The Puzzlement of People

Earlier this month we visited Big Bend National Park in west Texas. The climax of one particular and otherwise easy hike involved a precarious climb up a series of boulders. Just as we were scratching our heads and evaluating the least treacherous option, a group of three hikers were descending along the same route. Seeing our apprehension, the three spread out, like a bucket brigade, and pulled us forward from one to the next and the next until we reached the safety of the plateau at trail's end. They were, we told them, visiting angels.

I thought of those angels yesterday in the context of two airports, a regional jet, and my 96 year old father for whom mobility isn't as simple as it once was. He was whisked through security and down the length of the terminal by cheerful, expediting employees who would not countenance interference. Inside the plane, and separated by several rows, one after another fellow traveler recognized his need and took him under their wing, helping however they could.

"People are good," he observed at the end of the day.

The kindness of strangers. The visitation of angels.

Juxtaposing these kindnesses, of course, is the story of a crazed ideologue who broke into the home of the Speaker of the United States House of Representative and, failing to locate the Speaker, attacked and seriously injured her husband with a hammer.

It's hard to hold these two expressions of the human race in tandem. One seems so filled with grace and generosity, the other with such malice and unmitigated, untethered aggression. Like the animalistic, faux patriotism that boiled into violence on January 6, 2021, it is the self-justifying "annihilate opposition at any cost", "end justifies the means" moral disintegration that is the stuff of anarchy. Under the guise of the "defense of freedom," it represents humanity's worst expression. Let me state the obvious: civilized, morally mature people do not act this way. They do not attack each other with hammers when they disagree.  No matter the substance of our disagreement, decent people simply do not act this way.

But here we are, arguing about who is to blame. We live in strange times when, to bastardize Charles Dickens, the best of human nature and the worst of human nature cohabit a razor's edge. But heretofore our collective "better nature" has harnessed and redirected our stormier, more destructive selves. Presently we seem to be baiting and sheltering with contrived justification our vilest impulses.

We lend a selfless hand. When that hand isn't wielding a hammer.

Just when we convince ourselves of our advanced sophistication, we prove how little we have evolved. The jungle is not far behind us.

Or the zoo.

3500 years after Moses, 2000 years after Jesus, 1500 years after Mohammed we are still attacking each other with hammers.

I'd say the religious among us need to step up our game. If we haven't forgotten everything we once were taught, we clearly yet have a long way to go in figuring out what to do with it.

Gracious generosity and violent coercion arm wrestling for the soul of a people.

It remains to be seen who will prevail.

We people are a puzzle.

The Enveloping Expanse

Arriving at dusk, the evening cool is a deceptive welcome, belying the withering sun that will find us on the hikes of subsequent days. The baking heat creeps up on you, covertly, like the ocotillo thorns veiled behind the succulent leaves. And yet your feet keep moving, drawn forward along the stony sand - sometimes upward, sometimes downward, but inexorably onward - beckoned by an inarticulate invitation; felt, rather than heard, toward...

What?

Perhaps toward more of oneself. Perhaps into a vaster comprehension of the yet inscrutable magnitude of creation's subtle immensity and complexity. Perhaps those are ultimately one and the same. These lands - we - are as towering and sculpted as the stone canyon walls; as tenacious as the desert streams; as poised and posed as the balanced rocks; as beautifully shy as the succulent blooms, seduced into color by the evanescent dew; as determined as the coyote scavenging for food; as dangerous as the mountain lions and as irritating as the thorns; as known and still unexplored as the caves, the canyons, the looming peaks, the miles of cactus-pocked sand.

Big Bend is as evocatively compelling as it is foreboding and dangerous. Like trekking the soul, exploring this larger than life landscape is as precarious as it is instructive; as grueling as it is nourishing.

Heavy-soled shoes seeking purchase; bodies bending to avoid the pricklies protruding from almost everywhere; eyes scanning for spiders or snakes.

Everything at Big Bend National Park bites, burns, punctures, trips or stings.

And takes your breath away with awe.

When the heat finally finds you, next steps begin to elude you.
​"I look to the hills. Where does my help come from​?"
Water bottles are soon as exhausted as legs. Lips crack. There are miles to go.

How can one endure an hour longer?
How can one possibly leave?

The enveloping expanse first shrinks, then expands you; first decimates, then opens you to unexperienced majesty.

My foot slips climbing the stones, who unapologetically scold, "Pay attention!" My sleeve snags on an encroaching thorn which scoffs and advises me, "Watch where you are going!" A snake slithers across the trail, pausing long enough to admonish me that I am not the only one here. My irises swing between expansion and contraction, torn between taking in the horizon versus focusing on the details.

And then the sun goes down - the mountains and stones and fatigue dissolve into stars. Black and unmitigated sky as vast as the sands, and stars the diamonds envy.

And we are one of them - one with them - born by the desert winds and God's own Spirit into the heavens.

And then the sun rises, and all begins again.