Falling Through Ice

I’ve caught a couple hundred trout in Fetcher Pond these four summers I’ve lived in Steamboat. It’s my stocked go-to pond for casual practice of new flies and teaching beginners who visit us. I once tube-floated it, but bikers and hikers shouted out one-liners and laughed at me for my professional approach in amateur water. I’ve never seen another do it.

Fetcher sits beside the Yampa River. If I’ve brought my waders I can hop from a beginner pond to intermediate river, where the trout turn wild and expand to Browns and Cutthroat. Sizes can double too.

This morning, after some reading at a coffee shop, I took a walk along the Yampa for reflection, to see what I could see. A narrow inlet flowed between the ice-pack and boulders covered in marshmallow. At Fetcher I noticed tracks on the pond and a small snow sculpture in the middle.

Walking on ice is walking on water. I pondered the novelty and shuffled out on previous tracks, toward the sculpture. Have people been ice fishing on the pond? I wondered.

A small section on the edge had been brushed of snow and I edged toward it, hearing water flow down the outlet, pouring under the thick sheet of ice. I surveyed the shore, standing where my fly has floated a thousand times.

Gravity tugged.

You know the warning they give you in the movies when the ice is thin? The protagonist walks across the frozen water, the ice cracks, and the camera zooms in and follows the ice shattering like a web on a windshield? This wasn’t like that. One moment I pictured myself on shore back in summertime, the next I was waist-deep in water, no transition, no warning, no slow-motion. My arms caught the rim of ice my body had made, my shoes and socks immersed, the water seeping through my pants.

What now? The water felt more wet than cold.

I pushed myself up. Expecting the edges to peel under pressure, I crab-crawled backwards, likely dragged by Jesus on whose name I called.  Did my lack of faith draw me down? I stood up again on the ice. 

Shuffling briskly to another part of shore, I scaled the snowy bank and glanced at the open mouth that tried to eat me. I looked at the Yampa River. I wanted a longer walk. But wanted to avoid writing a silly headline on the free local newspaper: Man Hospitalized from a Winter Stroll After Falling into Pond.

I drove home wet, feeling the fiery cocktail of caffeine and adrenaline in my blood. That jittery mix shook my hands while I hung my dripping socks. Time to stoke the fire.

My annoyance with the telephone (and vote for better letters!)

Does the ring of the telephone fill you with anticipation or does it evoke dread?  Does it tell you, 

Hey, pick me up, I’m a surprise, like a birthday present… under the wrapping of this ringtone is something that could change your life!

Or does it tell you, 

Hey you, stop what you’re doing and pay attention to me, NOW… don’t glance up and then look away!... put your pen down, Mister, slam on the brakes and notice me!!

If someone was waiting for a romantic call or for a word that grandpa survived surgery or that our client is ready to make a deal, we’re grateful for the phone on these special occasions.  We can relax knowing the news, when available, will be immediate.  Soon enough, we’ll see what path lies ahead for us and those we love.

Yet most of the time we are not hanging in mid-air waiting for a call to help us land.  We are doing life somewhere.  Without so much as a warning from the window of our guest walking up the garden path to knock on our door, the phone blurts out, slicing the silence of the room, shouting that we are wanted… now!

I read that the philosopher, H. L. Mencken, once said that the ring of a distracting telephone made him “wishing heartily that Alexander Graham Bell had been run over by an ice wagon at the age of 4.”  Sometimes I do too.  Not that I wish the demise of the brilliant Bell, but there’s something peculiar about the phone that requires instant attention.

Would Bell have dared his invention had he known of the future cell phone?  The cell, that ubiquitous tether to the world, that device in our hands that reminds us again and again (after we pony up a large monthly bill) that we are wanted, needed at the mall, the ice cream shop, while commuting the kids to school, writing our memoir, strolling in the park.  The cell pretends we are celebrities, making our personal narrative available to the public without so much as dodging a paparazzi-like ambush of call, texts, and the other tools of smartness on our phones.

At home, I screen my calls.  My answering machine says so.  People ask why we don’t use Caller ID.  We do.  But Caller ID is inconsistently useless.  

“Out of area” doesn’t help.  

“Michigan” tells me little.  

And “blocked” numbers?  “Blocked” numbers tell people in a warm cheery ringtone, “Pick me up, don’t worry, I value transparency and respect your time!”  Uh huh.  

