (some would say that's a waste of an engine--I would say it just means you're less prone to stall behind stupid drivers and unpredictable rental RV's) as in Proverbs 16:26:

The appetite of the laborers works for them: their hunger drives them on.

Recently, I was reflecting on the line from Come Thou Fount: “Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God.” It occurred to me that the opposite, wandering in the fold of God, must be optimum. 1 John 4:15-16 says:

If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

To me, that last sentence mimics this inverse correlation between spiritual maturity and independence. In fact, acting like adults before God means submitting to Him more and more. Submission—frequent insistence of Thy will be done—often means we’ll probably have less and less of an idea where we’re headed because we’re not the ones steering the rig. May you be finding Proverbs 16:3 & 9 more and more telling of your own story:

Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.

In their hearts humans plan their course, but he Lord establishes their steps.

May you find your plans and desires less frequently born of you. As you come into your role for this dramatic comedy God's written about a bunch of wandering fools, may you find that the casting couldn't have been more well done.

---

Have Salt, Be at Peace

During the evening of June 10^th, we were at Indian Creek scanning for fresh signs of activity around the beaver lodge. It was one of those arid, breezy days that carve out the strangest, but most wonderful clouds overhead. I’m aware that Montana’s the Big Sky state, but I think people rarely pause to consider the anomaly implied in that nickname. My home state is named for the Spanish word for mountain and we have our fair share of those. Intuitively, you’d think the taller surroundings would shrink the appearance of sky, but non-residents still swear an impossible amount of sky hangs over Montana soil. Although we were in Wyoming, the state that geographically has the biggest share of the park, I’ve always been convinced that Yellowstone and the Tetons are quite unlike the rest of Wyoming. I’m of the persuasion that left to declare their own allegiances, territorial boundaries would be thrown out the window, Grand Teton would claim Idaho, and Yellowstone would be partial to Montana.
 

My point being it wasn’t out of place to be struck by the size of the sky that’s made Montana famous because it encompasses the greener pastures of Wyoming. Those clouds I was admiring only filled fractions of the sky, and they seemed huge in their own right. It definitely put the full scope of the sky into perspective. Case in point, when we’re used to seeing things like a clear blue sky in its entirety, it disarms our perception a bit—you could say it goes right over our heads (pun intended). I was particularly taken by this image in light of my personal gripe with the popular preference given to subjectivity, and the disdain for any suggestion of universal truth. One of my most intelligent Christian friends back at school once informed me of his wanton hope that a particular Christian cliché has a very special place reserved for it in hell. Without identifying the specific term, suffice it to say I feel the same way about two things: wind chimes and relativism. My conviction about indifferent tolerance of everything that can be described as “a matter of opinion” can best be summed up by the words of songwriter, Matthew Thiessen: 

Opinions are immunities to being told you’re wrong. 

Needless to say, I have a very cynical outlook on the sentiment that “everybody’s entitled to his or her own opinion” (don’t even get me started on how I feel about the concept of entitlement). But God met me in the heat of my anti-relativism obstinacy with a reminder that subjectivism is not entirely without value. 

Moments before making my cloud observations, I stepped out of the truck to inspect the beaver lodge. At the time, my range of experience had me believing that nothing was nicer on the nostrils than being downwind from lilacs. Now I had smelt white flox before, but not like this. Not only had I never seen so many phlox per-capita at a single roadside pullout, but they were accompanied by gale force winds so the floral freshness really hit me like a 10-pound catfish head-on (not that I’ve been victimized myself, but Josh Turner makes it sound like the experience leaves quite the impression. I trust his judgment). I had to refer to my own subjective perception, which contrived the Good Lord’s best aromatic undertaking up to that point to be lilacs. And in referring to that, I realized that white phlox at catfish-caliber aromatic intensity trumps lilacs easily.

As we boarded the truck again, Becca asked me what I think the Lord’s favorite color is. Offhand, I was trying to remember some of the usual meanings for basic colors in Christian doctrine. To avoid risking blasphemy, I asked, “well, isn’t white the combination of all colors?” Don’t get me wrong I definitely wouldn’t put money on that response. In fact, I thought it outrageous to think that God could be bound to visible light. He after all has dominion over infrared, ultraviolet, gamma rays, and all that other good stuff along the electromagnetic spectrum that I don’t remember from high school physics. Moreover, with deference to the typical meaning reserved for each color, I don’t think God would lend preference to any single color that we can see—they’ve had important roles Genesis. Moreover, translated, saying God likes that which reflects all colors is dangerously close to universalism—saying He’s in everything when, in fact, this is very much a fallen world with evidence of two warring regimes—a world He is nonetheless sovereign over.

