I Took The One Less Traveled By

I found something important that time Google Maps got me lost in the middle of nowhere.

This is hard to admit, but after the past year, the landscape of faith feels like unfamiliar territory to me. There are so many layers to this: a deep desire to believe and a concurrent underlying resistance and even revulsion at the idea, and overlaying it all, the general refusal to think too much about it because I don’t want to begin verbalizing questions that could lead me down a mental path that I do not wish to go down.

I want to believe - as I always have - that there is Someone There. I want to believe in Divine Will.

I’m not sure that I do.

But I am sure that I don’t want to be an unbeliever.

Dear G-d, I feel like I need a break from You.

I’ve begun tentatively exploring some of the conflicting thoughts and feelings I have about G-d in this new world I find myself in. I hate it. I hate realizing that something I thought was unshakable wobbles. I hate the disappointment I feel in myself when I catch myself questioning, doubting, concluding, wavering.

Where my uncertainty manifests the most obviously is in the exercise of prayer: it’s hard to ask G-d to intervene these days. I can ask Him to bolster my dear ones with strength. I can ask Him to fill them with courage. But I’ve begun to consistently stop short of asking Him to step in and change the circumstance. I feel uncomfortable asking Him to send rain in a drought, or specific protection in general disaster...or healing for the sick.

There are moments when I excuse myself for that by rationalizing that it’s not that I don’t think He can do those things. It’s just that I wonder if maybe He won’t, and I don’t want to embarrass Him (if such a thing can be said of G-d) by putting Him in a position of having to say no.

But there are other, more raw moments, when I fear that I’m holding back in asking because I deeply doubt that I’m being heard.

Last week, Google maps lured me down a dirt road with the promise of getting me back to GWINRVER the fastest way possible. Less than an hour this way, and although I was surprised by the first turn off onto a dirt road, the robotically calm navigator assured me that in half-a-mile, I would turn right onto what I assumed would be the actual road. It wasn’t, but surely the next one (one mile, then turn left) would link me up with the interstate.

Instead, as a snowstorm oozed over the mountains behind us, google maps let us deeper into a moonscape of decapitated peaks and black cinder fields - eerie remnants of an active volcanic area nine-hundred years old. Every once in a while, we’d pass a commune of ramshackle trailers clustered under the scruffy juniper pine. No utilities appeared to service the area; whoever was out here was interested in being beyond the reach of the outside world. Almost an hour went by. No interstate. Just a dirt road whose condition was worsening by the mile. I navigated away from my map and tried to look up a gas station - we were below a quarter of a tank.

No service.

My belly flipped and I tried to find my original map. Gone. I hadn’t saved it. The dot-that-was-our-minivan was traveling across a blank screen.

The kids freaked out. “We should just try to go back!”

Too far. Turning back would mean driving into the snowstorm just as it was getting dark. We had made too many turns and I wasn’t confident that I could remember which ones we had taken.

“It’s ok, guys. We’re headed in the right direction, let's just keep going. First one to see the pavement gets chocolate chips from my secret stash!” And I kept one hand casually on the wheel and tucked the other one - fist clenched - under my hip.

We drove through more headless mountains, more basalt-strewn fields, shadows growing eeirily long. Then we hit a fork. Both roads ribboned up a gentle rise.

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I,

I took the road less traveled by.

And ever since then, I’ve been hopelessly lost.

Thanks for nothing, Robert Frost!”

I took the right fork and tried to sound optimistic as we rumbled up the hill. Everyone craned their neck to see over the rise.

Nothing. Just that dreaded dirt road wandering across the same endless landscape we’d been traveling across. Not a sign of civilization.

I was speechless for a moment, then put on the brakes and did a u-turn. “I’m pretty sure I saw a roof through the trees before that last fork. Let’s go see if there’s someone there that can help us.”

We have blankets. I rehearsed the worst-case scenario in my mind. We have water we have snacks. Blankets water snacks we’ll be ok…

A tumble-down cluster of decrepit trailers off the road in a clearing. I drove on past. There was a roof back here, high enough to be a two-story house. A house. Permanent structure. That’s got to be a way safer option.