People comment on our boldness to screen our calls with our answering machine.  

How about that?  “Boldness.”  

I know some people have a different affection for the phone than I.  Their response to our “boldness” tells me something about them… Are these the people who feel ignored and need the ambush-effect of a phone call?  Or do they think it social rudeness to not pick up the invisible visitor?  Is it more rude to interrupt a quiet, hard-working day of another?  Or more rude to ignore the interrupter?  Cannot a call diverted to the answering machine say, 

You’re valuable, truly.  Doing what I’m doing in my space with the gifts I’ve been given is more important in this moment than talking to you… is that okay?

The telephone, for me, is a convenience for the most urgent communications; yet not much of a social device.  I have several reasons for this and they are all personal.  

First, verbal communication is a limited thing.  We are told that most communication comes through body language, eye-contact and tone, even more than the words we use.  In the performing arts, we learn that the eyes are the most important communicator on the stage.  If the eyes are unbelieving or disengaged, then communication is lost no matter the words we use.  

I’ve caught hints of people on social calls more interested in being “on” the phone than in having a conversation. I picture their eyes wondering who knows where, pretending to be a good multi-tasker.    

Now my second point: different kinds of discourse.

With the added work to translate information through the telephone, two different, but related kinds of discourse are required to navigate a conversation.  One is rational discourse.  If someone is good at thinking through ideas, then this is not an issue.  However, if you are not good at thinking on your feet, this creates a disadvantage which does not allow the other modes of communicating, like a face-to-face encounter, may give: pausing, glancing, grabbing salt and pepper shakers on the lunchroom table and making a schemata.  The immediacy of the technology subtly miscommunicates the immediacy of a conversation, give an instant answer.  Since I’m quick on my feet with rational discourse, this isn’t as much of an issue if people want to talk ideas or give an update. 

However, most of the time, the telephone also includes the other kind of thinking: relational discourse.

Relational discourse means navigating the relationship happening on the phone, reading what the other person is “really” saying and how they are connecting with you personally.  For me to engage relational discourse, I need what the phone doesn’t give: the body language and eye contact (and, no, skype doesn’t give eye-contact either because you look into the eyes of the video image, not the person).  Some are better wired for relational discourse on the phone, like our dog-sitter, Ben.  He tells me he prefers the phone because he over-thinks the other signals so much that he can’t hear what another is saying.  “Why did they raise their eyebrow?” he asks.  Better to talk without all the bodily distractions. 

Here’s a practical example: how do you interrupt on the phone?  To know when someone is finished with a point so they can be adequately interrupted without offense is something I need in conversation.  I often end up misjudging their point’s conclusion and interrupting repeatedly, talking over them, pausing, frustrated.  People do this to me too.  It bugs.  I’d like to lift a hand, like a crossing-guard, or nod like I’m already getting the point so please stop rambling, or a glance at the wrist watch to indicate I’m bored and have other valuable things to do or find a distraction nearby to change the subject, “Oh, did you see that clown go into the pizza shop?!!”

Or when I’m monologuing, how do I know if the other person is really interested?  They could just be the typically defeated suburban husband, like Mr. Incredible,

Uh huh, good, good…

No, Bob, not good! shouts back Elastigirl.

Third, you have people who master telephone conversation, working words and silences to get what they want.  Some passive aggressive, I bet, love the phone, poking their heads into distant lives via 10,000 miles of phone wire, people that we try to limit our time with if they’re to have any relationship with us at all.  Do they know they are passive aggressive?  Do they even know this is a problem?  They move like salesmen, motioning you to agree or say something before you know what you’ve said.  They play with the silences to get you to talk.  “Well, I am amazed that they said that to you!” 

Inner-monologue: No, I’m not!  Why did I just say that?

Likewise, I have the dilemma of telling people I don’t like their inquiry: it’s too personal, it’s none of their business, it’s boring.  Body language, eye contact can speak volumes in this, leaving your disagreement in the conversation ambiguous.  Ambiguity is good: it gives the other a chance to reflect on what they are doing without being call on the carpet.  However, on the phone you’ve gotta say it outright: “Um, I don’t want to talk about that.”  Awkward silence.  Leaving no doubt as to where you stand, deadening a relationship that could have been resuscitated had it not been the telephones damned demand for bluntness.

