If there was a flaw in the film White Boy Rick, one could argue it is the film’s central, titular character played by Richie Merritt. If you know the story of his casting, he was a troubled youth hand picked straight from the principles office to portray a troubled youth on-screen. On paper the idea sounds inspired. On screen it becomes obvious that Merritt is outmatched by a tremendous supporting cast, most notably the incredibly talented Matthew McConaghey. At its best, the film allows the supporting cast to elevate Merritt’s emotionally static performance. At its worst Merritt keeps the film ever so slightly chained to his level of inexperience.

I can see how this could represent a problem for some viewers. It makes for a slightly uneven viewing experience. But the context in which I saw this film allowed me to play this semblance of imbalance as a sense of of inspiration and an overall strength. I knew nothing about the story of White Boy Rick going in. If anything I had high hopes from the trailer that this was going to be a notable Oscar film. In-fact, the only thing I really knew was the casting story of the young Richie Merritt, and through that small bit of information I was able to read his story into the character he plays in the film. Which of course sounds a bit counter intuitive to what good film making “should” be. Merritt should be bringing us into his story, not expecting us to read into it something that is not earned. But I felt a degree of humility and earnestness behind the inexperience, an earnestness that has followed his public journey as well on his way from the principles office to the big screen. Commenting on the struggle, at one point he declared, “I’d remember what my mother always told me: ‘God wouldn’t put you here to fail,’ ” he says. “I would take a couple of deep breaths when I was anxious. I would always try to be in the moment, have fun and do what God brought me to do.”

This degree of humility suits a character who is uneducated and an equally unlikely candidate. It left room to consider his performance was perhaps more honest than unpolished, a reflection of his own context rather than aspiring or trying to be anything else other than his true self. And the more the film went on, especially in the films final 30 minutes, the more this began to grow on me.

Regarding the film as a whole, since seeing it for the first time I have read a number of articles and reviews that have found not just Merritt, but the entire film to be slightly underwhelming. I have heard many decry the films lack of a clear trajectory. Even more have complained about the films pacing, some calling it flat out boring and uninspired. In nearly every case (if not all), these two issues seemed to come back around to the idea of the film as “social commentary”, which is to say, some feel like the film needed to comment on “a” or any number of social issues that arise through the context of the film- the plight of Detroit, poverty, gun control, drugs, prison reform; but that it never truly commits to any one of these points, rather feeling scatterbrained in terms of what it wants or desires to say, even to the point of saying nothing at all.

It is fair to say this is where I diverge even more sharply in my own opinion and experience of this film. The first thing that deserves mention is the degree to which this film is not the film we see in the trailer. The trailer advertised a fast paced, taught, entertaining character drama about a particular kids story of living through the epidemic of a post apocalyptic Detroit. The moment I realized most of the trailer occurs in the first half hour of the film was the same moment I knew my expectations were going to be upended, if simply because the story itself had yet to be told. What the film becomes, rather quickly I might add, is a slow burn, immersive experience that sheds light on the everyday moments that form the real life, post-apocalyptic setting. Instead of simply telling the story in a direct and concise way, it is content to meander, at times allowing us to simply sit with the visuals while it takes the necessary time to build a deeply felt sense of atmosphere which flows out of this routine sense of direction and misdirection.

I think peoples criticism of the pacing and lack of clear direction speaks more to people’s expectations than to an actual weakness of the film. It is fair to want a film to represent a more direct social commentary, but I think in doing so it becomes easy to miss what White Boy Rick actually is and desires to be, which is a dysfunctional family drama. This also happens to be the film that landed with me on a personal level, more so than if it had been a more direct social commentary.

I think where the film truly finds its voice is at the halfway point when the narrative takes a sudden twist out of its more dire sensibilities and into a complicated vision of optimistic fervor. We see McConaughey’s character sitting on the porch of their house having a conversation with Ricky about the idea of family. In a life born out of their own given and earned social context, the idea of family seemed to remain just slightly beyond their grasp. In this moment though it is an idea that seems realized, an idea that maybe, just maybe could capture and reinforce a bit of Ricky’s sentimental longing for those forgotten childhood moments where “things were good for while, right?” And yet the sentiment of McConaughey’s character that breaks through this moment of perhaps ill-placed optimism quickly reminds Ricky that “family”, or at least our expectation of family, is an incredibly fragile and volatile thing. It is a stark picture of what it feels like to be stuck in a cycle without hope while doing everything in your power to simply put another foot forward.

It is out of this moment, looking both backwards and forwards as the story moves seemingly from point A to point A (for lack of a better description of the movies trajectory), that we begin to see where this slow burn is heading. The people we meet at the end of the film are not the same ones we meet in the opening moments. There is transformation, even if in some cases it is hard to recognize, and this transformation arrives in the midst of the fragile and misguided world that they embody.

