Safety and Vulnerability

I love sailing. My direct experience in it is weak (but not absent), but my pondering on it, reading about it in novels, and thinking of some of the life lessons it teaches is rich. For instance, when we are in a small vessel floating in an infinite sea, all pretense in stripped away and we are exposed to a harsh reality: that we indeed are exposed. We are at the mercy of the elements, and what is worse, they are utterly without mercy. Rain, wind, and even ice conspire to challenge, nay even sometimes seem to mock, our well-being and lives. At least, some may think, one is somewhat safe in port. Why do others ride the storm, risk their existence for what is unsure? Treasure? New land?
Hence, we come to Safety and Vulnerability. These two concepts exist in intimate, tender, and beautiful ways in humanity. I would suggest that our deep ability both to feel each and to allow courage -- in the face of vulnerability -- to supersede safety is something that makes us as humans very special, for it is not that some remain in security and others render their lives vulnerable (or, yes, dangerous) because the idea of safety (for it is not a thing, an absolute, but a feeling) has no appeal or grab upon the risk-takers, but quite the contrary. In other words, the vulnerable choose their path all-the-more because they feel both emotions -- a desire for safety and a reticence at fear -- in a much raw-er way than those secure, and yet choose the harder way, giving heed to vulnerability rather than security. . . but is it truly the more difficult path??
First, consider safety. It is something many long for and crave. It is the feeling of being insulated from the dangers that surround us. It can act as a buffer in order to operate under difficult circumstances, sometimes leading us to forget our dangers. It is also what holds us back (settling for it instead of chasing our dreams) more than anything else. Whats more, it is more imagined than real.
What safety covers us from is vulnerability. Vulnerability is what allows grace to flow into our lives. It allows kindness and all healing to reach us.Otherwise we spend our lives squirming at every close touch, every nearly-dear friend, every healing emissary. Of the countless examples from my own life, I think of spine therapy. A man in California, blessed still by life, told me of a car accident he was in where the vehicle rolled multiple times. He told me of the pain, the feeling of being imprisoned by his own body, and of the tortuous therapy sessions. He made the observation that only by allowing the physician, a chiropractor, to touch and apply force to his body, and informing Doctor where it hurt the most, was he able to receive eventual relief. Now, make no mistake, the least painful thing to do in the present moment would have been to keep silence over his hidden aches, but he knew that only through pain and exposure could he receive the full benefit -- yea, arguably the only benefit, other options offering nothing -- of his therapy sessions. I suppose one could argue that other options would offer no benefit other than that of security, or safety (in this case from heightened pain). As it is with this case, so it is with life. Pain or suffering and healing or improvement often come in the same package, which is why some blessings of our mortal journey seem like a curse at the present moment, but nevertheless yields "the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." I commented on this story in a religious discussion in later years, commenting that "when given the possibility of full healing by God, we are tempted to shrink and try to accept partial healing and, upon Him examining our darkest corners, exclaim 'No, Please. Don't look there, its too painful,' but in this context, vulnerability is a very good thing".  To extend the metaphor further, if we are to be exercised, or stretched and have our capacities enlarged, by the pain and suffering which vulnerability allows, how can we remain in safety, away from the gym, and rightly be upset when we remain weak, or struggle with the same chronic spiritual pains for years and years?
I therefore set out to the road, with little but my sleeping bag, bicycle, and a few hundred dollars in hand, relying on my own strength and soon thereafter by the human kindness offered to me at every turn. You just learn to accept it. Once you learn to love yourself, you come to cherish it and bask in the goodness in humanity that inspires naught but faith in hope in your kind. You come upon fresh shores, rich and teeming with life and abundance, even combinations of colors you had never supposed!

And thus many go, all they go who know they must, 

Set out with muster to abandon safe harbor, or vagaries thereof. 