Becca ventured red “because He uses it sparingly.” I thought that was really valuable insight and was reminded of the way Mark recorded Jesus’ words about fire:

 “Everyone will be salted with fire.

Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

--Mark 9: 49-50 

My most recent intrigue with this passage was over the indication that God had reserved fire for a sacred purpose. But like the color red, it was to be used sparingly, for sanctification purposes, so people could really feel a difference when it’s present. It didn’t surprise me then, that hell has been perpetuated as endless inferno because it’s so like satan to pervert, pollute, and overuse something that started with a constructive purpose. 

I shared that with Becca and she labeled that state of insensitivity I described as “beyond feeling.” I thought that was a good way of putting it because God wants us to exhibit intelligence by exercising the good senses He’s endowed us with. And by intelligence, I’m not talking about knowledge, but something more related to the etymology of the English word: namely, discernment—the capacity to distinguish good from bad, and beneficial from destructive. 

I can’t help but think of a line from Don McLean’s 6-verse classic, American Pie whenever satan and fire are juxtaposed: “fire is the devil’s only friend.” It’s one of my four favorite lines in the 8-minute song and God knows what Don McLean meant by it, but I think it’s fairly to the point.  The only things that the bugger has to work with are created things—things still subject to the Creator’s sovereignty.

I think I often fall into the ditch of being too squeamish about describing God in any kind of subjective terms. I had a friend call me out on that—in a particularly salty fashion, the good kind—back in April. God condescending and belittling Himself to fit into subjective terms is merely a continuation of what He did 2,000 years ago with the Incarnation, where Christ, the fullness of the Deity existed bodily. And removing that rich dimension from the gospel sells the abundance of God’s grace short because He certainly didn’t have to walk among sinners, much less break fellowship with His very being to do so.

To accept that God relies on our subjective perception to apprehend Him is merely to accept the same powerful, illogical, unnecessary, embarrassing grace he exercised in dwelling among us so that we might have restored communion with Him. C.S. Lewis suggested: 

Christ did not die for men because they were intrinsically worth dying for, but because He is intrinsically love, and therefore loves infinitely.

And by the same token, I realize that we can only perceive grace as subjective. The extent of God’s grace toward us on an individual level depends on how much we let the cross account for the chasm between our fallen nature and the fullness of communion God desires for us. We’ll never get the full scope of it, but it’s what we have to work with (and praise Him for that, because surely we’d back down if we had any idea how great that distance is). Visible light—it’s not all there is, but it’s what we’re capable of seeing, so naturally, God’s going to minister to us through that. And how fitting? Visible light as perceived by our eyes is merely reflected light, and the bible characterizes our God as the very essence of light.

The most arrogant thing I could do is refrain from describing God because He’s too vast an immeasurable—that’s a given. So I should be inspired to enlist every good word insofar as it paints a clearer picture of this Good King and Father that I hunger to see and know and love more clearly and indefinitely. The most humble thing we can do is try to seek Him out in what we’re able to perceive because that’s the most fundamental level at which we develop intimacy with Him.

Let’s Make a Deal: 502 for you, 3.5 million for us.

So I was the young pup hiking with some older folks Saturday, June 1^st; namely, two Daves and a Debby. Just to avoid getting into speculation over the sometimes sensitive issue of age, suffice it to say that Debby and Dave S. are both over the hill and each have four kids—all of whom are older than me. So the next closest to me in age out of the party was Dave R., the new Yellowstone social media and web design guy. Dave R. moved here from Glacier with his wife and two kids and brings an uncharted perspective, of sorts, into, shall we say a very exclusively Yellowstone corporate climate. Bluntly stated, he describes Yellowstone as the Catholic church of the National Park Service. 

The nation’s first national park does operate very much under a precedent of tradition. The usual response to most imaginable administrative questions is something to the effect of, “well, that’s the way we’ve always done it, and by God, we’re proud of it, and it’s not changing.” I laughed at the accuracy of that statement thinking back to all my old co-worker, Jo-Jo’s comparisons of Park Service dealings to the circus. We got onto the topic of backcountry hiking and camping in the park and how little is known about it outside of the local discourse. People want it to themselves, so naturally they’re cautious about divulging anything about it for public information. This is where Dave R. finds himself in a bit of a bind: In Yellowstone in particular, he’s encountered a lot of resistance to expanding web-based information about the park and mobilizing social media.

As he was explaining, I found my self-ascribed status as a “backcountry snob” ringing true on a much deeper level. I am totally in league with those obstinate, pro-status quo people of Yellowstone. I feel a sense of entitlement to my backcountry where I don’t see another pedestrian outside of my hiking party. Although I realize it’s archaic, oral tradition or the company of an experienced guide are what I’ve relied on to learn the lay of the land. And I like that, but I hardly believe Theodore Roosevelt would’ve endorsed my exclusive dispositions in approving the act of congress that set this place apart “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”

According to Discovery News contributor, Sheila M. Eldred, there’s a common saying in most national parks that 98% of visitors see 2% of the park. Yellowstone backcountry program manager Ivan Kowski supports this statement in Eldred’s March 2013 article on the Yellowstone backcountry. He said, “Relatively few of the three million people who visit the park each year ever get further than half a mile from the road.”

