Shift

March 22, 2010

Sometimes waiting on God means realizing he is waiting on you–waiting for you to face your giants, like David, head-on and full throttle…

Rich stands in the boathouse, massaging his head with a towel as thick as a blanket. He works slowly, lolling his head in the fabric, twisting spikes of blond hair into elaborate whorls like crop circles. His towel displays a permanent marker sketch of two swollen hips, a sinuous torso, and a blossoming bust. “Just something to lay on,” he is fond of saying. He drapes the cloth over himself like a cowl and his eyes glisten beneath it, two marbles, watery blue and cold.

I pause in the doorway with my question, the question I’ve been practicing all morning.

“Rich”, I say. My voice sounds thin. I am embarrassed by the sound of it.

Rich massages his left ear.

I clear my throat. “Rich.” My voice splits an octave. I sway in the doorway, a flagpole on a frosty morning, loose red shorts flapping against gooseflesh. I am eighteen years old; why do I always shrivel like this, like a child?

“Can I borrow your wetsuit?” I ask.

He lowers the towel over his groin and dries his tan and ample thighs.

“I’m gonna try a deep-water start today,” I say. I cross my fingers. I need that suit to barefoot. It’s the camp’s only padded suit, my only shield against a cold and violent ride behind a competition ski boat, my only armor as I try to walk on water holding nothing but the whip-end of a sixty foot rope. I imagine myself without it, skipping like a rock across the roiling backwash of the propeller, turning black and blue. I need that suit.

Rich turns his back to me. He hangs up his towel lazily, idly, as if laying aside a royal robe. The coveted wetsuit dangles next to his hand, dripping. He makes a move toward it. I exhale, breathing a funnel of cloud into the air.

From the dock, I hear John beep the horn, a shivering tritone from the camp’s newest watercraft, the Ski Nautique, a professional ski boat that leaves almost no wake. I glance down the dock and wave to say I’m coming. John nods, kicks his feet onto the dashboard, and pushes up his sunglasses, which he wears every day in spite of the mist and low morning sun. My eyes linger on the water. It is placid and mint green, reflecting the tall, spare pines that stipple the landscape everywhere in Oregon’s Cascade Range. I turn back to Rich, expecting him to be holding out the suit.

“You know”, he says and pauses to look me over. His body appears to stretch upward, making him too long for his legs, as if he is standing in a fun-house mirror. I grip the door jam. The Nautique rumbles to life.

“You know”, he says, “Letting someone borrow your wetsuit is kinda like letting them borrow your underwear.” He smirks.

My heart sinks. I bite my tongue.

Then, something inside me shifts. My nostrils flare. Blood surges in my ears. Rich lets people borrow his wetsuit all the time—the right people. Clearly, I’m not one of the right people. I never have been. It infuriates me. A whole summer of sneers and condescension rolls over me like a dump truck. A creaking load of social manure with all the dreck of life under Rich’s spell slides onto me in one steaming dollop.

I see myself clearly. I have never been anything but a pawn to Rich, a passive runt. And I have never talked back to him. Not once.

“That sounds rehearsed Rich,” I hear myself saying, “Did you come up with that all by yourself? Or is that one of Dale’s lines?”

His smirk freezes. His eyes, electric blue only moments before, dim to the color of steel. He fixes them on me. The corners of his mouth flicker and then flatten. He tires to speak, but the words tangle in his throat, twisting his Adam’s apple into a knotty gourd.

A gust of wind funnels through the doorway, lifting my hair, making me ever so slightly taller. It buoys me.

“I said that sounds rehearsed, Rich. You come up with that all by yourself, or did you have to ask your little, whatchyamacallit, mutual admiration society?”

Amplified silence. Outside, I hear tiny wavelets lap against the dock. I smell gasoline and pine pitch. Rich flicks his eyes to stare at the wood knots in the paneling behind me.

“Tell you what, Rich,” I say, “why don’t you take MY underwear and I’ll take your wetsuit?” I hear the words. Am I really saying this? “Unless, of course, your collection of underwear is getting too big? I’ve seen lots of people in that suit this summer.”

Fear falls away, delicious and alarming. I realize, with a flutter, that there are no bridges to burn with Rich. How could I have imagined wheedling my way into his inner circle? I am free. It is like putting my hand on a stick shift for the first time.

