The North Shore

The North Shore route was a trek within a trip. In 9 days I went 1243 km from Kenora to Thunder Bay, then around Lake Superior to Sault Ste. Marie. My jelly legs and I are currently enjoying a relaxing day in the Sault. I made sweet potato hash browns, had leftover pad thai, and am devouring a delicious smoothie at some local coffee shop, "Dish".

As soon as I hit Kenora, Ontario it felt like familiar terrain. I felt like I was close to home as I traded the prairie tundra for lakes, hills, trees, and signs that said, "no snowmobiling on the sidewalk." I'd hitched a ride from Winnipeg with the fellow I was staying with as he was going climbing in the area. Needing to make up a few days to get to Toronto for the long weekend, I happily traded in two windy prairie days for the new landscape.

On the way from Kenora to Thunder bay I had the pleasure of meeting a host of bikers! Up to this point I really hadn't met anyone biking across Canada. A few spandexed hardcores on their slick road bikes out for a their daily cruise, but no fellow weary-eyed bike tourists loaded down like mules. But the mule men were on this stretch! And a mule-maiden for that matter. I had the pleasure of running into a middle aged duo doing the cross-Canada in sections, an older couple taking it slow but steady on their way to halifax, and a 30ish year old brit who is taking a few years to bike from Alaska to the tip of South America. I camped with them for a night or two and enjoyed the company. My introverted self has been loving travelling alone, but it was also nice to get to know some people and realize my days on the road haven't completely eliminated my capacity for conversation.
I had my first major bike repair incident when my chain snapped the day I was going to try and make Thunder Bay. Fortunately, the Brit who was only a short distance behind me had 15 years previous bike repair experience! He did in 2 minutes what probably would have taken me a half hour. We replaced the link in my chain and I carried on the Thunder Bay without difficulty.

Seeing the Great Lakes for the first time was quite special. I took my take-out and tea down to the shores of Lake Superior and gazed out upon the expanse for the first time. I am sure I am not alone in cherishing the experience of gazing into a horizon that doesn't end before your eyesight does. I felt such peace as the sun set on the great body of water. I felt as if I aged 6 decades in a moment. I could imagine myself as an ancient man staring out on a similar expanse on a similar day and feeling the exact same as I did right then, content and complete. As if I had reached the extent of some forms of the human experience and while I may feel identical someday, I could never feel them more fully.

I found the most glorious campsites along the north shore and met up with a few other bikers who I saw on the road daily throughout my trip. A wonderful Spaniard named Simon and a young 20 year old from Kalamazoo named David. They were fast bikers. Simon had raced as a young man and has been literally all over the world bicycle touring. Peru, South America, Europe, Malasia. That is not even uncovering the surface of all of the places he's been. And David is a fit young passionate cyclist studying Political science for the purpose of bicycling. Do not worry, I do not see a direct correlation either, but they were both very great people.

3 days before I made it to Sault Ste Marie I woke up at 2am in immense pain. I swallowed and it felt like glas shards grating against my throat. If expletives are any indication of how difficult days are, this day would take the cake before my alarm went off at 7am. I popped some tylenol and went to the bathroom to see what was going on. My tonsils were red, inflamed, and painful. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Should I hitch hike into Sault Ste Marie and rest there? Should I get some Halls and tough it out? As I contemplated my predicament I started to filter 5 liters of water because my campsite water wasn't  potable as it started to rain, further cheering me up. And as if a ray of sunshine wanted to shine straight down on me, as I finished up filtering water into my camelback, a time consuming process with my filter, I spilled all 3L of drinking water on the ground. This caused an eruption of curses that I think will make sure no other day beats August 23rd for parental advisory cautions.

I needed a time-out. As I went to the lake to spend some much needed time with God I remembered the wise words of "The 100 year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared" (a brilliant book I'd been listening to). "What has happened happened, what will be will be." I cannot control how terrible my sleep and morning have been, but I have some control over my day and how I will process it. And so, the day improved. My legs were surprisingly well rested. The tylenol kicked in. I bought some halls. And was able to make it through the next 3 days with only minor pain and interrupted sleeps.

And so here I am in Sault. Tomorrow I am hopefully catching a ride to Niagara Falls and then biking to Toronto then having a glorious weekend at a cabin. My sister is looking at flights to join me on the east coast for a week around NB, PEI, and NS. Enjoy the end of summer and the leaves as they start to turn. I am hoping to be in Montreal with maple syrup filled french toast when they are really colorful.