For winds blow to those at sea, not to those moored in misery,

But secure. Out of port, out onto a sea of uncertainty,  

Carried forth by the steady breeze and sunshine of kind humanity

Riding upon the wind, to where it knows they must go 

(To those who know) It will take them

For you see, gentle readers, safety is an illusion. The harshest dangers we fear exist for those in proximity as well to those far away. The hurricanes that do the most damage always wreck as many ships at harbor as those set sail.

Travel

We all desire this. We all desire to move and expand our horizons. Some seek travel as a means of pleasure. Others seek it as a rite of passage. Countless souls long to become a better person for their travels. With reasons all our own, many will go forth to find what this huge, magnificent world we call Earth can offer them. As such, we all are the captains of our own ship. Above that, only each of us has the star-map to our own vessels. Each route we travel is our own. I have traveled for all the above reasons. However, upon explaining the purpose of this blog to a new friend, I realized that the most beautiful reason to travel is to give love. How many people do all this travel because what they get out of it more than anything is love: experiencing love of mankind and receiving the love of others. I think of the many travel documentaries I have watched, whether by land or sea, and how often I see the purity and sincerity of travelers' interactions with another, especially those traveling on little-to-no money. I think of my own travels last year. The greatest thing I experienced was not the landscape, but "the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men." Perhaps that is what draws people out of their home ports, embarking on strange and stormy seas, being fed on the love of perfect strangers. I list one a quote from one of my favorite books

[Mark] was twenty-one years old and had just graduated from Swarthmore with a degree in agricultural science, a major they did not offer but one he'd put together for himself out of classes in biology, chemistry, and economics. He wanted to see what farming was like across America, and to see what rural life was like, and he wanted to see it up close. He set off from his parents house in New Paltz, his bicycle loaded down with a tent and a change of clothes, and rode west. It was summer, and he told his grandmother he'd spend Christmas with her at her home in California. He took very little money with him, partly because he had very little money at the time and apartly because he had a sense that money would insulate him from his adventure. The first week of his trip he rode two days through a difficult patch of construction in New Jersey, feling frazzled by the noise of trucks and by the heat bouncing off the asphalt. Late one afternoon he saw a hiker coming toward him on the other side of the road, loaded down with gear that looked a lot like his. His name was Carl and he'd come from Seattle, biking the same route that Mark was just setting out on, but in the opposite direction. Carl told Mark what an awful trip he was about to have, what an awful country America was, rife with mean-spirited people and patrolled by bully cops who were just looking for an excuse to give you trouble. Then they went their separate ways, Carl pointed east, with Mark's parents' address in his pocket, and Mark pointed west. . . The rest of the trip was exactly like that, full of good people offering food and shelter and kindness, genuine kindness. At the end of his day of travel Mark would look for a certain type of farm, with a garden, not too big and not too polished, but in good repair, without the whiff of desperation. He'd knock on a farmhouse door and ask if it would be all right to camp somewhere on their place. He was never refused, not once. Nine times out of ten the door would open and the next thing he knew he'd be saying grace with a family at their dinner table, and soon after he'd find himself tucked into a bed in the guest room. He'd often spend a day or two working on the place, and in this way he saw all sorts of different farms and met all kinds of farm families. He saw feed lots and citrus plantations. he hoed beans on a small-scale organic vegetable farm and rode a combine through a thousand acres of corn, the corn pouring out of the machine like a smooth gold river. He stopped to get maps at a Chamber of Commerce in the middle of country, and the man at the desk went out to the car and came back with a pack of new socks. 'Here,' he said, 'You always need a good socks on a trip like this.' He stayed four or five days with a family that grew corn and beans in Indiana. The wife, Connie, ran a beauty salon, and after Mark was fed and rested she took him into town and sat him in her chair and washed his hair, twice, because the water was still brown after the first washing, and then she gave him a haircut. Connie still sends him Christmas cards, pictures of her grandkids tucked inside. I'd seen them, so I knew it was true.