I pop the clutch.

“Actually Rich, the more I think about it, you probably peed in that thing a dozen times. Maybe I should just let you keep it.”

His face is a mask and I hit the accelerator. It’s time to flatten the elephant in the room once and for all.

“I’m going to get my deep water start today. You know that, don’t you; that’s what this is all about, isn’t it. God forbid, the windsurfing instructor should learn to barefoot before the waterski instructor.”

I shake my head and suck breath through my teeth. “I don’t need no stinking wetsuit.”

I turn and walk down the embankment toward the dock. John waves impatiently. The Nautique snorts and tugs at its mooring. The air is crisp and the water is as smooth as a slab of obsidian. I will barefoot today—I WILL BAREFOOT TODAY–goose bumps, pounded flesh, irrigated sinuses, whatever it takes. There is an inevitability about it now that didn’t exist just five minutes ago.

Rich stands in the shadows of the boathouse. I don’t look back, but I can feel his stare boring into my shoulder blades. He’ll have a good view from there, I think.

“Ready-O,” John asks?

“Ready-O.” I say.

I leap into ice water.

“Hit it!” I yell.

My body goes rigid, toes pointed. I float like a plank, arching. The line twangs and the shock of it drives me down, peeling my eyelids back, shoveling lake and silt into my nose. I do not let go. Not this time.

I shed water, like space junk; it falls away and I rise. Magically.

I am standing on water. St. Peter. I am standing on water. It scours my soles, jet-streams my ankles.

John whoops and signals a turn about. The shoreline tilts back into view.

And I see Rich standing in the boathouse, watching me.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to read the rest from this author. Marc is a local writer, musician, and physician. He is a regular contributor to ConneXions and has written reviews for Spectrum: Adventist Forum. He loves words and music, windsurfing, and going on adventures with Janine and the kids.(Read more from this author)

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Comments

5 Responses to “Shift”

Becky Colvin on March 22nd, 2010 11:05 am

Marc–
Love this post. It really took me back to that “us & them” vibe Big Lake had going back in the early 90’s. It was all about being waterfront (and definitely not canoe, sailing, or swimming waterfront. . . )
Marc on March 26th, 2010 3:25 pm

I realize it’s poor form to tack on a moral at the end of a story, but perhaps this particular story could be unpacked a little.

Some readers have sincerely wondered where God is in this story. Fair enough. He’s hiding. Because God often hides in the masculine journey. Yes, it’s true. He’s there, but He’s wearing camo.

Let me explain.

When Adam fell, he fell through passivity. You’ll remember that Adam was standing right next to Eve when she was tempted, standing right there when she took the fruit. And what did Adam do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He could have intervened, “Eve, Sweetheart, let’s talk about this”, or he could have just taken a shovel to that snake and made an end of it. But no. With eyes wides shut, he takes the fruit that Eve offers him. Adam is not deceived. It’s worse than that. He goes limp. He succumbs to his fate with Eve, without so much as a whimper. He offers no resistance. He does not fight for her, for himself, for anything.

Men have been suffering the paralysis of Adam ever since.

The reason “most men live lives of quiet desperation” (Thoreau) is because they are checked out. They are confused and intimidated by life and instead of standing up against all that has come against them, they go get a beer and sink into the couch and watch the game and watch other men take the field. They are spectators, spectators in their homes, their relationships, their jobs, their churches, spectators in their own dreams.

Men are miserable, precisely because they bear the image of God as men. They were not made to be a spectators. And they feel it. They know they were made for action, made to rise up, made to fiercely oppose injustice, to “be oaks of righteousness in the land”. And when they shrink from this calling, the Enemy gains a toehold. And the Enemy works this toehold until it becomes a giant fissure. If a man does not find healing, or some chance to redeem himself, he will spend the rest of his life trying to numb the pain, trying to fill the gap in his soul, where he failed to become a man.

Sad. But true.

So Adam goes passive and abdicates the Kingdom to the Usurper. And what happens? He is cursed. And notice this, the curse that falls on Adam is very different from the curse that falls on Eve. Adam is cursed with a life of resistance, a life of battle, a life that will require something of him, (by the sweat of your brow shalt thou labor), everything that is good in life will now require the man to stand up, require him to engage. It has become a matter of life and death.

