Float Like a Hummingbird

Morning devotions
(couldn't snag one of our Picnic Dinner)

Acts 2: 42-45 “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common.”

Wilderness Tour ’15 – Float Like a Hummingbird

I know, I now. Muhammad Ali said, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Well, I felt like I was floating like a hummingbird during our Wilderness Tour Picnic Dinner the Monday evening after our first day-hike. I floated, I flitted from one person to the next, darting in and tasting their day. We shared; old friends, young friends, old not-so-young friends, and a collection of new friends shared the best that the day had to offer.

Earlier, while four of us waited for the shuttle that would take us from Agnew Meadow back to Mammoth Village after our hike to Shadow Lake I had the opportunity to observe a pair of Rufus Hummingbirds. This should explain my use of these amazing birds in my analogy. First, the male appeared across the road and darted about from flower to flower occasionally popping up to hover and turn this way and that, searching and looking over the landscape while checking us out as well. Soon his mate turned up and alit on a nearby bush. The male went into his courtship dance rising straight into the air twenty or more feet before diving straight down to his love interest. I’ve seen them rise up to fifty or sixty feet in more open country. Just as he passed her and before entering into his loop to rise again he let out an ear-piercing chirp, easily the loudest sound I hear from these tiny birds. After several of these displays the two rose together and spiralled round and round each other in a frantic dance. They broke off to taste a flower or two and then darted off into the forest.

I felt just like my little friend as I darted around the picnic area and then pulling back to hover and turning, first one way then another, while I considered where to pick up a little nectar of someone’s glorious day. It was such a pleasant sight; twenty-eight of God’s people in animated discussion and reliving experiences while on wilderness trails of varying difficulties. We all should have been tired and ready for some quiet in-room contemplation but we couldn’t get enough of being with each other. This was as it should have been.

We were blessed with an infusion of LCPC kids in Mammoth for a week of altitude training with the CVHS Cross Country Team. They’d run, worked out, ran some more, and yet, were as lively (and lovely) as the rest of the WL Tour people. We ate our picnic dinner that was largely designed and prepared by our own Chef/Pastor Andy Wilson. That guy is a dynamo. Dinner was followed by a wonderful discussion about the local geology as delivered by Doug Given. The group gobbled up the information like desert only to follow it up with insightful questions asking for more.

I had full day, first waking early with hummingbirds darting about my stomach (have to maintain theme here) with thoughts of starting off the week with my devotion knowing that the brokenness that had been building for days was just below the surface. I shared my little story, choked up and let a tear fly as I am apt to do, and all in the midst of heroes in every sense of the word. Missionaries were sprinkled about through the group like raisins in a prime cup of Raisin Bran cereal; the whole Kennedy family who serve in Cairo, Egypt here for R&R, Young Chul Oh serving in northern Thailand here on an educational sabbatical, Lauren Gossett back from Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Holly Wilson recently returned from Nepal where she was serving during the massive earthquake that rocked the Himalayas. There were many DR trip veterans and a bunch of friends who’ve served with me on Mission Arizona trips. I was at the same time humbled and uplifted.

As I sit back just now and hover in my chair, first looking at the previous paragraph I’ve just written, then to my notes, then to the list of WL ’15 Tour members, I can see that each one is God’s servant in a critical mission in His Kingdom. ‘Twas grace that brought us together and we found restoration, recuperation, and renewal.

I assure you that the days that followed were full of the same. Praise God!

In His grip, jerry

Thundering Quotes

Wilderness Tour ’15 – Thundering Quotes

This Calvary’s Thread post is more whimsical than most found in this venue. Don’t let that fool you. I took serious joy in collecting these quotes during our Tuesday hike to the Tuolumne swimming hole. A couple of other strategic areas during the day yielded quotable material as well. For me, this is a joy that can only be experienced while talking with members of Christ’s Family. There is one quote that I sincerely plan on resisting but feel compelled to report it anyway in the effort to be fair and objective. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine which it is knowing that the sleepiest will get it right away.

