the .two

since the shack, almost everyone i know has asked me about multnomah falls. "have you seen it?" "have you been there?" "did you read that book?" "i heard a native american woman jumped off it, is that true?"and so on and so forth. well, you can all back off. this past weekend i hiked all around multnomah falls. here it is in all its splendor.

here is a bonus view from the top, looking down.

now, you may be asking yourself: how did tim get up there? well, i'll gladly answer you: he hiked up there. after that, you may be asking yourself this: isn't tim in terrible shape? well yes, i am in terrible shape. how did this happen?

one fateful day, one of my roommates asked if i wanted to go hiking. i did and decided to go. we were going to go with his 47 year old brother. i figured i'd be safe then. he couldn't do too much, he's 47 afterall. well, i'm an idiot. here is a picture that proves i am an idiot and shows one of the 5 or so waterfalls i saw and what i feel is a decent beard:

you see, chris's brother is working on getting into climbing shape for the spring when he climbs mt. hood again. thus, he was in much better shape than i was hoping he would be. i'm in shape if you count round.

this man led the way: head down, plowing forth. i kept up. we did somewhere like 5.2 miles or so i was told. though, i think it might have been more if the simple math i did was correct. he kept throwing distances at me and i swear they added up to something more like 11.2 miles. either way, there was definitely a .2 involved. if life has taught me anything, it is always the .2 that gets you. the .2 makes your butt hurt, your lower back hurt and basically your entire being hurt.

there always seems to be a little extra that you don't think you can do. typically you can. a lot of the time you don't have a 47-year old man to drive you along. but, you do need somebody or somebodies to push you, to hold you accountable, to be a part of your life. hiking alone is silly.

if there is one thing i am learning out here, it is that having people you care about is precious. i've got a lot of friends, a lot of people i know, that are struggling with life right now. to a degree i am one of them. it sucks to feel like you've got nothing that inspires you, that gives you satisfaction or that you love doing.

we need people. they need us. we weren't meant to live alone, to struggle alone, to be happy alone. as i've read through the old and new testaments these last few months, community has shouted loudest in the text, in God's word. i feel like we need to reach out. living alone is silly.


God is in nature communal. He is trinitarian. He is within a divine community in essence. God is three in one (any attempt i've made to explain this further falls short of that simple truth). what is rediculous is that we are not only invited into the Trinity, Jesus himself prays that we will engage with that fellowship in john 17.

i need to grab a hold of this perspective. i need to realize the value of the offer out on the table. how amazing it is that God wants us. in Christ, we have amazing things in our possession and still more amazing things to come. if you don't believe me, read through the first three chapters of ephesians and hear what this relationship with God does in the believer's life.in the attempts to pursue whatever the heck we are pursuing, we can lose sight of what we can have and what we do have.

in the exhaustion of the hike, when the extra .2 has sucked all the oxygen from your lungs, let those people around you keep you going. in doing so, you'll help them too. i think that as we learn to do that we start to learn more about what it means to be in community with the God that loves us so deeply. i'll leave you with a picture of a place made for thinking way too deep about life.

holy ink

recently a friend of mine lost her pen, one of her two favorites, and it happened when i was with her. she got this pen when she graduated from college, from the college. it was a sentimentally unique pen and a solid writing pen with pine cones that fell from a tree. the loss made her a bit sad. i'm not sure if it was my fault, possibly was in a strange church + bag incident, but i took it upon myself to get a new one.

so, i emailed the alumni association of her college. here are a few excerpts from my initial email, where i unashamedly begged for a pen from a guy named tad (i used his name a lot in the email):
"Tad, I know that sometimes our jobs can get wrapped up in the mundane and the thankless tasks, then we can begin to wonder if we are making a difference. This is your chance to know you have blessed the life of one of your own, a fellow pirate out in the world."
&
"I cannot do this without you, Tad. I also understand that your life and job have much more important duties to undertake but this is an opportunity for something epic and heroic, if I may really stretch the meaning of those words."

i received an email back from another member of the alumni association, Kim, with good news:
"I'm going to put a pen in the mail to you today so that you can bring a smile to her face as she watches the pine cone fall over and over again!"

alright, now i was excited. the pen was on its way, thus i replied. again, a sampling:
"I had a good feeling about you good people, Kim. You've given me a new perspective on pirates. No longer are they mindless plunderers simply out for themselves. Nay, pirates are charitable lovers of life with hearts of amazing capacity."
&
"Thank you for this kindness. You Kim, if I may use a word I recently heard a rambunctious teen utter just yesterday, rock."

i waited patiently and on one rainy day in portland the sun broke through the clouds. a thick envelope, jammed quite unlovingly into my tiny mailbox by a surely disgruntled undergrad postal worker, was revealed when i opened the small mail door. with all my might, i maneuvered and navigated the envelope into my hands, opening it to find the pen i had sought and a bonus pen (though this bonus pen did not contain the novelty of its travelling companion, it was a nice addition).

proudly, i give the pen to my friend. she is happy to have it, grateful as well. way to go me. i felt a small bit of satisfaction. then the story of my life unfolds in all its comedic tragedy.

the pen does not write.

what? she gets a few sentences out of it. after that, she can only scratch her words onto the paper. no amount of spit or will-power can get this thing to release a drop of ink. oh, how i tried. it is now a useless pen, good only for watching pine cones fall from the tree into the waiting arms of a motionless man. that novelty only serves as a welcome distraction whilst taking notes. 'whilst' is under utilized.

this bothered me on a purely metaphorical level. even when i've done all i can do for something to succeed and go right and even when it feels like i have and it has, something falls apart that i have no control over. if it isn't obvious, i do feel something for this girl and she knows it (this is a subject i've intentionally never written about on this endeavor and i do so now with incredible hesitation and internal objection.). but i cannot make her write, so to speak. God knows what will happen with her, God knows i don't.

i just identified with this dry pen scene too much. i could make a thousand gestures and they could all come up dried-out: oh, so close to success but just a little closer to failure. but at some point they work their way out of my control. this isn't my fault, the pen. but, come on. why couldn't the pen work? where is the dang ink?

i hate that there are so may dry pens in life. it sucks that we can want something -this is about more than a girl here- and do everything right to get it, but we don't. life is so out of our control. our planning, our hard work, our wanting can all add up to a big pile of nothing with heavy parts disappointment. God then becomes the object of our anger, our disappointment, our empty hands. who else is there to blame after i get tired of blaming myself?

then, i see that my desires are all out of whack. i wanted a person, a purpose, a characteristic i don't possess, a status, a change, meaning, for my beard to be fuller on my cheeks and that spot between my soul patch and chin, and a ridiculous amount of things before i wanted to be with God. i thought that amassing all of those things would add up to a full life, a satisfied life. but as augustine said (in paraphrase): our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. our lives are empty until they are filled up with God, with Love itself, with holy ink.

deep down, i want God in everything in my life. but, i've got this habit of separating Him from a lot of things. this one hurts to write: God is not enough for me. obviously that is a subjective truth about my life that contradicts the objective truth that only God is truly enough. God is all i need: this is what i am working towards.

right now, i've got a dried up pen in a lot of areas of my life. i'm grateful for the places ink is not in short supply and i'm working on that God in everything process. i want to get to that place where i don't really care what i've got or where i am because i've got God and i'm in His arms.