Talk on the phone is for me like climbing a tree with one hand.  Awkward, risky, and I walk away with scratches.

Maybe this is a guy thing, at least in American culture.  I know more women prefer the phone than men, though I know some men who would rather phone than write an email and women who prefer email to the phone.  Yet, in general, women tend to do their socializing on the phone more than men, having, perhaps, that sensitive awareness to understand tone and words, to skillfully climb a tree with one hand.

Now, for those who prefer the phone over email, let’s make a case for the written word.  I prefer email to the phone. If my phone represented half of the emails I receive, I’d get nothing done. I’ve heard many say that the phone is more personal and "old-fashioned" and email impersonal.  But is this so?  Telephones "old fashioned"?  Maybe for an older living generation but not in history.  Emails are newer, but at least these are things I can save.  I wish I had more personal notes from my grandfather and mother, who have migrated to another country from where no phone lines are long enough to preserve a talking relationship.  Phone conversations easily slip into small talk which are, in my opinion, relational but not often that personal, like the chatter in the foyer after a Sunday church service.

Before electronic technology, nobody had telephones or email.  Communication was personal meetings and letters.  Telephoning is like a personal meeting on a diet, reducing eye-contact and body language.  Emails are still letter writing.  While we often write emails too hastily and lose the art of crafting words, let’s not blame the technology for that.  Let’s blame a hurried society instead.  Emails are the same as letter sent on the pony express; now the pony is the web.  As long as the recipient doesn’t demand an immediate reply, I’ll take an email, usually, as much as a mailed letter.

Letters allow tone and words.  A good metaphor can move the imagination as easily as body language, if not more. Written words also add complete thoughts, uninterrupted.  When someone gets to monologuing in a letter, you step away and re-engage their manta after tea.  And as one crafts his ability to write, he can also add in details not otherwise afforded by telephone conversations.  Writing requires you say what you mean (if you are not hasty), mull over ideas, and protects us from inappropriate word choices.  Writing requires the reader to sit and ponder the carefully chosen phrases, the reading between the lines.  Email, if done well, can be catalogued next to the fine art of letter writing, minus the personal marks of handwriting. Telephoning has no tradition prior the Bell’s technology (unless praying to saints counts) and was not an art on which civilization was built.  Letters, however, were.

So take your pick or choose them all.  You may feel about the written word as I do the telephone.  So be it.  Writing doesn’t come easily for me simply because I’m a writer.  I started writing and became a writer, though I was raised in a family of telephoners.  I’ll stick to personal meetings and crafting letters.  And when the local college offers a course in “creative telephoning” I’ll sign up.  Until then, I’ll screen my calls.

May Bell rest in peace, having died from pernicious anemia at age 80 instead of that ice wagon at age four.  I’m thankful for his technology and for the choice to disdain it too.

Living with Questions - best price for Christmas (book and audio version!)

I thought you'd like to know this!

Yesterday I discovered that Amazon has my book on sale at a bargain price of $1.86 (and it qualifies for free shipping if you have Prime or a $25 order).  Get a copy for the students in your life or for people wanting to grow deeper in their faith but don't know how.  These make great stocking stuffers, an extra present under the tree, an easy thing to mail as a gift (media rate mailing is cheap!), or to buy a stack of them to give away or start a small group discussion.

I don't know why the bargain price, but take advantage while you can!!

If you haven't discovered or read Living with Questions, it's one of the best intro to apologetics books you'll find, easy, accessible, conversational (not the typical abstract stuff that apologetics has become associated with).

And it's a one-of-a-kind book for students (high school and college) on having the tools to answer today's hard questions, the kind that keep you awake at night.  Gathered from thousands of questions from students across the nation, I put together the seven hottest questions, framed them with stories and a personal conversational style, to equip readers to carry their faith with confidence in the 21st century.

See the comments section for Living with Questions on Amazon too.

Also, if you like audio books, Living with Questions was released as an audio book last month.  I narrate the book and bring my own reading style (not your average dead-pan book reading--which usually puts me to sleep).  Oh, yes, over 6 hours of fun!

Story of Surgery - Skin Cancer

In September I went to the dermatologist for a bump under my eyebrow.  The visit was as ordinary as the one I made the year before over a similar bump in the same place.  That year they blasted it with liquid nitrogen and I was done.  A tiny bit grew back.  So that was the purpose of this visit--to take off the tiny bump that had grown a little.