Thunder rolled around off and on throughout our trek alongside the Tuolumne River in the highlands of The Yosemite National Park. Thunder plays a big role in the bible and my thoughts on the phenomenon bounced around like echoes and conjured thoughts about what could be determined in the sound of it. Here are a few that I found flipping through the scriptures:

Mark 3:17 “James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means ‘sons of thunder’…”

Job 40:9 “Do you have an arm like God’s and can your voice thunder like his?”

Isaiah 29:6 “the Lord Almighty will come with thunder and earthquake and great noise…”

1 Samuel 12:18 “Then Samuel called on the Lord, and that same day the Lord sent thunder and rain…”

And Psalm 77:18 “Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind, your lightning lit up the world…”

While on the trail and upon our return to the trailhead I asked some of my hiking partners from the day their thoughts on thunder. The following are some of their quotes, I’ll leave it to you to determine who the various speakers might have been:

• “We are racing the rain.”
• “Brian.” (for obvious biological reasons)
• “Jesus’ stomach growling…”
• “Bowling” and “God Bowling”
• “Voice of God”
• “There is a song about thunder being God’s voice and not fearing the sound of His voice…”
• “Rattling sheet metal…”

During our commute to and from Tuolumne Meadows for the day’s hike two things stood out to me from our discussions. One was a new term coined by our own Josh Horton, “Assurement”. This ersatz writer’s attempts to define the term came up blank and I can only say that I believe he was using the French term “assurément”. I can attest to you that the term “Bus Plunge” we discussed during our traverse through the Tioga Pass with shear drop-offs and without the benefit of guardrails was no assurément. Thanks be to God for Doug’s expert driving.

One of my own quotes elicited a good laugh but will go on to be the basis of a more serious post later this week. My new friend Michael Lopez gave an inspirational morning talk. One take away I had was “Don’t Tex and climb.” A humorous quote for really serious point that I will attempt to do justice to in a subsequent post.

Scene of the crime: The Burger Barn in Bishop California. The crime: several of our burger hounds had pulled three tables together around the corner of a building and I was the last to go round to find a seat. One of the excellent Burger Barn employees, a heavily tattooed young man and eager to please, picked up a chair and carried it around the corner for me. As he set the chair down at the far end he said, “I’ll just set this down here for you, Pop.” Nuff said.

Tuolumne Swimming Hole
and Slide

My favorite quote of the day came while I was swimming with Sammy Kennedy at the waterhole. There is a main pool fed by a smaller upper hole via a gentle, six-foot slide. Young Oh had been the first use the slide, the older boys who ventured to swim, Michael Van Citters and Austin Marks, followed suit. I swam over to enjoy the cold spa feeling of sitting under the waterfalls feeding the upper pool. When Sammy, an 11 year old jewel complete with his red baseball cap, came to the pool and worked his way over to the slide I asked him if he was going to slide down. To my inquiry he turned and gave me a serious look while saying, “I feel it is part of my obligation of being a boy.” He turned back to the task and promptly slid down to the great pool below.

To all my friends and readers, I wish for you to stay in touch with your inner child and adhere to the obligations therein, to go about life in happiness, and with Joy in your heart. Hear the thunder and smile.

In His grip, jerry

The Trail of Brokenness

Wilderness Tour - 2015 Meditation Opener

For over sixty years I knew who I was responsible to. As a young boy, it was my parents. When I reached school age, it was a mix of parents and teachers and eventually coaches. At church, I knew to be responsible to my Sunday School teachers and pastors. My earliest recollection is being in some long ago torn-down LCPC classroom with Mr. LaClair as my third grade teacher.

Though I’d grown up in the church, it was man’s authority I submitted to and never realized that I’d put them in the way of a real walk with God. Not until my basketball dreams blinked out and I looked down the pathway and into fog did I make a conscious decision to put Jesus on the throne of my heart. From there He led me to churches and schools that I had no idea would be along the path he wanted me walking. He led me to a girl who became my wife whom I’d known but had never considered for the role of 'partner in life', a role she should be rewarded for again and again.