251 miles of roads service Yellowstone’s 3.5 million square miles in the summer. Flank both sides of the road with that half mile that Kowski spoke of and you’re looking at about 502 miles of land that sees a significant amount of either pedestrian or automotive traffic. Offhand that strikes me as unsettling for two reasons. First, those 502 miles take the brunt of the impact of visitation. However, I realize that’s probably preferable to the impact being diffused across the entire park. Second, I often enthusiastically share that I’m a Yellowstone native at school in Virginia only to be informed by my peers that they visited Yellowstone and weren’t impressed. It’s as though we’re talking about two different places, and I assume it’s because I’m actually acquainted with the character of the place.

The common Yellowstone experience is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other tourists waiting for Old Faithful to erupt in July, and I’m blessed to say I’ve seen many a geyser including Old Faithful go off sans the fallout of claustrophobia. So whilst trying to resolve this tension between my insensitive backcountry snobbery and the very purpose for which the park was dedicated almost 150 years ago, I found myself a very whimpy stone’s-throw (like 30 feet tops) from a beaver lodge before 7am Thursday morning. In my 20 years in Yellowstone, I’ve actually never seen a beaver. So had we been fortunate enough to catch the furry tenant emerge from his creek-side home, it would’ve been a first for me with the bonus of having equipment at the ready to document it. It’s worth noting that this lodge, presumably the home of something I’ve never seen in its natural habitat, was within 50 yards from the Indian Creek pullout just south down the road from the upper terraces going toward Norris.

The proximity reminded me of a passage in Acts that God’s seemed to be referring me back to time and time again:

From one man he made all nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

–Acts. 17:26-27

I thought it was only appropriate that God, in His sovereignty, would take special care to place at least one beaver lodge close enough to the road that really anybody could check it out if they knew where to look for it. With that I realized that this backcountry/front-country dynamic is actually a great tangible illustration of how God reveals Himself to us. He doesn’t deliberately distance Himself from anybody. In fact, once we know what we’re looking at, we tend to realize that He is and always has been alarmingly nearby. And of course, we always have that access to the backcountry when we desire to see more of the intricacies of His character. The more time you spend in the backcountry, rather than feeling a heightened knowledge of the territory, you just realize how much smaller you are compared to its vast and complex beauty. Likewise, richer encounters with the Lord are more concentrated. They often leave you more incredulous but always with a sense of peace and quickened senses.

And with that I understand that this tension between hospitality for first-time visitors and the seasoned natives is really a misconstruction. Visitors come from near and far to see what little of the place they can and the minority seeking a different experience can simultaneously wander off the beaten path at their leisure. The two can and have coexisted harmoniously for as long as Yellowstone’s been Yellowstone—heck, probably even when it was Colter’s Hell. You can have the best of both worlds. It’s certainly big enough.

And the more encounters I have with tourists close to the road stepping out from their vehicles with their cameras and an expression of giddy excitement, the more I realize that they’re hardly apathetic. Later that same Thursday, Becca set up in front of two aspens just ahead of the pullout across from the Specimen Ridge trailhead northeast of Tower Junction. One tree had a bluebird nest, and the other a tree swallow nest. People would park their vehicles and emerge curiously asking what we saw, and I would tell them. Most followed up with something to the effect, “Oh, we were hoping it was something big.” I found that mildly humorous because I feel like common sense would indicate it’d be pretty easy to see from the road if we were looking at “something big.” But I noted their enthusiasm, and instead of regarding them as the classic simple-minded tourist, I had a different appreciation for their zeal. Many come to Yellowstone with the earnest hope of seeing a grizzly, and after looking up the figures, I can see why. Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Washington are the only places to find the 1,200 grizzly bears in the continental U.S. Yellowstone’s boundaries, conveniently, occupies area in three of those four states. It’s easy for me to overlook the limited distribution of North American grizzlies when I’ve seen one for every week or two of my life when they’re active. As I realized with the Hell’s-a-Roarin’ horse drive less than a month ago, that’s not the average American’s experience.

I could go on being an unfriendly local who treats tourists like outsiders, or I can embrace the fact that they are the reason that anybody here has any kind of job security. And in the meantime, I can appreciate that God’s heart and will is not that people have to search far to encounter Him. And it’s always pretty sweet that He honors the desire for richer encounters with him when we’re ready to venture out.