Only this time the doctor took a biopsy.  Small shot and a cut.  As is my usual custom, I had a vasovagal episode: cold sweats, low blood pressure, pale face.  The biopsy lasted two minutes.  My response lasted another 20.

I was confident the biopsy was just procedural and of no concern.  I was convinced of that before I went to the doctor that morning.  I was told the results would be available in a week.

Ten days later I got a voicemail that the results were in.  I called the doctor but had to leave a message.  Two days pass, so I tried calling again.  I found out this is the "nurses" line and they are not always available.  So I called several times until someone picked up the one.

In a very candid voice, "Oh, yes, your biopsy returned.  You have cancer."

That word "cancer" is like saying AIDS.  Everything stood still for me at that word.  Yet the word, I've learned, is more nuanced than AIDS, applies to different kinds.  I asked a couple of questions.  I was told I'd undergo a MOHS procedure in early November and that literature was being dropped in the mail for me.

I called back two more times with questions that day.  Processing.  The kind of skin cancer I had can spread to other organs, I was told, could cause the removal of my eye, could spread to the lungs. 

My mother died of breast cancer that went to her lungs.  But breast cancer is a different kind of cancer than skin cancer.  Yet, still, I started to think about what I was leaving behind should this cancer spread: wife, baby boy, Soulation, too many unwritten words.

One thing that kept coming to mind was my story with fundamentalism... how it had to be written.  I didn't want to die without writing that.  People need to know, I thought.  People need to know how its poison effects most evangelical churches in various forms.  People need to know.  Just like people needed to know about the Gulag.  If I had a year to live, would I write that?

Funny the things that come to mind if you think you've not much time left to live.  Reassurance flooded me that human life was good, appropriate human life intended by our Maker, though it's funny how hard you have to wrestle with humans sometimes to remember and believe it.

I debated finding a doctor that would put me under general anesthetic.  I didn't want a HUGE vasovagal episode during a longer surgery.  As I explored, I decided to just do the MOHS and the local anesthetic and listen to the knife and scissors and feel the needles and the cuts.  This would be the most dramatic physical manipulation I've consciously had. [I was knocked out for my wisdom teeth procedure when I was 21.]

I shared all these fears (confessing of sins?) with my house church.  They encouraged and prayed for me.  Our Soulation prayer team did the same.  Many of my readers knew I was going in for surgery of some kind, though without specifics.

The day came.  The waiting room was filled with others getting the same procedure that day.  All of them older than I.  The doctor said I'm young to have this procedure, but all this Welsch skin in Florida and California sun does not a friendship make.  I'll have regular examinations the rest of my life, the surgeon said, and 50% chance another procedure in the future.  We caught it early and the chance of spreading is slim.

That day in the doctor's chair was miraculous.  I don't use that special word very often.  But with prayers and Jonalyn's sticking with me through the whole procedure, I had no vasovagal response.  I was even talking to the doctors as they sewed me up (15 stitches, maybe more).  Jonalyn even had to sit down for the sight of my eyebrow flayed open.  I kept squeezing her hand through my fears and uneasiness and inviting Jesus to be my peace.  The God of Israel held me.

A week later the stitches were removed.  Those were a monument of a time God met me and I went through the waters unharmed.  I wore them proudly.  The scar continues to fade (the doctor said there likely won't be one when it fully heals).  But the memory lives on.  Now I have to wear hats in the sunshine... another monument, though less rugged as a scar above the eye.  You'll see more hats in future pictures on our facebook fan page, I'm sure...

That's the story.

Pondering Streets of Gold (and an opportunity)

This is today's fledge (going out later this morning)... I wanted to give you a sneak peak at pondering beauty in sacred space as well as sharing with you an opporutunity.


Pondering Streets of Gold



[All photos, but the golden driveway, copyright Jeff LeFever]

We rounded the corner of our driveway and caught a rare a glimpse of heaven: a street of gold. Aspen covered the drive, leaving a sheet of yellow. Sunset seemed to emit light from the road as well as from the sky.

We drove slowly over the carpet of leaves, windows down, catching our breath, watching the extravagant show of God littering a world preparing for winter.

These little moments are sacred. They feel set apart, remembered. While some moments call us in whispers to pay attention these extraordinary sights may be missed only by the blind. Yet even the blind may smell it in the air.

