Paddling with Divine Abandon

Even as I knew with a big part of my mind that there really was no going back, that getting out and off was not really an option, and that it was probably going to be fun, a part of me still played with the fantasy that there might be a way to set the clock back an hour and so magically get off this seemingly rather flimsy rubber raft, a raft which was rapidly propelling me and seven others towards a large bend in the Snake River Canyon. The Rafting Company’s brochure had touted their extensive safety record, and had promised that “rafting adventurers,” as we were called, would get a thorough safety orientation. My confidence in the truth of the first claim was somewhat shaken by patent falsity of the second  --  the “thorough safety orientation” turned out to be only a thirty second river-side explanation of how to put on the faded life-jackets they had handed out, together with some brief remarks that if we fell out we were to point our legs downstream so that they would crash into the boulders before our skulls. I immediately resolved to stay in the raft at all costs.

            The river bend was drawing nearer, but it was not the bend itself that concerned me – indeed, for the past 30 minutes we had been drifting lazily down the Snake, admiring the gently rising canyon walls along both banks, getting glimpses of the Grand Tetons now and again off to the west, even spotting an occasional bald eagle. Our guide had insisted that we, novice “rafting adventurers” all, practice paddling, which mostly consisted of her yelling, Captain Bligh-like, a stream of orders: “paddle left”, “paddle right”, “full power, five strokes”, “reverse all”, and so on. We were not very good at this. We improved remarkably when she told us that our ability to paddle was going to get us through the rapids – or not.

            Which was my concern. As the bend got nearer and nearer, the canyon walls drew closer and closer together, a sound, a roaring, was getting louder and louder, and the raft steadily picked up speed. A quick look at the waterproof map they had handed out showed that just around that rapidly approaching bend was something called a “Category 3” rapid – how bad could that be, I thought? Looking over my shoulder, a fellow rafter said “Oh, look, they even name the rapids – I wonder why this one was named “the Widowmaker”?”

By now the river had got my attention. As had our guide, who ordered the right side to paddle to avoid a bolder, which flashed by to starboard, then called for three strokes from the left to line us up for the approach to what looked to be something you might see on the “Discovery Channel”, or in one of those big-screen Omni-Max theaters about kayaking the Himalayans, a steep stretch of river that boiled and churned over boulders the size of cars and towards which we were headed like a runaway freight train.

At it was at that point when I seriously wondered why I hadn’t had the presence of mind to object way back at the boarding area when the guide had placed me not on the left side of the raft, not on the right side of the raft, not way back on the stern, where she was safely ensconced – but on the blunt front of the raft!

“Full power, everyone!,” yelled our guide, and the sensible, logical part of me, that wisdom and intelligence that had seen me safely through some 43 years,  said to me, “Are you nuts?! Let’s hit the reverse thrusters and get out of Dodge!” But then, as our paddles furiously dug into the tossing waves, it became clear that the way out was the way forward, that it was only by aggressively working to move the raft forward through the water that we could have steerageway, and so avoid that bus-size boulder on the left, and that back eddy on the right, but what about – oh my God, that huge hole right in front of us?!  Down, down, down  we slammed into the hole, a sucking vortex in the rapids created in the lee of a submerged ledge, the raft buckling underneath my crouched legs. The front of the raft slammed into the wall of water at the bottom of the hole, a wave poured over my head, screaming with terror and joy I furiously dug my paddle into the water and pulled for life and then – and then we were up and out and spinning in lazy circles in the calm waters beneath the rapids.

            And so maybe you can see why Mary Oliver’s little prose poem speaks to me – it resonates with my experience on the Snake River – and it calls to mind Jesus’ conversation with those recalcitrant experts of religion close to the end of his ministry.

            First, the poet calls us to stop, to listen, to pay attention. Put aside those distractions; put aside that single-minded focus you have on rowing so diligently on a course that was set for you long ago, a course you might not even know why you are on right now. “Listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and listen to me.” Mary Oliver, West Wind, Poems and Prose Poems (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1997), p. 46.

            She goes on, here is the lesson you need to learn. This is what is ultimately important in life. Not success, not money, not the adulation of others, not some secret horde of brownie points you accumulate for pleasing others. This is what is important: love. For there is life without love, but “It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied.”

            This is, of course, Jesus’ message.  What is the greatest commandment, what is the Divinely-given rule which, if followed, will be both pleasing to God as well as life-promoting for the individual and the community? “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’ . . . [and} ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Love. Its that easy. Its what I have been teaching you about all these past three years, it is what I have been modeling for you as we have healed the sick, restored to the community those who were marginalized and scorned, welcomed all to our table fellowship, urged justice for the oppressed, sharing by all. Simply this: love God, love yourself, and love one another.

But Jesus’ message, and that echoed by the poet, is not as easy at it first might sound. Love, the poet reminds us, is not simply warm and fuzzy and a feel-good emotion. Love is risky, love is dangerous, love can be costly. There really is nothing safe and secure about loving. Love, Mary Oliver tells us, is not a leisurely row on a placid lily-pad-strewn pond. Love is a heart-pounding, adrenaline-inducing roller-coaster ride where there are no visible safety rails, an accelerating journey of increasing speed as a river is narrowed by steeply rising canyon walls into a foaming, churning rapids, a boulder-littered watery obstacle course where standing waves conspire to overturn your raft, where Charbydis-like whirlpools threaten to pull you under. This is what love sounds like, this is how love tastes and feels in the pit of your stomach: “When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, -- when you hear that unmistakable pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming….”

Like Jesus speaking to the lawyers long ago, Mary Oliver tells you again what you already know. You know the risk and cost of loving. Why else did your stomach get all tied up in knots when she first agreed to go out with you on that date? Why did you hope and fear and hope some more that he would pop the question, would ask you if you would commit yourself to him for the rest of your life? Why else is it so hard to send your child away to school the first time, and the second time, and you wonder if it ever gets easier? Why else does it pain you so when a loved one suffers, or dies? Loving comes with risk and with costs. You know that when you volunteer at a the hospital and come face to face with pain and suffering; you know that when you commit your time and energy to the young of this church, through teaching in the church school or helping as a youth leader; you know that when you put yourself on the line for the homeless or struggling parents or people of different sexual orientation or our environment. Love is more than chocolates and flowers and mutual self-absorption – love, in all its wonder and life-affirmingness, can be risky and costly. See where love took Jesus.

The Good News, of course, is that we can risk love because God loves us first, because God loves us so fiercely that no matter the category of rapids we might face in our lives of loving each other and God, we have Jesus for our guide, we have the Holy Spirit to give us strength for the task at hand, and we have a God who is both in the raft with us and who promises us that at the last we shall be together, at peace besides the still waters.

So what to do? What difference does this make in your life? Shall you, when love comes knocking on your heart, do the sensible and safe and sane thing, and turn and run for your life? Or will you, learning the lesson we on that raft on the Snake River learned, for love and for life paddle with divine abandon?

Listen to me.

“When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, -- when you hear that unmistakable pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life toward it.”