Warnings posted. Beware Dogs. Target Practice Happens Here.

My pre-teen co-pilot looked at me with terror and pulled his pocketknife out of his pocket.

I pulled up to a closed gate posted everywhere with signs. Turn back now! Does anyone know you’re here? Mannequins leaned against the fence. All headless.

“Mommy, it’s not worth it!” my kid wailed.

“Oh, it’s fine. I’m sure with this much bark they can’t have any bite.” But I took the knife he handed me, anyways. I honked several times. Got out of the car. Yelled through the trees, “Hello! Hello! I need some help please!”

Dogs barked eventually. Big dogs. No sign of people. I turned back towards the van and for the first time felt desperation tighten a fist around my stomach.

“Mommy, what are….” the baby started.

“Quiet!” Another kid hissed. “Mommy’s trying to figure out what to do!”

It was totally silent in the car as we sat parked, engine running.

“Abba, I really need You to help me. I got lost. Lost my map. I’m not sure which way I’m supposed to go and I need You to send me a person who can help me find the right way…” I said it all out loud. Automatically. Without pausing to wonder if Anyone was listening or if

The trailer commune. I headed back towards the trailers. As I slowed near the clearing, I saw a pair of boots on the other side of an old truck. I pulled in and rolled down my window as he looked over at me from under an old t-shirt wrapped around his head.

“Dude, you’re a human! You’re totally an answer to prayer.”

I had prayed. Asked for intervention - automatically, instinctually. When all my defenses were down, something was revealed to me: that I rely on there being Someone There. Send me a person to help me find the way.

A gap-toothed smile. “What do you need?”

It was only five more miles, he said. Left at the fork, the one past the cattle guard. Then go through “the Rez.”

“Man, thank you so much. What’s your name?”

“Lance.”

Lance may have been a psycho cult-leader or a crazy conspiracy-theorist or a murderer on the run. Or just a guy who likes to be by himself in the woods all the time. I have no idea what his road was like before or after the particular moment in time when it intersected mine. But thanks to Lance, we all howled with relief when we finally hit the pavement fifteen minutes later and breathed an even deeper sigh after we made it to the reservation’s gas station and filled up our near-empty tank.

Perhaps my deeper feeling of relief came from savoring the feeling of being cared for. Despite the cynical tendencies I have these days, here was evidence that in my deepest depths, He’s the One I know I can lean on. It’s a piece of evidence I’m holding tight to as I continue down this unknown road.

Rain in Slow Motion

I’m in fear of losing a moment; even while I am in it.

My awe and delight are tinged with the knowledge that this moment of bliss is temporary. Transitory views, experiences, encounters: I question their value.

What is it all for?

Moments here, then not here?

Because they are transitory, are they without value?

It’s too hard to accept sometimes - how utterly evanescent this all is - and there’s something in me that willfully fights it. Each time I put pen to paper or lift my camera or pick up the phone to call a dear one and describe the scene to them, I’m desperately trying to capture the fleeting and give it something of forever-ness. When I realize just what I’m doing, there’s a little embarrassment; who do I think I’m kidding? A journal, a picture...they are illusions of endurance. Paper, ink, digital footprints; vanity of vanities.

Kohelet is daily with me.

Just surrender to the moment. That’s the age-old wisdom that I daily try to relearn. But it’s hard and unnatural. If the moment is a mandala, there’s a bitter gritting of the teeth when I reach forward to brush it into the past. I accept intellectually that to resist is a pitifully lost battle. But deeper, in my soul, I don’t understand how to embrace that which disappears even as my arms are wrapped around it.

We left the desert sun above ground and ventured into Carlsbad Caverns last week. I was struck by a towering stalagmite more than five feet in diameter and so tall I had to crane my neck to see it’s reach. It’s the result of one drop of rain that fell into the desert above us and slowly oozed it’s way one thousand feet down, pulling along minerals as it went until - an almost silent drip.

Drip.

Drip.

It’s rain in slow motion: ephemeral desert rains spread over eons, and the darkness of the cavern shelters their dynamic record.

When we came back topside, wouldn’t you know it?