Grace and such

Obedience is the offspring of a deep and intimate relationship between our own hearts and the God who embraces us and who shares with us a joyous delight in and passionate concern for all of creation. When God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, then our spirits will reverberate and our lives echo that limitless love. - Joan Puls

I don't know that I understand "grace". Christians toss that term around quite often and while thinking about it on this trip I realized I haven't really understood or lived it that much. Grace. It seems to me if you do something wrong there are ramifications for that wrongness. That ramification is often accompanied by guilt. Guilt I understand. You do something wrong, you should feel sorry for what you've done. Guilt should cause you to change. Grace on the other hand seems to me an easy solution for a guilt-free life. Its as if the wrong we have done or will do mean nothing because, why, we are saved by grace! While I don't understand it, I cannot get away from the fact that my bible is littered with the term, and that indeed, I am saved by "grace" as Ephesians 2:8-9 tell me, and that this saving isnt anything I can earn so that no one can boast.

It is about this time my mind realized that my guilt is the result of boasting. Or perhaps would be if I could somehow learn enough from my guilt to save myself. Guilt comes from this desire deep within me to be perfect which I suppose is a good desire. The only problem is I never will be, and I can never learn enough from my mistakes to save myself.

My reading of a book Insurrection told a beautiful story that I think puts this in perspective. I have since lent the book away, so I shall do my best to recall  what I can...
In this story a man lives a wicked life cheating in his business practices and exploiting his workers and such. This man turns his life around. He gives birth to a son.Though his son admires his father and his changed ways, he falls into the same wicked pattern his father had. This father does not know what to do with his son. He tries to coach him, be gracious with him, help him to see the error of his ways and change. The son cannot.
One day the father is praying and asks God what he can do to help his son change. The response he hears is to love him as he is, not how he wishes he was.
The father then changes his mindset. He decides he loves his son for who he is, despite his wickedness. The son sees the grace of his father and only then is able to change from his ways.

This story illustrates what I think I have learned and what I have found to be true: guilt cannot change me, but grace can.

I would rather be changed by love than by trying to live up to the law. I may even abuse grace, failing over and over again, but in the end I will be more fruitful than had I lived feeling what I "should" feel under guilt.

"O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I "pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me... give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name, Amen." - The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer.

In this beautiful prayer at the end of one of Tozer's chapters I was met with an odd phrase I had to ponder. Painfully concious of my need of further grace. In my head this sounded like a mish-mash of the two concepts. Talking with my friend David Morgan about this the other day he brought up something that gave me a new perspective, that something being the importance of knowing when you are in need of grace. Perhaps it is in this knowledge that true change happens. We are the son in the story, given grace by our father so we are then free to change. We are loved no matter what we do, but because there is some mutual love going on, we are then motivated to change.

Anyways, its hard to write this post without going on a tangent about many other things, but I'll leave it here. May you truly know that you can have grace. May you be motivated by love and forgiveness above feelings of failure.

Recollection

I'm through chasing after tomorrow, before I end up somewhere too fast
In a fight with the clock time will shoo me away, before the present can pass

It's a lyric I penned a while back but have never been able to make a song out of. Usually because it always just ends up mimicking the melody to Bright Eyes' Land-locked Blues. I think behind alot of my worry, anxiety, or depression is a deep-seated feeling that I am going to miss out on something. I do not know why that is. When I look back on my life, it is not hard for me to see a guiding sovereignty that I would give responsibility to as "God". I've had many moments that I can only attribute to something guiding this worried soul. Here's just a few.

In my final year of nursing I wanted to be a mental health nurse, so that is what I requested as my #1 desire for final practicums. But, as fate would have it I received First Nations nursing as my final practicum and went off to Ft St James. Besides the great family I was able to stay with and connections I was able to make, I was able to participate for a day in a mobile diabetes program for a day. It was a good day, and I didnt think much of it. That fall, the gentleman I worked with on that day emailed me and essentially asked if I'd be interested in the job as he remembered me from that day. I went in to ask questions, have an interview, and got hired on in a job I now quite enjoy and find rewarding and growing. The next year, I found myself in the same room in the Nakazdli health center, with the same client I had observed the previous year, with my now boss also in the room, but now I was the one who was conducting the interview. Moments that make you think, "hey, Im doing what Im supposed to be doing."

In my first summer of nursing I got to look after an elderly man who was dying of cancer. He was a man who you could tell had lived a full, loving life. He was full of grace, encouragement, and had a beautiful family who you could tell had blossomed growing up under the care of him and his wife. We got talking about music as he played, I mentioned what I played, and he offered me his harmonicas! Needless to say, you cannot accept gifts as a nurse, so while excited and grateful, I denied the offer. The next January I had the opportunity to play alongside some brilliant musicians through the Coldsnap festival. I held my own alongside Royal Wood and Catherine McLellan in a singer-songwriter workshop that was a gift to be a part of. At the end of the event, a woman came up to me and said, "I remember you! You were my father's nurse. He still remembered you when we went home, and he still wanted you to have his harmonicas. He has since passed." That is how I came to be in ownership of a beautiful man's harmonicas. A kind of connection that makes you feel as if you are in the right place using your gifts in the right way somehow.

