Canoeing the Mountains During the Pandemic
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
—John 12:24.
A recent Alban Weekly from Duke Divinity School interviews Tod Bolsinger, professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, about the meaning of the title of his recent book, Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory (IVP Books, 2018).
Bolsinger provides us with an amazing metaphor for so many of our transition experiences in life. He tells the story of the journey of the explorers Lewis and Clark, who thought when they reached the Continental Divide, they would find a navigable river leading directly to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, they met the Rocky Mountains.
They didn’t survive by trying to canoe the mountain. And they didn’t let this obstacle destroy their objective. They had to adapt; and their key to survival came from a source of wisdom that was not part of their hierarchy or privilege.
I think what Bolsinger is trying to tell our churches can apply to aspects of our own life. We have so much to learn from people who know what it is like to reach the top of a mountain with a canoe in hand and yet accomplish what seems at the time to be an unsurmountable task. These survivors have a sense of a GPS calling them back home. Immigrants, people of color, and women especially have had to adapt to overwhelming situations, and their experiences have much to teach us. More and more we are called to listen to their stories.
Lewis and Clark encountered the needed wisdom from a teenager, a nursing mother, a Native American who was kidnapped as a child. “She wasn’t in unfamiliar terrain; she was going home.”
Bolsinger reminds us that transformation most often comes from loss, and those who do not have power may be the true experts in overcoming precarious situations. They may be the best trained in survival and wilderness experiences. Just as Lewis and Clark had to take direction from a young Indian mother, Bolsinger reminds us of the wisdom of giving up power so that something much greater can be birthed. This also is a basic premise in recovery programs.
The canoe metaphor is an apt one for our individual life transitions. What mountains on our journey have we encountered, equipped with only a “canoe”: an energy useful at one time in our life, but is not the expertise we need now? What does it mean for us to listen more carefully to survivors—survivors in our own world and survivor-parts of our inner world that can guide us along the next pathway?
I keep remembering stories I have read that were helpful at that time, but were so much more meaningful in the future. Oh, my, how appropriate this story is for us today during the pandemic.
We must adapt to new survival techniques that we have never used before, wearing a mask, socially distanced, constant hand washing. These are simple tasks that will save our lives. We must admit that there are people much smarter than ourselves who know about survival along this path, and some have even been a part of other pandemics and know a thing or two.
I am thinking of the big party we are going to have when we reach the Pacific Ocean. I also keep remembering those we have left behind that we will so miss.
“Tod Bolsinger: What Does It Mean to Stop Canoeing the Mountains?” Faith and Leadership, Alban at Duke Divinity School, alban@div.duke.edu, 8/13/2018.
Joanna. joannaseibert.com