The God of Israel described his city as having streets of gold. The shimmer, the opulence, the purity all come to mind. God may be giving us a picture of what sacred space looks like, moments where we have to pause to catch our breath, to relish the visual pleasure, to let the smile freely curl upon our faces.

Beauty does this to us. And while beauty cannot be described as easily as many of our theological doctrines and apologetic arguments, it is as important to our souls as daily bread. It draws us in, slows us down, reminds us that more is going on than meets the eye, and points us in transcendent directions.

Sometimes we merely look at beauty, sometimes we are in it. Sometimes we look at the aspen, like a postcard. Sometimes we are in a forest of them on a hike. Most man-made sacred spaces are created for such an experience. Cathedral domes. Steeples. Gold leaf. Paintings by the masters. Hard stone floors cut from mountains. Light perfectly positioned through impenetrable architecture, depending on the time of day. A place to pray. To kneel. To remember. Outside, the “world.” Inside, something special, deliberate, set apart, beautiful like a street of gold.

Our friend and Soulation teammate, Jeff Lefever, has embodied this to us more than anyone in our lives. He's concerned we remember sacred space, not only in our churches but in our surrounding culture. He hears the whispers in the beauty of brokenness as he captures people sitting on a curb, a child playing with ice cream, a woman in full Muslim dress walking the beach. He notes graffiti and the ways we express ourselves through retail shop windows. He captures the bones of an abandoned bridge. He reveals the pictures rainbowed in stained-glass. And he brings these things home.

Jeff is currently working on capturing the sacred spaces in many well-known cities. Last winter, he spent several weeks in Prague, which was the third city for his body of work (United States and France were previous). He posted an ongoing blog of his photos and reflections, the disappointment with closed churches, the architecture of people at prayer, the snow falling on once-noticed statues around the city.

We now have four prints from his last trip. One sits above our mantle, reminiscent of the dutch landscape painters, large sky, village below, cathedral dominating the horizon, a farmer harvesting food in the foreground like a biblical parable. Another captures the entry way to the side door of a Jewish synagogue, the edge of the building meeting a leafless tree stretching to the sky as a metaphor of life. While our cathedrals and sacred spaces are decaying and in disrepair, Jeff has brought them home, bottled them in print for us, our generation, for the world. And we're reminded daily of the God of Israel who comes near to us in beauty, architecture, and the in weighty privilege of prayer.

As our personal photographer, Jeff believes in the work of Soulation like few others. And it is my honor to present his work to you and an opportunity to join in a community of voices that says "Beauty matters! I will relish and defend it for the world!"

You get participate in sending Jeff to Israel this December. As you know, Israel is the hotbed of sacred space, the epicenter of religion and cultural upheaval. Jeff is, in many ways, going behind enemy lines find the sacred among all the violence and show the peace that the God of Israel promised to his people.

We'll be giving to this project too. This project benefits us by sharing the awareness and experience of sacred space. The more we share them, the more we learn to "see" beauty, the more it helps us and our community to be appropriately human.

The added benefit is choosing a professional print from Jeff that I can put on my walls, to share that story, to draw others into this food for hungry souls. In many ways, Jeff's photography is an apologetic: showing the world what God is like with pictures, light, and space. Your gift would be a simple way to see a profound thing happen.

People often ask where are the artists today speaking into our culture? They ask, where are the fresh voices our world needs to hear? Jeff Lefever is among those unsung fresh voices. In a world of high-tech fundraising, mega-marketing, and media-hype, where the most “popular” voice gets to be heard over many of the other worthwhile voices, I'm glad to call Jeff a friend. He's uninterested in collecting money to serve him. He wants a community to help serve the work. He's interested in taking you along, to find meaning in the mundane and beauty in the brokenness. See his work at www.lefever.com.

Jeff has many other benefits for those who give. Check out his Kickstarter page at www.kickstarter.com and help him reach beyond his goal. And if you want a tax-deductible receipt, you can send your check to Jeff and ask him for one as his work is under a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. Write him for more info if you'd like to give that way (lefever@lefever.com).

As we all learn to "see" beauty better in this world, our Streets of Gold moments will grow more numerous and the meaning God has poured into this world more blessed. Our souls will grow sturdier and our commission to shine light into the world more creative.