So You Are

 For her and Him who gave her

Not one to dive in I wade in slow. The water is always too cold. Slow step by slow step. Easy misstep on green fungus or teetering stone. So you are. Jagged rocks had left a scar. Still you beckon. Slow swirl outside the mainstream. Wooing. Escape from the summer heat. Selah.

Sliver sun betwixt Birch. Rustling wind, shining silver. What’s around the bend? Quiet? Snow topped granite grandeur? So you are. Moving forward; both impetus and reward. A biting wind blows. To be alive!

Salt burns eyes. Burgeoning heat; the monsoon builds with no release. Heart pounding. Tympany beat on tympany beat, body jarring.  So you are. Breathing escapes me. Air-won’t-satisfy. Gasping. Rock steps pound knee and drive hip upward every stinking step. I’ve been here before. Reward will come.

Time tried, water formed, forged in fire. Standing white; river sentinel. Elements have etched a hammock in igneous. Shelter from biting wind; heat that’s been borrowed from the sun. Stretching out, safe and secure. So you are.

Intimacy and Touch

"Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend."

"I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey;

I have drunk my wine and my milk.
Eat, friends; drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers."

It’s easier to hike a mountain than make love. If you’re seeking release—sex is easy. True intimacy requires work. Fearful, mask lowering, work. Hiking a mountain is easy that way—on a base level easy to be selfish. Intimacy requires giving yourself away.

I am not hungry for surface relationship. I desire connections that consume. Soul to soul with my wife; iron to iron with friends and face to face with God. This is frightening and holy ground. I try for transparency. Peel back layers and talk to my wife—even about the crap inside me. God fully aware, but still, I speak, I cry, I convey feeling.

My mom; my parents, did not hug. There was no touch in our house---except hand to head and nail to arm with my sister. Hugging and touch a foreign language. My childhood was devoid of intimacy in talk and touch. No safety there. 

Intimacy is ill defined by touch. I was in my forties and mom in her seventies. A three-hour drive for work; crashing at her house. She’d spoil me with dinner, breakfast or both. Ever the night-owl---we’d sit down at that long wood dining-room table and talk. Past midnight. Over rich home-made dishes and Trader Joes cheesecake.  Here is a strange thing; in this breaking of bread that table became a safe place. A satisfying, sweet place where we shared heart and thought; as mother to son and friend to friend.

To be intimate does not require touch. Touch affirms but isn’t required. Intimacy is established and nurtured in ritual and security. The desired depth with God, wife or friend occurs in this context. The over and over again meeting with another through celebration and storm. Open table, safe place, face to face. Over time, transparency and intimacy will grow. Imbibe deeply, O lovers!

Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

The Road Well Travelled

If I’ve learned anything…it is that true, real inspiration and growth only comes from adversity and from challenge from stepping away from what’s comfortable and familiar and stepping out into the unknown. In life we all have tempests to ride and poles to walk to and I think metaphorically speaking we could all benefit from getting outside the house a little more often if only we could sum up the courage.—polar explorer Ben Saunders in a TED talk

Sometimes I wish I’d taken the road well travelled. There were times I stepped out in faith and fell flat. I’ve had great adventures as well. Still I can’t help but think I could have been making money and living in that nice little house with the white picket fence. Truly there’s no guarantee that my rear-view vision would have come true. More than likely the little house would have come crashing down or someone would have tripped over the fence and sued me. Truly taking the safe road would have robbed my soul of joy and sent me into mind numbing depression.

It’s difficult to be wired like that though, isn’t it? To dream dreams is to open oneself up to serious disappointment. To act on the dream is to open us up to embarrassment at best and ruin at the worst.

Ben Saunders has seen the light (and the Aurora Borealis). If we are to be inspired and grow we have to leave our doorstep. If we are to inspire others we must set the example; we must walk the walk. We have to invest in people and adventures we find valuable. There is a cost involved.


There’s a price tag either way. Staying safe, warm and insulated from the world will cost something. Stepping out seems the scarier but in my mind the cost is less. Soul is satisfied as is that gnawing hunger for adventure that so many of us feel. Not stepping out is safe and death knell all at once.

The tempests that life chooses for us to ride can wall us in. Keeping that vision of that next adventure, the far country, is how sanity is maintained. Wisdom tells us that without vision a people perish. Still the sight of that safe little home with all the creature comforts will call to our flesh, “Be warm, safe and comfortable.” True adventure has a deeper call; to a satisfied soul, a lived life and a spirit ever deepening.