It was raining. Rain in the desert. A storm that flitted by, dropped it’s showers and disappeared almost as soon as it arrived, the dry ground acting like nothing had just happened.

It was a moment. Here. Gone. But a thousand feet down, the rain continues to hollow and carve and build and shape.

I watched a brilliant rainbow arch over us and felt wistful at its too-quick fading; on this plane of reality, I have to make peace with the impermanent. But how overly-simple it would be to assume that this plane of reality is all that really is.

Rerouting

Today marks one year since the phone call that rocked our world.

Exactly one year ago today, my mom texted me - Call when you can talk. I have something I need to tell you. It had already been an overwhelming week of personal crises and I was consciously grateful for her wisdom and love in patiently walking me through my stumbling difficulties - just like she always did. I thought this call was going to consist of additional insights she had into my struggle, some more encouraging words and blunt challenges that she had to offer.

"I had an ultrasound at the doctor a few days ago..."

She had been dealing with some kind of infection all summer. We had been together for family vacation only a week or so before and she struggled with painful symptoms off and on.

"They found a growth..."

If you've heard it before, you know the thud in your gut, the instantaneous nausea, the profound surrealness. If you haven't heard it, you've no doubt imagined it in the most fearful corners of your worrying mind...and it's every bit as horrifying as your nightmares.

We stumbled our way through the conversation. Both of us in shock, reaching for hope, reminding each other that we didn't know if it was horrible and terrible, or just your run-of-the-mill bad. It was in her endometrium, but it hadn't been staged yet. Maybe it was early enough to be dealt with.

A few days later, as we were struggling to our feet after being hit with that wave of shocking news, Mom left us a message on our family chat - Stage 4 uterine serous carcinoma, inoperable.

It's understandable, what comes along with that kind of news: the terror of impending loss, the frantic search for alternative prognoses, the begging G-d, the longest hugs, the hidden tears, the miraculous good days, the despairing bad days. This year passed by in a blur of all that and more. I gave lip-service to the inconceivable concept that she might not make it; but it was only once I got the text - "She's gone"- that I realized that I never really believed it could happen to her.

That what could happen?

You know. Mortality.

This has been a year of holding breath, of treading water, of my world constricting smaller and smaller until it seemed to consist of only one particular point.

The week after shiva, as the Engineer and I were laying out in the sunshine, we tried to lean against the wall surrounding that One Particular Point and imagine that there was something else that existed. We talked about taking a trip to visit grandparents and felt the walls give just a inch. We figured we might as well extend that trip by a few weeks since he was working remotely and the walls bowed like a rib cage expanding around a deep breath.

What if we just traveled for the rest of the year until they call me back to the office? And with that suggestion, the emotional Big Bang vaporized the suffocating walls and that One Particular Point exploded out and re-condensed into everything.

This trip is to give the kids a piece of her - of the girl who was raised on three continents, who didn't have just one "home", who experienced early such a variety of lifestyles and people that stoked lifelong curiosity and genuine empathy and the ability to relate with ease to folks of all backgrounds.

This trip is to push off the ill-fitting return to normalcy that I'm just not ready for - because the world is not normal with her not in in.

This trip is to give us the chance to heal together. We've had our eyes focused in the same direction, and now that the fight is over, we're looking at each other all battered and bleary-eyed. It's time to pull each other closer and affirm that life with you in it is life I still want to be a part of.

This trip is to fulfill a daydream we've shared on and off for years, fueled by the keen realization that the future is uncertain, nothing lasts forever and now is the only moment we are guaranteed.

We don't know where we're going exactly. We just know that we're going. This is truly a ramble - no destination in mind. Just the need to have our external reality match the transient nature of life that we are feeling so sharply.

This year has dealt so many of us some knee kicks in one way or another. I know I'm not alone in feeling disoriented in the current world. To you reading this - yes, you - I'm reaching out my hand and giving yours a little squeeze. It will be ok. May we have the courage to embrace the inescapable reality that nothing in this world lasts forever - and to look for seeds of transcendence which are tiny tastes of what lies beyond the limits of this very limited world.