And so a man’s life is pockmarked with a thousand crossroads where he either learns to be more engaged or he learns to succumb, to slide into deeper layers of passivity. And where is God in that? Oh He’s there. God is standing there at every one of those crossroads. And out of respect, He often stands back a little to see if the man will stand up this time. He honors the warrior heart He placed within us and says “go on, don’t be shy, you have what it takes”. Like a good Father, or a good coach, He is much keener that we should take a whack at it, than that we should “get it right” on the first try.

The masculine journey is therefore a journey of a thousand initiations, a thousand trials, where the first and most important thing we learn is simply to rise up and meet a challenge. Finesse comes later, with practice.

In my story, Shift, I was eighteen years old, with all the wounded pride and bravado common to that tender age. Thankfully God, like the shrewd Father He is, looked past all that and moved me to rise up, somehow convincing me I had what it took, and not to worry about doing or saying all the right things. So naturally I did and said some silly things. But I rose up. And I think I made Him proud. Certainly the fruit of it in my life was more than transient revenge; it was a doorway into a whole new way of living, it was the spot where I turned my back on passivity, I think for the first time. But not for the last time.

We cannot underestimate the spiritual significance of events like this. I think sometimes we do God a disservice by telling Him where He can and can’t show up, by drawing sharp lines between the “sacred” and the “profane”. But life doesn’t come with convenient labels like that. An experience my seem secular on the surface and yet be freighted with deep spiritual significance that we only discover much later in life. That’s why God doesn’t just show up at “sacred” events. His presence is unbroken and continuous, a stream of life to us from the beginning of our days to the end of them. Someday, we may even discover that not a single moment of our lives was ever secular.

Bottom line, the moral is this: He shows up, over and over again, and He is patiently waiting for you to show up. In spite of everything, He still believes you have what it takes. He ought to know. He made you. He believed in you before you did. That’s what fathers are for. And there is no event too trivial or too secular for a Father like that. So rise up. Make Him proud. Reclaim the life He made for you. And stop thinking it should be a piece of cake. It will require something of you.
blittlefield on March 26th, 2010 10:28 pm

Mark – Loved it! Thanks for sharing. It keeps me thinking.
Bill L.
gretchenvirk on March 27th, 2010 7:41 am

Not “poor form” at all!!! I stood up and applauded your addition. Not because I thought your original piece needed more, (your brilliant writing is always a pleasure), I didn’t realize how much richer it could be..but turned out it blessed my socks off! In fact, your “moral” written out as such, has done to the prince of darkness, the very thing you speak of in “Shift”. He’s been outed. You have shed light on a matter that forces us all to recognize that quiet, unseen (or at least under-acknowledged) battle within. Just as in Screwtape, it is a great call and encouragement to stand, to act, to acknowledge that dark dusty corner of sin that usually gets the blind eye. And, with light comes exposure and with exposure comes the broom. You have edified me and my lurking passivity this day!! Thanks for the addition. It clearly helps those of us, like me, who need things a bit more spelled out for complete understanding, application, and blessing. I praise God for the gift and calling He has laid on you, Marc. For He longs to make us each a vessel to carry light to a dark world…like a chandelier is to the light it carries or a drinking fountain is to the water it brings out. Your faithfulness to pour forth His water and His light in your testimonies/lessons He’s taught and revealed to you, brings Him such Glory!!
“Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” John 3:19-21 “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son purifies us from all sin.” 1 Jn 1:7 The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.” Prov. 4:18,19
BobThayne on March 31st, 2010 4:31 pm

Marc,

Stupendous writing! You’ve told me this story before, but I must say this expanded version is tremendous. I could feel the awe and tightness at the beginning and then the freedom and tipsiness of the metaphorical action of standing up.! I felt the act of being alive!

I didn’t think the story required a stated moral, but I must say that your discussion of the condition of the human male was just as well-written and profound as the story. The discussion gave me a new resolution of perseverance.

Cheers,
Bob

P.S. When you publish your next book, I expect to see the story and the discussion side by side (but without the segue sentence, “I realize…” since it isn’t needed.)