With the new life came a new order, a divine order that I willingly submitted to then and re-submit to every time I search for a new direction. It was defined. I knew where I was to serve, who it was that I was serving, and basically, within a structure that I could easily identify. I have had a life of youth ministry of one level or another since before I made the decision that enthroned Jesus in my heart – 45 years of youth ministry, give or take a year or so with a wrong turn or two thrown in.

My term of service had come to resemble a deeply rutted road leading off into the distance, one where the fog had been creeping in and obscuring the trail for a long time. All that structure began to erode, things and mechanisms that I’d come to rely on wore down. It began to break away when I exited Student Ministries where I’d been ensconced for sixteen, maybe seventeen years. I knew where I’d be every PEAK or TNT night, every Sunday Morning, all the Parents’ Nights Out, Mission Arizonas, special events, and committee meeting nights. It was nice and neat, an orderly life of service.

When I made the exit from full-on Student Ministries involvement I stepped into uncertainty. I still had a boss at work, a family at home, and Jesus as King but I wondered some, trying this line of service and that, asking Jesus where I should go, what I should be doing, and finding myself in a spiritual wilderness.

Eventually I came to believe that my Lord wants me to write. I have a story to tell. He gives me insights that can help others and myself. It is the hardest thing He’s ever asked me to do. There are no built in structures, only a few people expect much in terms of my writing and most of those who do are my motorcycle riding friends, I know that it’s touched some of them. Being my own boss sometimes makes me feel like I’m performing with a net.

I often need to remind myself that if only one person, even if it is only myself, reads what I’ve written and comes closer to Jesus then I’ve served a purpose and advanced the Kingdom of God.

The accountability system is internal and I feel like I’ve been failing at it. Since I stopped working at AT&T I bill myself as a self-employed, unpaid writer but there are too many days that have gone by that have not seen either of my blogs active and nor have I advanced either of the books I have underway. The distractions are many; work on the house, electronic games, life’s business responsibilities, and the like. I was hoping for a divine rush of enthusiasm that would carry my book to a first-draft conclusion within the first year of my retirement. It has not arrived. Don’t pity me here. I’ve been making strides and improving my process. Jesus is re-engineering my way of living.

Let me wrap this up with my personal expectations for the 2015 Wilderness Tour. I have a mediation line that I use from time-to-time. I’d like to share it with you from my main character’s perspective since it so closely relates to where I am right now that my head spins. I wrote this part into the story months ago.

I start out closing my eyes to imagine myself walking along a trail very much like a trail in what I remember as the Paradise Valley alongside the stream rushing down the hillside there. I imagine myself walking along until at some point or another I meet Jesus, kneel in front of Him, confess and worship Him. Sometimes we walk along together talking and discussing things just as we will walk together today on our selected trails. We converse and somewhere along the line he leaves me transformed and ready to move on.

Bishop Pass Trail

My protagonist has used this same meditation only he is in a bad place at this point in his story. He’s in a wilderness that is stark and devoid of much life. He passes through the Paradise Valley failing to encounter Jesus and marches on to a trail leading upward, above the tree-line. He is struggling up a series of switchbacks, rocks obscure his path and Jesus has still not made an appearance. He grows desperate. He’s already mad at God for a great loss that he’s suffered. Finally he comes to a rockslide that has obliterated the trail and he cannot pass. The rocks and boulders on the trail are labeled; sin, anger, unbelief, drunkenness, and a few others that he can’t even recognize as being his own. He knows that in the saddle of the pass above awaits Calvary’s Cross and he needs to get there once again to be the man God wants of him. He goes to his knees and digs out the rocks and moves them out of the way.

This is my hope; that I come to the obstructions and move them out of the way in submission to the King. I fully expect this to happen during the week. It will come during quiet moments alone on the trail, sitting in fellowship with you, and while joking around at the trail’s end with my friends.

In His grip, jerry

 

PS: During that first day’s hike a few of us came to a little rest stop and I found what I was looking for along the trail. I knelt down, bowed my head for a moment and picked up a moderately sized stone from the path and moved it aside and out of the way. The stone represented a habitual gaming regimen, a huge time waster and distraction. On subsequent days on the trails I would line up my footfall to a rock in the path and scoot it away as I walked on, symbolically moving things out of the way in my personal walk with God.