Tag: healing

adventure, Adventure Tourism, Cancer, Cancer treatments, canoeing, Dying to Self, Faithful Living, God, Lessons from the Wilderness, Life's Storms, Nature, Outdoor Adventures, Perseverence, Prayer, Religion, River, Serving Others, Uncategorized, wilderness, Wilderness Paddling

When God Floats Your Boat

This Side of the River

Two years ago, the Walton brothers paddled in Ontario’s Spanish River Provincial Park. SRPP info   They chose a route that threaded through multiple lakes connected by short, shallow outlets. In low water, these outlets turn into tricky portages that leave the canoeist knee deep in boggy, rocky muck. It can quickly become a slog hauling canoes and supplies over challenging barriers that were supposed to be paddled but instead have to be portaged without any trails to follow. The brothers were dismayed to find when they arrived in September that the water levels were at their lowest in a long time, clogging their planned paddling route with clots of muck and rock where lakes should have been.

After Hugh underwent his second round of chemotherapy and subsequent bone marrow transplant, he developed blood clots called DVT, or deep vein thrombosis in one leg.  It is actually quite common for leukemia patients to acquire DVT.  DVT info  These clots are life-threatening because they can move through the blood and lodge in the lungs. Once in the lungs, the clots become barriers to oxygen exchange, and the patient can quickly die of suffocation. As a result, Hugh is now on blood thinners. While this is a terrific remedy for blood clots, it does raise the risk of a dangerous bleed-out from cuts or accidents. As a matter of fact, on one trip, Hugh was pulling a canoe up onto a sandy beach in his bare feet when he stepped on a buried and severed tree root that stabbed deep into his instep. It took some time for the bleeding to stop, and the brothers were too far into the wilderness for immediate help. They now have a rule that you can’t ever be barefoot on trips unless in your sleeping bag.

There are barriers in life that quickly and easily clot our thinking. I often find that they are spiritual in nature, and usually begin innocuously when we let our focus become too heavily inward. Our inner dialogue evolves into a diatribe. We’ve been wronged, treated unfairly or with disrespect, and the “I” language in our head bubbles over in frustration and anger. These are times to take great care, because the lifeblood of the Holy Spirit is clogged, and our sour thinking then deprives us of the spiritual oxygen to act and live rightly toward God and others. Days become a slog of carrying heavy burdens that weigh us down in the muck of our darkened thoughts.

There is a spiritual blood thinner though, and it is incongruously connected with the blood of Christ.

If you can intentionally move your thoughts from yourself to God, if you are willing to unyoke yourself from life’s burdens, to think of and serve others first, God will float you up out of the muck. It’s a wonderful experience to feel the waters of the Spirit float you up, out, and on your way. Next time your language is laced with “I’s”, get in the boat with God and get moving again.

~J.A.P. Walton

 

 

Peace, Religion, Uncategorized, War

BUT OF COURSE

This Side of the River

Last week, while visiting our daughter who lives in Paris, we took a three day side trip to Bonn, Germany. If we had done that in our college days, we’d have had to say ‘West’ Germany.  So much has changed in our lifetime!

Riding the train through northeast France and northwest Germany, we saw endless fields of early crops like alfalfa and potatoes, and many more still lying fallow waiting to be plowed and planted. It didn’t take much imagination to visualize the same fields dug in with the muddy trenches of the “Great” War, and to wonder what it would have been like for French Jews to be training eastwards toward Auschwitz.  This land, and these peoples have lived in peace for over 70 years now, having been demoralized and exhausted by the wars of the 20th century. Walls have fallen. Governments and ideologies have changed.  Churches, especially have emptied; northern Europe is godless.

We went to Bonn to meet the young man who was Mark’s brother Hugh’s bone marrow donor in 2005.  He is Bonn born, a software developer married to a woman from Siberia. Imagine a west German man married to a woman from the far reaches of Russia! That couldn’t have happened 35 short years ago! M and N are in their late 30’s, childless professionals most worried about caring for their aging parents. We shared a wonderful meal of sauerbraten and schnitzel while getting to know the history of M’s decision to be a bone marrow donor.

M’s neighbor and good friend was diagnosed with leukemia in their middle school years.  As M watched his friend’s struggle to get (and stay) well, he was determined to become a bone marrow donor as soon as he turned 18.  Hugh was diagnosed with leukemia in 1995, and a bone marrow search yielded zero matches.  M was added to the bone marrow donor registry three years later. Hugh underwent nine years of experimental treatments, which, finally failed. The marrow search was reopened, and there waiting was M.

We learned that marrow donation wasn’t much fun, requiring a month of self-injection with drugs to force the immune system to ratchet up its white blood cell count. That makes the donor feels flu-ish for the 4 weeks leading up to the 4-hour donation in a faraway city. M gladly went through all that for an American man he never met. We are so grateful, because

Hugh is alive and well today thanks to M’s selflessness.  When we told him so, he humbly smiled and said, “But of course.”

