Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28
The itinerant teacher who spoke that invitation and offered rest was wearing dusty sandals when he spoke those words, not snowy boots. There were no mittens on his gesturing hands, either. The landscape around the Sea of Galilee was nothing at all like this small park a mere two blocks from our home.
Why this photo should call up that long-ago promise of rest, I’m not sure. Indeed, I can’t even explain why I recently chose this 5-year-old photo as my computer background, after stumbling upon it by chance. Ever since, it has haunted me, drawn me in. It wants to become the subject of some grand reflection, no doubt, but its complete and inscrutable silence has left me without words.
I offer it simply as an invitation to look and meditate. Let your heart be still for awhile.
For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Mystery is the place where we can finger the ragged edges of what we know and begin to make peace with what we will not know. (Stephen Jenkinson)
#1
In my part of the world, days are getting shorter. Sunset begins sooner each day, signalling not only the end of another day but the end of a season. If I wish to continue my cherished evening walks, I shall have to walk in the dark. The summer’s mellow evening light has now shifted to late afternoon, slanting in at a different angle, lower on the horizon.
Letting go of sunlight each evening is a ritual practice for letting go of much else in life. Whether it happens abruptly as the sun drops behind a mountain, or in a lingering blaze of warm colors (as is common on the prairies where the sky goes on forever), sunset blends awe with melancholy. This one day is almost over and cannot be retrieved, reminding us that our lives too will end. Yet the beauty of the sun’s disappearance is so varied, so evanescent, and so necessary—how could the earth and all its inhabitants continue to live without daily darkness and rest?—that we are cleansed by astonishment.
The very word life shouts out promise, potential, opportunity, breath, vibrancy. Life has drive and will and force. It continues its changes forever. That which does not change, that does not obey the principle of death and resurrection into a new form, will die most certainly and finally, declaring its essence to be not-life.
The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more lifeless it tends to be.
(Alan Watts)
Sunset has to do with time and change. Celebration and loss, all at once. So we cling to the loveliness, even as we rejoice at the prospect of rest. We gaze at the dance of color and watch the earth around us take off its robes of light, giving way to starlight and moonlight. Who would have it otherwise?
#2
These days, I’m asking myself how to let go and what might need to be let go. A friend is losing independence, giving up the tasks of caring for herself (when will that be my lot?). Another friendship seems lost entirely as we walk different paths now (shall I stop trying to maintain what was?). The pandemic has taken away both political innocence and a certain social ease (can I find hope again in realistic possibilities?).
Some once-loved books have ceased to matter; they will be “remaindered” (to use a publisher’s phrase) and turned into something else that can be made with recycled paper. I’m not sure that the memories I will also have to relinquish can be recycled as usefully. There are no cemeteries for books, and photographs of my library end up looking like artifacts of interior decorating.
Certain shelves of said library remind me that what seemed wise to me once upon a time is now folly, much as teens might look back on their favorite crib toys with a sheepish smile. Not all beliefs continue to sustain, necessary as they may once have been. Circumstances have changed. I have changed. I am now embarrassed to admit that I once had a copy of Total Woman and read it mostly without irony, although I might have felt twinges of critical thinking over the worst of its excesses. As the sun sets on some days, the ending is entirely welcome.
#3
There is a reason that photographers, amateur and professional, have probably all indulged in sunset phases. Melancholy and awe are addictive, yet essential to our humanness. We know very well the flutters of possibility within a new love, and the throbbing ache of a lost love. Regret and satisfaction. Is that reading too much into the result of light passing through more of the atmosphere and hence being scattered by additional particles?
My struggle for words is at an end. Let sunset photos finish this reflection. Each one was taken in a different place and hence calls up different memories, different feelings. I leave them untitled except for numbers, and I invite you, my readers, to let me know which one(s) call to your heart.
This reflection will not be obvious. It considers not the what, but the how and the why and the what happens next. Those are often not obvious at all, partly because our culture has cast the language of choice in the individual mode. I am convinced that that can be misleading. There is no such thing as an entirely “personal” choice.
