Thursday September 30, 2021

On the last day of this summer’s hiking camp, we hiked out to where Ripple Rock used to be, in the channel between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland.

             “Used to be” immediately brands the speaker as an old-timer. 

            I recall the late Rod Booth giving instructions to get from the United Church’s training centre in Naramata to the high school in Penticton, about 15 km away. It went like this: “Turn right where the riding stable used to be. Where the fruit stand used to be, turn left. Go straight until you get to where the packing house used to be….”

            The room erupted in laughter. Long-time conference attenders knew exactly what he was talking about; newcomers were utterly baffled. 

            Anyway, we hiked – over rocks and roots -- to where Ripple Rock used to be. 

            At one time, Ripple Rock was a major maritime hazard. Two great spikes of rock jutted up from the sea floor, right in the middle of Seymour Narrows, barely three metres below the surface at low tide. Tides raced in and out of what used to be the Gulf of Georgia, now the Salish Sea, at 15 km/hr. They created eddies and whirlpools that could spin smaller craft around, and sink some. 

            Even big freighters could get swung off their path. 

            Official statistics claim that it wrecked more than 20 large vessels, well over 100 smaller ones, and took several hundred lives. 

            So in the 1950s, the federal government resolved to remove Ripple Rock forever. They drilled tunnels under the sea, then up into the rock’s twin peaks. They packed the tunnels with 1,400 tons of high explosive. 

            On April 5, 1958, they blew up Ripple Rock in the world’s largest non-nuclear peacetime explosion. Also the first event ever televised nationally, live, on CBC. 

            When the shards and seawater settled, Ripple Rock was now 20 metres underwater. 

            The Pacific Ocean’s surge through Seymour Narrows now barely ripples the surface. 

            So we hiked to a viewpoint, to see a rock that used to be there, but wasn’t there anymore, and hadn’t been there for 63 years, and that we couldn’t have seen even if it had been there, because it was all under the surface anyway. 

            As I think back, that hike feels symbolic of grieving. Since my wife died, I’m often asked, “How are you doing?” I usually answer, “Fine, thanks.”

            On the surface, that’s true. I write my regular columns. I cook something more than chicken strips. My dog provides company, and takes me for three walks every day. 

            On the surface, life flows as smoothly as the sea pouring past the remains of Ripple Rock. 

            But underneath, there has been a lot of roiling and churning. An undercurrent of anger -- that 60 years of togetherness should end this way. Also anger at pandemic lockdowns that restricted contact with the people I most needed contact with.  A loss of purpose – for those final years, I knew exactly my role; now I don’t. And a sense of sitting under Damocles’ sword; if death can take Joan, am I next?

            So much of life now is “what used to be.”

            Ripple Rock was a thought-provoking way to end a season. 

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Copyright © 2021 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

            To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

After reading last week’s column on how the various senses might interact, John Willems asked a question I had not thought of: “So, what are the colours of prayer?” He suggested this might be “a wonderful exercise of mental gymnastics, as I consider different denominational tribes’ expressions in prayer.” 

In last week’s column, I wrote, " I wonder if humanity’s original sin might be our obsession with labelling and categorizing our experiences.”

            Kim MacMillan picked up on that theme: “I suggest that this is true for only certain strands of humanity, particularly those who have inherited the Greek way of thinking and using language (and who dominate in this world). In one of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essays in her wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, she writes of her struggles to learn her native Anishinaabe language. She was already well versed in the language of botany, of science, but was trying to learn a language that reflected a different world view. She was especially frustrated by a vocabulary list that defined various things as verbs. For example the word “bay” was defined as “being a bay”. As she reflected on that she realized that all the things that constitute a bay – the water, the sand, the rocks – could all be part of something else but they are currently part of this process that is a bay. 

            “Taking that idea further, she realizes that English (and science) makes most everything into a thing, an it. It is therefore separate from us (and consequently can be exploited). In the Anishinaabe culture, things are more like people – fluid and changing – a who – to be related to. That leads to a radically different relationship with the whole of creation. As you write, ‘nothing stands alone.’” 

On a similar theme, David Winans wrote, “The concept of Original Sin bothers on many levels.  For the longest time I rationalized away the bothersome concept by picturing a newborn and telling myself that this so precious, so alive, so innocent being could not have possibly committed a sin. Thus, continued the rationalization, Original Sin doesn’t hold up as inherent to a human being and can be dismissed. 

            “The bothersome nature of the concept returned when I came across the notion that laziness is the original sin.  I had to admit that even an infant will turn to the path of least resistance in order to get changed, get warm, or get fed.  I credit my first born with hammering home this insight.  

            “Underlying your offering of labeling as original sin is judgement.  Judgement dams up the works! No sooner do I make a judgement, i.e., apply a label, then I stop considering alternatives and limit all the possibilities that might be realized by continuing consideration.  Acceptance, on the other hand, permits flow, movement, discovery!  Even if the determination of acceptance’s journey becomes preference for an earlier possibility, it’s better for the comparisons.  Labeling, and its prerequisite of judgement, is a worthy nominee for original sin beginning about age two!

            “How refreshing to have a reminder that a full five-sense experience enriches far more fully than the exercise thinned out by a label or two!”

Tom Watson expanded the significance of the senses: “I have played drums in a variety of bands since I was 15. There are some musicians—for example pianists—who can play note-perfect but lack any sense of ‘feel’ for the music. And there are those who play with feeling. Accompanying the former is work. Accompanying the latter...well, you can play for three hours and it still feels as if you just started the gig.”

Isabel Gibson gave my experience a name/label: “Perceiving one sensory input in terms of another is called synesthesia (link below). While it can't be forced, maybe we would all do better to try to see all of Creation as one glorious whole.”

            Read more at https://www.webmd.com/brain/what-is-synesthesia

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Psalm paraphrase

The Revised Common Lectionary gives me a choice of two psalms for this Sunday: Psalm 26, or Psalm 8. For me, there is no comparison. Here’s a version of Psalm 8.

My God, my God! How amazing you are. 

I would describe you in terms of the stars or the skies, 

the forest or the farthest reaches of the universe, 

But they are your creation, and you are their creator. 

You are all creation. 

Our weapons, our bombs, our power to destroy, dwindle into insignificance

compared to the cry of a newborn baby. 

On a starry night, with your glory sprinkled across the skies, 

I stare into the infinite ends of your universe, and I wonder, 

Who am I?

Why do I matter?

Why do you care about me?

We humans are less than specks of dust in your universe, 

our timeframe shorter than a second in the great clock of creation;

Yet you have adopted us. 

You have given us a special place in your family;

you have trusted us to manage your earth, on your behalf --

to look after not just the sheep and the oxen, but also the wolves that prey on them;

To tend the birds, the fish, and even creatures we have never seen at the bottom of the sea. 

My God, my God! How amazing you are!

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of the web links.

            Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!

            I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.

            Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE

            I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)