Of course he would do anything to help stop all that his friend went through. Of course he was glad to help an American. Of course he would do it again. Of course, his respect and love for life is rooted deeply in the carnage of his country’s wars.  How interesting that God would orchestrate new life in this way- that all of our recent ancestors fought each other so fiercely only to result in a generous life-giving gesture in the ensuing peace.  Although M is not a religious man, God used him mightily. But of course.

~J.A.P. Walton

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adventure, Campfires, Camping, Cancer, canoeing, Creation, Darkness, death, Faithful Living, God, Henry David Thoreau, Hope, Lessons from the Wilderness, Outdoor Adventures, Starry Skies, Uncategorized, wilderness, Wilderness Paddling, wisdom

The Brothers Gemini

This Side of the River

The two Walton brothers have spent over thirty years paddling the rivers and lakes of the far north each autumn because of their shared love of wilderness, canoeing, and one another. They paddled as young men in the vibrant prime of their lives, and still do today as seasoned and much older men. Not even Hugh’s cancer could stop these adventuring brothers, who know more than most that both the wilderness and brotherly affection have healing hands. Hugh stayed positive throughout the ten long years of treatments, too busy living to entertain thoughts of dying. And in his deliberate living and adventuring, he taught his brother Mark about peace and hope.

It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.”[1]

A favorite time of day in the northern latitudes is the autumnal twilight when the sun has gone down early and it’s too cool for bugs. An earlier sunset means the brothers can sit around the campfire for a few hours before turning in. The washing up is done, the canoes are put to bed, and the bear bag has been secured high in a tree. Such evenings are steeped in the reflections of the lowering sun as it briefly teases the landscape and water into a blush, while the spruces’ silhouettes go from stark outline to murky drab until darkness cradles them into its bosom entirely. Eventually, the young fire that started up with spits and mutters matures into a sedate, radiating murmur of glowing and hypnotizing embers. The waters warble a sultry lullaby. A loon mournfully trills across the water. The night in the wilderness is never completely silent, rather orchestrated with a subtle harmony, and it becomes clear, with careful listening, that the small voice of God is out here in this deep indigo twilight. Slow evenings are a necessary part of the adventure, for it is at night that the body is restored. The same can be said for one’s soul.

It is easy, when far away from the nonstop noises and lights of our lifestyles, to look intently at every natural thing out in the wilds and feel thankful that the planet still has these unadulterated oases of space, timelessness, stillness, color, and open skies. This is flair. Art. It is creation, imagination, beauty and adornment. This is how God made the world, speaking it out word by word, adding extravagant flashes of color, texture, and music in the everyday life of the wilds. We miss seeing it and hearing it, and we misunderstand its importance in our daily lives. Fire, water, and the waking creatures of the night all make for a mesmerizing symphony, a bewitching tonic for what ails us.

The brothers aren’t big talkers at night; still they enjoy each other’s company in a curiously uncommunicative way, on a shared adventure among best friends at the end of a physically challenging day. And though the fire and melody draw them in, they stay up late-on clear nights at least-because of the stars. This is especially true when camped beside a remote lake, where trees and rocky ledges can’t obscure the sky. The starry lights emerge one by one as the darkness encroaches. And, aside from the fire, the darkness in the wilderness is complete, no rival light pollution out here. Venus, Jupiter, and the Big Dipper materialize. And though Orion won’t show up until November, they know he’s on his way, the able guardian of the night and comforting friend to those who pray through the night watches in winter. The dancers of the Pleiades begin their warm up. Somewhere out there in the low autumnal sky the sleepy moon pokes its head out from under the covers. Like Orion, felt but not yet visible in the northern hemisphere, the brothers Gemini stand tall, side by side, arms raised in triumph and praise. I like to imagine that the Walton fellows are the Gemini twins, arms around each other’s waists, holding their paddles aloft in victorious self-congratulation and a joy that cancer could not squelch.

~J.A.P. Walton

[1] Henry David Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Viking Press, 1985. p. 31 (The author originally published this book in 1849, detailing an 1839 river trip with his beloved brother John, who died in 1842.) Read it here: A Week…Thoreau

Cancer, Creation, Darkness, death, Faithful Living, God, Hope, John Muir, Lessons from the Wilderness, Life's Storms, Prayer, River, Sierra Nevada, Spring, Trees, Uncategorized, wilderness, wisdom

The Geese, the Floods, and John Muir

This Side of the River

Geese flew over the house this morning, with a honking so hauntingly welcome that it stopped me breathless with the happy assurance that winter is losing its grip. This has truly been a winter of discontent, to borrow from John Steinbeck (my favorite author of fiction). We lost a loved one. Another continues to decline. We are sending up prayers for too much cancer, too many bullets, the sword-rattling of our enemies, and the deaths of two great men of prayer and faith, R.C. Sproul and Billy Graham. This week we had days and days of rain atop melting snow, sending our creeks and rivers out of their banks.