Let’s start with the trivial: which candy I choose to spend my dimes on (oops, not dimes—dollars!) can hardly matter in the grand scheme of human endeavour. The world seems indifferent to such a choice, even to whether I choose candy at all or potato chips (much more likely – I dislike candy). Yet as soon as we back away from a single bag of candy, the scene changes.
Store owners stock only those candies that sell; the more often I and others opt for lemon drops, the more likely it is that stores will stock them. That then determines what factories produce, and if making lemon drops has deleterious effects on the health of factory workers, then my utterly trivial choice matters. The more candy I eat, the more likely it is that the sugar overdose will affect my health, beginning with my teeth. My health, as it happens, is important to more people than just me.
I could also talk about what I choose to do with the now empty wrapper. Does it end up in the ditch at the roadside? or on the sidewalk beside a park? Out of what was that wrapper made? What was its overall cost?
Even in the most trivial choices, I am in the midst of a whole web of connections with other human beings.
Consider another seemingly simple choice: what shall I have for breakfast? Someday, archaeologists will draw conclusions about our culture based on packaging debris that survives beneath the rubble of centuries. Be it Frosted Flakes, or granola, or bacon and eggs, or smoothies with startling ingredients, every selection affects which business grows and which does not, which animals and plants are grown and which are not, which divisions of our health care institutions are overworked and which are not, which tracts of land are cared for adequately and which are not (see Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma).
The how and why of all our small choices together reveal our tastes, our values, even the causes for which we’ll be prepared to march in the streets. All of those choices have been created in the crucible of our multiple contexts, some of which have been given (perhaps most) and some of which we have chosen, each choice determining to some degree what follows.
Some choices are made without thought, the variables having been sorted out long ago: I need no conscious decision to walk by the candy store without pausing; I will, however, linger by the camping supply store and linger even longer by the book store window.
Other choices are far more difficult. Why did I leave one church and eventually settle on a different one? Indeed, why have I chosen to continue to identify myself as Christian? (The initial identification as such was hardly a genuine choice, not where I grew up.) To answer those questions would require long stories, which call for a different venue than this blog.
The point I want to make here is that the choice was not personal except in the sense that I was the one who had to make it. In the end, my choice to leave a church I’d been part of for decades was the result of the influence of people (and some books) who invited me into different perspectives and other people who made it increasingly difficult to remain. No doubt my choice likewise affected others. Just how many or how much, I don’t know beyond the fact that some friendships ended.
Since we cannot know all the intricate ways in which our smallest choices might affect so many other people, the least we can do is to remain aware that our choices are both personal and not personal. That is, we do have to choose, many, many times a day even; I am the person whose foot pushes down on the brake or the accelerator—no one else does that for me. At the same time, every choice I make is not only the result of all the overlapping circumstances of my life but will then also affect later choices of mine and of others. Every effect becomes itself a cause.
In our current climate of anxiety over the pandemic and dire political and climatic circumstances, perhaps two principles could and should be kept in mind. One is that sooner or later our choices (even the trivial ones) will enter the territory of values; they will become moral choices. As C.S. Lewis once insisted, all of our decisions, both trivial and momentous, will make us more of a certain kind of person, and who we become matters a great deal.
“I’ve been considering the phrase ‘all my relations for some time now. . . . It points to the truth that we are all related, that we are all connected, that we all belong to each other. . . . ALL my relations. That means every person, just as it means every rock, mineral, blade of grass, and creature. We live because everything else does.”
Richard Wagamese
The other principle is connected to the previous one: the well-being of others should come first. That is such a huge statement that it has already filled libraries with books as philosophers and theologians and thinkers of all kinds have struggled to work out the relationship between our instinctive—and necessary—care for ourselves and our equally necessary care for others.
If we look out only for Number One, the society around us is likely to become, or least seem, more hostile. When unchecked selfishness is pursued in high office, the entire country becomes a less liveable place. Jesus once said, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” and also “those who would save their own souls must first give them away.” Other religions base their rules of conduct on the same principle, albeit worded in slightly different ways.