I remember meeting people throughout my travels, and I often marveled at the look in their eyes and pondered, "what do they seek? They are looking for something. What??" We seek to experience love in its purity. That is what our soul hungers for. Tale after tale of wanderers I have crossed reveals that what they find more than anything else is the pure love of Christ, manifested in the kind words and deeds of God's children. Respect is love. Civility is love. We ask and plead for it always.
You also come to see the silly majesty of the children of this earth. I just made a bus I could not afford to miss be cause a man with a heavy stupid-looking electric bicycle need it to be wheelchair-lifted onto the bus, and the bus driver was new and never had to do that before, and he kept telling this pretty young newcomer how to do it and it bugged her, you could tell. All the people on the bus got a kick out of it. You always remember the moments you are on fire, consumed spiritually by the playful grandeur of this world-weave, and, just like a child's, your body is affected with tremors and sheer excitability. I loved my night in Denver after meeting the salt-and-pepper-mustached high old man, with a child's smile as big as Texas, and telling it to my friend as I climbed the stairs of a hotel where I'd stay the night with a friend. I was on fire too that morning in Salt Lake City, the wind ripping through the rail-way-lined streets, wild pre-sunrise air checking the heat in my face. Now, going back to my point about how the traveler seeks love more than anything else, I would pose a question: Why does the proverbial Jack Doe who goes traveling, gets nice hotels, plans his sight-seeing and event-attending as if he were still back home at a job, takes airplanes to and from destinations returns from his trip wanting to go back and do it again, or wondering why things weren't more wonderful during their venture? I would call your attention back to the story from "The Dirty Life". The aforementioned Mr. Doe interacted with objects aplenty, it is true. He also spend much hard-earned capital. What he failed to realize that the services and comforts he received also insulated him from other people. His materials abounded, and his increase in relationships was wanting. When I traveled with little funds, I got love. I got relationships. And I was able to give. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, the love comes. As it is in Christian Theology, so it is upon God's earth. My greyhound ride back was much better this time because I thrived not on the comfort of the seats, but on the comfort and warmth of the smiles and kinship of those beside me. We travel for the thrills it is true, but what of the soul? Does it render us a better person, a holier disciple?

Homeless

As I planned this post, I thought of the words of our Savior, born to transient parents in Bethlehem, who responded to a would-be disciple with these words:

The snakes have dens, and the foxes have holes, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay his head.

I met a variety of people today, who in my mind were exactly as I: without abode. Darrell, the wandering invalid. Max, by Blessed Heart Catholic Church, the Job of Denver. Ron, the content bum, having mastered his lot, lay in a sleeping bag by a walking trail. Gary, the established wino with his own "little piece of heaven" as I called it, nestled between a brick wall and a small fenced-in grassy plot, complete with a tent (I only saw all this due to the fact that I walked down the hill from the Interstate overlooking his kingdom). A whole community of homeless people at the shelter, who had the pleasure of getting a hot meal  (boy was it good!), which made me completely open to the idea of being "stuck" for a few days longer. A lot more hope and excitement than you might think would exist in such a dining hall. Strangely, it had the same animated feel of the shelter where I volunteered in California during my 2-year mission for Christ, serving food to these precious souls. And finally, the homeless gentleman who goes un-named. He was so high, and all smiles. He was in his 60s or 70s, served in Viet-nam, and had a booger laying on his salt-and-pepper mustache. He laughed with the eyes of a child. His smile was the kind that lights you up. Oh goodness, I'll never forget him.  He was the most adorable little homeless man I've ever seen in my life! I feel that once I was entirely open to associating, such to accept a hot meal from kind strangers, that Denver became not just a city but a gathering of God's beautiful children, no matter their station in life. I can honestly see how people get comfortable in it, though there is no reason to take up apathy and sloth alongside it. The next morning I got a ride out to Utah. I took it easy, and basked on the side of the highway, eating a simple meal. I think of the words of King Benjamin,

Behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not depend on that same being, even God, for all the substance which we do have?

These words penetrate my heart. I always want to have something I can give. I always want to have something I can give to anybody in general, whether starved of food or fondness for another.