To dwell on all this too long leaves us as drab and lifeless as the snow-matted flood-stained grass. We defend ourselves with intentional numbness. Yet the geese remind us that goodness abounds, that life is not snuffed out entirely, and that there is work to be done. This week, as Trout Creek rose higher and faster, swelling and bullying itself downstream, I thought about the nature of things-water most especially. How it gathers to itself, seeks out the lowest places, dwells and swells with an abandoned playfulness that lurks with deadly innocence too. Water has a voice and a rhythm. It sings and swings down its course, sweeping everything unrooted away with raw power. What other than our faith can anchor us amid the flood of evil tides?  But water is also life-giving.

I have spent this winter reading the selected works of John Muir because his writing is extraordinarily uplifting (winter is long in the north, so I strategically choose reading that will edify and encourage me). Muir’s prose is divinely poetic, and his love for God and Creation oozes from every page. He often wrote about the waters that fall from the peaks of the Sierra Nevada in California, carving out passes and canyons-

“The happy stream sets forth again, warbling and trilling like an ouzel, ever delightfully confiding, no matter how dark the way; leaping, gliding, hither, thither, clear or foaming: manifesting the beauty of its wildness in every sound and gesture.” 1

Muir shows us that part of the water’s power is in the way it glories to be on its way, hailing any who would heed. Spring is coming friends. Won’t it be glorious to be on our way, doing the work God has given us to do, righting wrongs with energy, and pointing others to the same hope we have in God? May you “set forth again” and rise up out of your banks with a renewed vigor, confiding in one another no matter how dark the way. Look up. The geese will show you the way.

~J.A.P. Walton

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  1.  John Muir Selected Writings, A.Knopf, New York. 2017,p.178.  This excerpt is from Muir’s first book, The Mountains of California published in 1894. (an ouzel is a bird)
Cancer, Cancer treatments, Darkness, death, Faithful Living, God, Hope, Lessons from the Wilderness, Life's Storms, Prayer, Uncategorized, wilderness, wisdom

Bad News Comes Calling

This Side of the River

We were just getting ready for bed when my brother-in-law Hugh called. He was in graduate school at the time, and I assumed he was calling Mark with an idea for their next wilderness canoeing adventure. Mark gasped and motioned to me to pick up the other phone. Hugh was shaky and emotional as he related to us that his visit to student health services that afternoon for flu-like symptoms ended up instead with the diagnosis of leukemia. Out of nowhere.

Life is a wilderness of unexpected challenges, of things that burrow in and deposit a twisting terror deep in our marrow. None of us could know all that lay ahead for Hugh…dropping out of school and moving home, not one but two body-slamming bone marrow transplants, the agonizingly unfruitful search for a donor, the enrollment in clinical trials for new drugs, the knowledge that nothing again would ever be the same. And it all hit him, and us, out of nowhere.

Death is often referred to as passing. We liken it not to an ending but a transition from here to somewhere else. Not many people like to talk about the process of dying, but the notion that it is like a water crossing is a biblical one. Israel crossed the Red Sea into freedom, and again the Jordan River into the Promised Land. Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee in a killer storm. * All relate to the idea of passage from an old life into a new one, from chaos into calm, and from death of the old self into a new, better one.

When you stand along any river, whether the water is sluggish or swift, your mind automatically looks both across and downstream. What’s over there? What delights are just around the bend? What threats are hidden under the surface? The waterman learns to read the currents and the shoreline, but the only real way to find out what’s across the water is to go there. For Hugh, the far shore of the river was closing in, and it felt like he was being swept away. For us it became a 10-year exercise in the power of prayer. Hugh’s positivity was amazing, and he never did cross that water and leave us. Instead, he turned into the downriver swifts, and ran the rapids of experimental cancer treatments for 9 long years until he reached the calm waters of a cure. He has been in remission for 14 years.

Hanging on for dear life is not easy. Your physical self is decimated, your finances often ruined, and the loss of all control intensely frustrating. The drugs make you crazy, and the loneliness cuts deep. But God is in that despair with us. Jesus crossed the water before us, for us. Even if the cancer grows unabated, Jesus stays with us, and promises no more tears, no more suffering. And if the treatments are successful, we are reborn into a changed life. Because you cannot be unchanged by cancer.

Bad news will come calling out of nowhere. That’s just how life works; suffering is as much a part of life as is joy. We must be brave and prayer-full, and accept a lot of help. What’s more, God is always here in the boat with us no matter the destination. He does not come out of nowhere. So when bad news calls, get ready to ride.

* I highly recommend Leslie Leyland Fields’ book, Crossing the Waters, Philip Yancey’s book, Where is God When it Hurts?, and Kara Tippets’ & Jill Buteyn’s book Just Show Up: the Dance of Walking Through Suffering Together.

~J.A.P.Walton

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