If religious reasoning is not your preference, then scientific analysis will lead you to a similar conclusion. It turns out that human infants do not thrive without love (nor, for that matter, do adults), and societies in which altruistic behaviour is encouraged offer better and more satisfying living conditions.
Robert Frost’s famous poem “Two ways diverged in a yellow wood” concludes with “I took the one less travelled by / and that has made all the difference.” Generations of school children absorbed the lesson that we should be brave individuals and choose to be non-conformists. I would argue that had the narrator chosen the more travelled road, it would still have made all the difference. Choices do that.
Near the beginning of the trail to the alpine meadows near Mt. Edith Cavell. Photo taken in late summer 2021.
I fell into hiking in the mountains almost by accident, but even at the beginning, it had the pull of destiny about it—that feeling that comes rarely and then with a wash of loveliness: I was born to do this.
It happened in Jasper National Park in 1968, when a convergence of necessities and opportunities gave me a summer of work in the tourist town of Jasper, Alberta. My friend and I had no car, just occasionally borrowed bicycles. Days off became hiking days because we wanted to get out of town, and there was little else to do. I succumbed immediately to the lure of the trail.
Along one of the many trails on the Pyramid Shelf, near Jasper, AB. Photo taken in late summer 2021.
Camping began three years later when my husband and I borrowed tents and other equipment to escape to the Rockies where we spent our days hiking trails, sometimes bagging a walk-up peak. Mountain climbers we were not and would never be, lacking both money and nerve. All that was needed for hiking, though, was a map and good boots – and the desire to explore.
Decades later, my husband and I are still camping, still hiking. We hiked with our young sons as soon as we could persuade them to cooperate on the trails (frequent snacks helped!), and now we’re still hiking with them and with our grandchildren as well. I cannot imagine anything more soul-restoring.
This summer, after a year lost to the pandemic, we were finally back in the Rockies, back to Jasper, where it had all begun. Thanks to the pandemic, we were hiking without our family, but we were hiking. We’re slower hikers now than we once were, more tolerant of our limits, more grateful than ever for every heart-stopping view we achieve.
Dorothy Lake, in Jasper National Park, photo taken in late summer 2021.
Over the years, our hiking has become more meditative, even creative. In years past, I used to draft entire university course outlines in my mind as we walked in companionable silence. This year, as each scene revived memories of previous hikes, previous adventures, I began thinking of just how much all those beautiful mountain trails have taught us about living thoughtfully and well.
It was Mt. Rundle in Banff that first made life applications explicit.
Mt. Rundle, towering above the golf course. Walk-up ascents can be done on the more gradual slope not visible here. Photo by Darian Froese.
My husband and I attempted that daunting, supposedly “walk-up,” ascent back in 1973, when our first real hiking boots were still stiff and untried. My older brother, who was with us for a few days and who had done the ascent before, led the way.
Less than an hour from the peak, I lost courage. I could not take another step on that sheer slope of rock. Never mind how often my brother reassured me that my boots would not slide, I couldn’t do it. I resolutely sat myself down on the rock, and informed my husband and brother that I would wait for them. They finished the climb, reveled in the astonishing view, took their pictures, and then returned jubilant. After which, I discovered that going down a mountain is even more unnerving than going up!
As we hiked more often in subsequent years and achieved some high passes in the mountains (adjacent photo is Nigel Pass in Jasper National Park, 2004), I often recalled that “failure” and promised myself that I would get back to Mt. Rundle eventually.
Twenty-two years later, in 1995, when I was facing the last hurdle of my PhD, we returned to Banff, with our two younger sons, now in their teens. I had insisted on that destination that summer because I had made a private bargain with myself: “if I can get to the top of Mt. Rundle, I can finish my dissertation.” I made it, but not easily. The last hour and more was a struggle over loose shale, on which I slid back down with nearly every step up. Mt. Rundle, by pushing me almost to despair, taught me that I could choose to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I also learned the value of not hiking alone; the presence and patience of our sons mattered more than they’ll ever know.