On the morning of my 25th birthday it started to rain. I stayed in my tent hoping it would die down. It did temporarily, so I quickly packed up my tent, covered all my gear in a tarp and went to wait out the storm. A storm did indeed brew up. I sat beneath a tin roof in the dugout of a ball diamond as the lightning, rain, and thunder passed overhead. I read scripture, observed the red stones and countless spitz that covered the ground, and ate trail mix in the cute town called Lumsden. I had been delayed from making it to Regina because of harsh wind the previous day. But as I sat and enjoyed the sky full of melancholy I thought, "I think I was supposed to be here this morning."

A quote I read a few days before my birthday read thus:

To recollect yourself is to recover all your scattered energies- those of the mind, the heart and the body. It is to reassemble all the pieces of yourself flung in the four corners of your past or the mists of your future, pieces clinging to the fringes of your desires.   Michel Quoist

I feel as if the present is always what you need. If my history of countless moments of coincidence and blessing is any indication I need not be so eager to be anywhere but here. I feel alot of my own scattered energies returning to me this trip.

The Michel Quoist quote is followed by this note: "Most of us have neither time nor place for recollection in this busy life of ours- and thus the exhaustion. Recollection becomes a matter of priority only when we have experiences one too many times the tastelessness of a passionless life."

Happy recollections everyone, may you be able to enjoy today and, even if it is unpleasant, trust it is part of a bigger mosaic.

Insect world

I love pulling into new towns. Once I get within city limits of any sort of town I turn off my iPod and just observe. The city parks, the sun's reflection on windows, the fashion of the inhabitants, different mom and pop stores, style of homes, its all just so interesting. Every town is someplace different, its someones home.
I can never quite fathom that as I drive by homes lit up at night. Each dwelling has a different family, different life experience, jobs, desires, passions, favorite foods, achievements. There's nothing like travelling to serve up a good dollop of healthy insignificance.

I lay down stretching on a patch of grass with some rare shade (the prairies are pretty flat and mostly treeless, who knew) and got looking at the bugs. I always find it interesting that if you get your head close to the ground its like another world opens up to you, the insect world. Here you see things that you wouldn't ever really see or care about going about your day to day business. But this area matters to these ants, beetles, mosquitoes, and worms. They mill about getting sustenance for their day and building their homes until some unsuspecting bloke like myself smothers them when stretching his quadriceps out. Dang does that quadricep stretch feel good.
Its a bit how I feel on this trip of mine. I bike and bike and bike and bike and then reach some town where I bend down and take a look at all these different people milling about living life and getting sustenance and building their homes. They feel like, in the words of Death Cab, "all different names for the same place".
Perhaps that same place is simply, "not home".

I don't miss home, I get to travel! And I love getting to poke around different people's homes and find the great cafes, parks, and local beer. But it does give you a sense of healthy insignificance. I do not matter to any of these people. My life could end and they would not care one bit. They wouldn't even know. Unless I chose to end it dangling off their front porch or stuffing myself in their freezer or something. "Honey Ill get you some Eggos from the fr.... OH MY GOODNESS!"
Morbid thoughts over.
And that's in a country with a pretty small chunk of population all things considered. 33 million. That's like a drop in the ocean of humanity. A very beautiful tasty drop, but still a drop. It's enough to make someone feel quite small. And that is a wonderful thing.

You meet people now and then who have never left their immediate surroundings. I lived in a neghbourhood where some of the kids had never been outside of the 8 blocks radius surrounding their homes. And you can sort of tell sometimes. A nursing friend of mine thought it should be mandatory for people to take a year and travel before going into nursing school to get some healthy perspective on life. The world does not revolve around you. People think differently from you and that's OK. The way you do things is not "normal", just societal.
I think travelling merely forces you to do that (unless your idea of travelling is resort hopping). But we can all get our head out of the clouds any day, anywhere and be in relationship with the people that are around us. Realize that the world does not revolve around you. People think different from you and that's OK, they may even be right! And the way you do things is not "normal", just societal.

A friend (thanks Kyla) gave me a book called Insurrection by Peter Rollins just before I left on my trip, today I was reading an excellent observance of what love is and does in said book which sort of relates and I sort of just want to quote.

"This is what love does. It does not make itself visible but, like light, makes others visible to us. In a very precise sense, then, love's presence cannot be described as existing, but rather is that which calls others into existence... love does not stand forth and vie for our attention but rather brings others forth. When we love, our beloved is brought out of the vast, undulating sea of others. Just as the Torah speaks of God calling forth beings from the formless ferment of being, so love calls our beloved our from the endless ocean of undifferentiated objects." 

I guess this sticking our head down and looking at what's there, be it bugs, towns, or people we are in contact with, is a sort of love. It is an acknowledgment of their existence. What we can otherwise ignore, we choose to bring out from that vast sea of others. I have time to acknowledge this country. Maybe you only have time to acknowledge your neighbours cat. We are incredibly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But we are also grandly significant to the scheme of other things.

Get your heads down in the grass. But if you are in Saskatchewan I will warn you, there are alot of bugs.