There's No Place Like it... part 2

Psalm 27:14   "Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD."

Waiting is not a strong point for me. Waiting carries with it the understanding that you are not able to move from the current position because something is coming that you need.  For instance, I can remember a year where Cabbage Patch Dolls were really popular.  My parents happened to get in before the craze really took place (crazy it was because those dolls were the ugliest toys I've ever seen - except for Garbage Pail Kids) but some parents were waiting in line at the store overnight so they could buy one of the misshapen dolls with masses of thick scraggly hair.  If they left the line to go to the bathroom, their waiting would be for naught.  If they didn't wait, they'd miss out. 

I couldn't leave my position at the airport, standing on the curb in Minneapolis.  In the ninety-five degree Fahrenheit heat, I was immobile in waiting for the white Pacifica to arrive.  If I were to move, I might miss my brother and his family.  If I were to move, they might have to make another lap around the highly reconstructioned airport.  If I were to move, I'd probably suffer the wrath of Ryan, which is not really wrath, but more like an uncomfortable silence.  That's how my brother punishes me: small grin on his face, blue eyes staring me down and no words to let me know that, "you should have just stayed put."

But that's neither here nor there because within minutes the car towing a the bass boat pulled up in the left hand lane.  It's incredibly difficult to park the connected car and boat so they just kind of pulled up slowly rolling to a halt. 

In the long line of things that you shouldn't have to wait for, waiting for your brother comes only after the short list of Christmas Eve and the moments after you ask the question, "Will you marry me?"

I threw my suitcases in the boat because there wasn't any room in the back of the car.  Packed to the hilt with kids, kids' entertainment devices, kids' food and kids games, I popped up front with my brother over-the-moon-happy that they were able to pick me up at the airport.  As I hugged him for the first time, it was like squeezing myself.  We still look alike; we still sound alike.  I once told the congregation that when I was lonely for my brother, I would record a message on my own answering machine that said, "Hey bro, this is Ryan.  Just wanted you to know that I miss you." 

We drove about three and a half hours that night telling stories punctuating them with superlatives of the amazingness of life and how fast it goes.  It had been two and a half years since I had seen any of my brothers or sisters - it didn't seem that long.  Where did the time go?  Life is a lot like a tether ball, I think.  When you play tether ball, each person takes a swing at the ball and if you hit it, it wraps around the pole.  As the game begins the ball moves really slowly, but the longer you hit it, it begins to circle faster and faster making the same rounds and eventually it stops after exhausting the energy given it.  Life goes slow when we are younger, smaller and have plenty of energy to expend, but the longer life endures, if we are so blessed, the faster it seems to go even though the minutes and hours stay the same until eventually, when we have expended all the energy given us, we stop.

My brother is the chaplain at Concordia University in Seward Nebraska and my sister-in-law, Sarah, is a doctor in Lincoln.  They make an incredible couple and it is evident to everyone who follows my brothers Facebook page that he adores her like no one else in the world.  We talked about their life together, the vacations that they have done together, their ability to raise excellent kids and by the time we reached Two Harbors, Minnesota, the time seemed to have passed like another thwack of the tetherball. 

When we reached the hotel, our friends Matt and Anji greeted us for the night.  Matt is one of our friends from college who lived on the same floor as Ryan and I.  As I was attempting to escape jet lag, we stayed up until almost midnight sifting through all the old stories and learning all the new ones.    It was going to be a good week.

Lake Superior is, as Thunder Bay's motto states, superior by nature.  Lake Superior is the largest lake in the world with regards to surface area and is the third most voluminous.  It is said that if Lake Superior were drained, it would cover the surface area of both North and South America to a depth of one foot.  I didn't do the statistics; I let Wikipedia do it for me, but it's an interesting fact if it is true.  During storm season, wave heights have been measure up to twenty feet high; some as high as thirty feet. 

It's a cold lake and as we woke up in the morning, kids swirling about the legs of adults.  We sat on the shore of the lake looking out over the vastness of the water.  Three hundred and fifty miles across and one hundred and sixty wide.  Pebbles, warming in the sun, were being tossed about the shore by Matt and Anji's children and I watched them for a while before approaching.  There is something special about kids and the way they interact with the world.  For many of them, there is nothing as enjoyable as simply throwing rocks into the water to watch them splash, or to see how many times they can skip, then watching the effects of the waves ripple out in concentric circles to far off shores.  Kids like to make waves.  Do we ever stop being kids?

Back in North America making waves.  This first stop at Lake Superior was good for me.  It never changes.  My family had been going to the same place in Canada every year; the feeling of anticipation and the presence of patience was overwhelming.  If parting is such sweet sorrow then practicing patience is such sour sorrow.

But then, almost suddenly, I had arrived and the majesty of the lake was before me, its ever present motion does not offer a reflection.  You must keep moving.  So we did.  For breakfast, I ordered some kind of omelet with wild rice.  That in itself is not really important, but it was the accent of the waitress that caught my ear.  It had been a long time since I'd been surrounded by the hardness of the Midwestern American accent; the hard 'r's made me smile.  It was another one of the things that I'd missed and hadn't recognized it; I was the one without an accent.  During my trip a few people would tell me that I was beginning to register an Australian accent.  There is nothing wrong with the Australian twang, but deep inside me, I didn't want others to think my speech was morphing or that I was, if you will, betraying my homeland by gathering a different distinctness in speech.  Perhaps I was overreacting, but I made a conscious effort to sound as American as possible.

Our drive up the 'coast', or shoreline, was decidedly uneventful.  The kids played their games; the adults told about theirs and soon we were at Gooseberry State Falls hiking area.  We disembarked from the cars, stretched our legs, filled water bottles and headed off into the bush for a walk along the rushing waters.  For miles we had passed the coursing waters from swollen rivers emptying in a brown, slushy mass into Superior.  Rains had created an northern wonderland with beautiful wildflowers and tall grasses waving to us along side the road.  As we hiked up the trail, we looked over the angry river roaring at us, spraying us with mist and baptizing us with the promise of new memories to come.  It was not a difficult hike, but on the back end to the falls, there were many stairs.   It would have been easier for us to forego the stairs and just stare over the river, but the falls beckoned to us.  Aurally, we could hear the crashing water over the rocks.  Just to see it would be amazing, but that would take some effort.  As with all of life, if you want to experience something incredible, effort is required.

We live in a generation that seeks to expend as little energy as possible.  We expect that experiences will be brought to us, that somehow the internet or our cell phones will help us to enjoy life at its greatest.  We expect that a movie or a video about Lake Superior will suffice and bring us joy, but this generation, and its presumed allergy to patience, will slowly sink into the depths of its own self interest eventually if we don't get out, put our screens down and feel - literally feel the world around us; experience the nervousness of descending the stairs to see the majesty of a waterfall in flooded waters.  As we reached the falls, I took a few moments to sit in the dirt to feel the presence of God in that moment.  Just like Moses was required to take off his sandals in the holy place, so I felt connected to earth in that holy place by touching the ground, the leaves, the water and, seemingly, the sky.  With energy expended, one of the great places in the world was revealed. 

But then we had to climb the stairs to go back. 

Any time you have to leave a place, the return seems more grueling.  Climbing the stairs was difficult, especially for Ryan as he couldn't find his socks and was wearing flip flops (thongs) instead.  Walking back down the path back to the cars was a bittersweet moment.  It was hard to leave a place of beauty, but the sweetness that was to come was that I would soon see my parents and my sister Dani and her family as soon as we crossed the border into Canada. 

It was time to ascend the stairs.