At the top, I hardly knew what was more astonishing—the sight of the entire Bow Valley spread out far below me, or the fact that I was really and truly there.
The following day, I bought a huge poster of Mt. Rundle. For the next year, that poster graced the wall of my tiny study room in the U of S library where I finished writing my dissertation. When I wanted to hurl books at the wall or just give up and go home, I would look at the summit of Mt. Rundle and whisper, “I can do this.”
A photo of Mt. Rundle (by Darian Froese) taken many years later (2009) when my husband and I were content to view the mountain from the relatively easy viewpoint on Mt. Castle, near the falls. It is now more astonishing to me than ever that we were ever on the peak of Mt. Rundle.
There have been many other gifts of wisdom that the many hiking trails in the Rocky Mountains have given me. I could, I suppose, write the hiking equivalent of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
The worth of the trail itself, for example, never mind what its destination might be. Mt. Rundle was a fantastic goal, but the truth is, there was much to pay attention to throughout the eight or nine hours of the climb and descent. Yes, pay attention—to all of it: the enclosing silence of the forest, not truly silent but rich with the breath of trees, the songs of birds, the scolding of the squirrels, perhaps even the echo of a far-off rock fall; the delicate beauty of lichen, ferns, flowers, insects; the scent of the mountain air; the peacefulness of shifting clouds and the absence of urgency of any kind.
The walking of many trails has taught me much about letting myself be the traveler first of all. The journey itself is the point. Arrival is a bonus. Sometimes spectacularly so.
Taken in 1998, somewhere on a ridge near the peak of Mt. Indefatigable in Kananaskis, Alberta.
Which is another way of saying that hiking has changed my perspective in important ways. I am less driven now as a hiker, less anxious to achieve goals, although the prospect of a trail that keeps going up still gives me an adrenalin rush. In our many seasons of hiking I have also learned how to adjust my literal focus.
There is, I’ve found, a time to take in the long view and let myself be inspired by the challenge, and a time to gaze only at the next few feet. Back on our first attempt at Mt. Rundle, I gained considerable altitude simply following my brother’s advice to look only at the back of his boots just ahead of me. To look at the enormous distance between me and the peak was a bad idea. In hiking as in life, it helps to know oneself well enough to gauge when one needs to stare at the ground and when one should look up to the hills.
Hiking in Glacier National Park, BC.
Trail through Mt. Edith Cavell meadows to a higher ridge.
The exaltation of arrival—at the high ridge, at the glacier-fed lake—comes in three stages for me: first a long-held breath of awe, then happy exclamations—LOOK! We’re here! We made it!—and finally an inner silence, the self-forgetfulness of just being. If the timing of the hike is right, this is the place to combine transcendence with the ordinary ritual (and it feels like a ritual!) of having lunch. It’s the miracle of being alive writ large.
Besides, a lengthy lunchtime postpones that most wrenching moment of the hike, when the hiker has to pick up the pack again and turn his or her back on the glory to begin the return journey. It’s not only that the descent from the high place is going to be hell on vulnerable knees; it’s the knowledge that this moment is rare, precious. Our instinct is to hold on to it.
But it’s not possible to stay there. There are other mountains, there are other journeys, other places in which one must put one foot in front of the other. No matter how stunning the view, sooner or later the good-bye must be spoken (I prefer the German Aufwiedersehen – “until we see each other again”).
Oh, there will be stories to tell afterward. Notice that 26 years and 48 years later, I’m retelling the stories of those two ascents of Mt. Rundle yet again. I no longer have the Mt. Rundle poster; after years of hanging on the walls of my different offices, it was eventually passed on to Value Village. It was time for me to let it go.
The beauty of a mountain is talked about most from a distance . . . .
“The path has infinite patience” (Aboriginal saying)
The most well-known statement about the fitness of time is from the biblical Book of Koheleth, better known as Ecclesiastes. The author, who prides himself on his realism and willingly admits the futility of most human effort, yet sees a pattern in human events that might argue for an over-arching Providence after all: “there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to mourn,” and so on. One by one, he lists the extremes of human emotion and experience and declares that there is a right time for every single one.
I have no wish to quarrel with his summary. My focus is on lesser matters, although I could indeed riff on Koheleth in a dozen ways: There is a time to accept the particular miseries of this job and there is a time to begin looking for a different one; there is a time to take risks and a time to be cautious; there is a time to say no to an obstreperous toddler and a time to forestall needless anxiety by promptly meeting immediate needs. There is a time to vote Liberal and a time to vote Conservative—oh, dear, I was not going to summon up political debate!
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
Ecclesiastes 3:1
Several occasions and important dates in the last months have led me to look back on past decisions and consider whether I had indeed followed the advice of a good friend who once assured me that I would know when the time was right for a big decision if I paid attention. I would sense, deep within myself, when, for example, I should resign from some committee whose work had once given me pleasure and purpose, or when it was time to let go of possessions that had once been oh, so important.
Actually, I’ve been inclined to think matters are more complicated than that. I can recall decisions that seemed shaped more by circumstances and urgent need than reflection, and careful planning wasn’t possible. There had been no time to ask myself if the time was right. Sometimes inclination urged me on, yet I faced only closed doors.
That’s not where I am now. The path remains open – there’s no blocking gate. Yet within me, the conviction grows that it is time to say farewell to a part of my identity. As of the end of this year, 2021, I shall not be an editor any more, except of my own work (if one can call repeated revisions editing). It has been a pleasure to be of assistance, to take someone else’s writing and make it as smooth and persuasive as possible without altering either the intent or the voice of the writer. It has been a wonderful challenge to learn to “hear” the writer’s voice and then make it stronger, clearer. The frequent tussles with language, when the exactly right word proved elusive, were exhilarating, at least when the battle was over.
Editing is background work. Sometimes an editor is given public credit, sometimes not. In the academic world, where I have functioned, the one who polishes the conference paper, corrects grammatical errors, and makes the list of references conform to a journal’s specifications, is rarely mentioned. That’s as it should be. I have only tweaked the details of someone else’s work—that someone should get all the credit for doing the hard work of research, sorting through ideas, and writing (and re-writing at my behest).
Some books that have always been close to hand will now be given away or remaindered; they will be needed no longer.
How is it that something that was once a pleasure, indeed still gives satisfaction, can become something that needs to be given up? I’m not sure. It seems to me that the motivation could be a range of circumstances from the changing nature of that something (a dance club that loses its sense of community through personality clashes, for example) to some change in me, the decider.
That the passage of time has something to do with it is beyond doubt. Each succeeding birthday has sharpened my awareness that time is not infinite. I do not have all the time in the world. Just as a summer of illness taught me that life is too short for me to read all the books I might imagine I wanted to read, or even to finish every book that I’ve begun, so the passing of ordinary time carries the lesson that not everything needs to be done, and certainly not everything needs to be done by me!
There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.
Guy Gavriel Kay
While retirement from teaching was not an issue over which I was granted as much choice as I might have wished for, I did learn over the subsequent months that it is indeed better to step out of the working life while one is performing well than to keep going until one has become incompetent and everyone else is waiting impatiently for the end of the ordeal.
My memories of my last teaching year give me much pleasure. It had been a very good year. Besides, I was now freed from the tyranny of ever-changing technology which I would have found harder and harder to learn. Already the gap between the way I thought and the ways my students thought was growing dangerously. It was time to learn how to be a grandparent instead of a teacher; grandparents are generally granted more tolerance and forgiveness.
As I recall the rightness of that major shift in my life, I am more comfortable now about planning to give away my style manuals and grammar books. I shall delete files, I think, without wincing, but I’m not so sure about turning my business cards into grocery lists. Perhaps I’ll keep one or two as souvenirs? Still, it is time.
Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.
Stones and Flowers 