Sometimes when your expectations are upended, a film can go very wrong. And sometimes, as it did for me, it makes the film that much more compelling. I was there for the real life story, and instead I got something that was far more immersive, a film content to sit and marinate in its sense of time and place. The narrative that it does follow becomes important for how we learn to weigh our sympathy for a family of corrupt individuals making corrupt choices that somehow and in someway manages to mirror something of worth and demand our empathy. And it is this process that becomes incredibly important for the ways we are able to engage with larger social issues. If we can’t gain sympathy for the brokenness of others, and if we are unsure how to see the good in something that appears on the outside to be morally corrupt, our engagement with social issues will be limited to the level of responsibility we see people taking for their own problems. And yet these problems are rarely so black and white. Often they are systemic and complex. What White Boy Rick teaches us is that what is most important when it comes to those larger social issues and concerns is taking the time to hear the story that lies behind it.

For Richie Merritt, it was the compassion of others that gave him the chance to better himself and to tell his story. In the context of this film it is the story of a family that ultimately leads towards a compassionate end. In both cases the starting point is the same- a story about corrupt people making corrupt choices struggling to become better people. And that is the issue that compassion should be concerned about first and foremost.

In my own wrestling with the recent documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor, one of the best and most powerful films I have seen in 2018 so far, I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Good Samaritan parable found in Luke 10. A while back I came across a teaching on this passage that really transformed the way I think of faith and God and salvation in general, and much of this came flooding back as I watched Mr. Rogers story unfold on screen.

The Good Samaritan: Discovering the most important question
My tendency (and I don’t think I am alone) was and is to read this passage solely from the perspective of what I thought was the most important question, “what does it mean to be a “good” Samaritan”. With the emphasis on the word good, the parable would then boil down to the following two takeaways- being a good Samaritan means helping others, and so go and be a good neighbor to others.

What I missed in the passage through so many years of reading it from this singular perspective was the motivating question of the passage that the parable is actually responding to, along with the way this motivating question actually directs (and redirects) the trajectory of the narrative in a slightly different way than I had been reading it to that point.

What Must I Do To Be Saved
Consider that the concern of the initial question posed by the central character, in all respects appearing to be a good, God fearing Jewish man is, “what must I do to be saved”. What fuels this parable then from the get-go is a question of salvation. At which point consideration for the ancient Jewish context becomes vitally important here for understanding the nature of this man’s question and for ensuring we don’t simply submit his question to modern day constructs of what salvation is. To start, the question this seemingly devout, Jewish man poses would have been one of participation, not conversion. Participation, that is, in the hopeful “Jewish” expectation of ushering in God’s Kingdom “on earth as it is in Heaven”, an important piece of the ongoing Jewish story of exile and expectation. At this place and time they had indeed returned from a long period of exile only to find things were not not as they were supposed to be, or at least not as they expected things should be. What is important here to note though is that what was most definitely not foremost on their minds when it came to this question of salvation was notions or concerns of going to Heaven or Hell after they die. This was about Kingdom building and Kingdom participation.

It is also easy for our modern day constructs to quickly turn a discussion of salvation into a very Protestant tinged faith-works or law-grace dichotomy or argument. The Jewish man in question certainly would have been thinking along the lines of the law, and his question immediately points us in this direction, but what is central to understanding the nature of Jesus’ parable, or the answer He gives to this man’s question, is not positioning this question of law against notions of a Christian faith or Jesus grace. Christian theology was not a thing at this point in time. Rather it would have been about recognizing how the Gospel, recognized in the person and ministry of Jesus, was breathing life and meaning into this man’s idea of full participation in the Kingdom of God. In other words, Jesus was informing the true nature of the law and the man’s deeply devout Jewish expectation, not upending or demonizing it.

So to return to the question at hand, “what must I do” implies that if I do this I will be saved. A more accurate rendering is more apt to read this as an assertion of community, or Jewish community, what must “we” do in what was (and was becoming) an incredibly fractured and assimilated state at the time.

On the flip side of this same question is the fear that I am, or we are not doing enough to be saved. That the promise of God that formed the Jewish expectation of God’s Kingdom come was not going to arrive as promised. New Testament scholar and theologian N.T. Wright has written extensively about how this plays into the forming of an early and distinct Christian theology, primarily through the apostolic ministry of Paul, and in his latest effort, Paul: A Biography, he talks a lot about how the person and ministry of Jesus, certainly from Paul’s own experience and understanding, really becomes an embodiment of this Jewish exile tension, going so far as to posit Paul’s own ministry in line with the Jewish prophetic tradition and legacy. They have returned from exile as the Prophets promised, but they found themselves still waiting for God’s Kingdom to arrive. For Paul, Jesus minds the material gap of this tension as an already-not yet spiritual and earthly reality where heaven and earth are in the process of coming together. Jesus is the promised fulfillment, but the pattern of exile continues to mark the “Christian” life as we, both Jew and Gentile, patiently wait for the restoration of His Kingdom to be completed.

It is under this backdrop that Jesus’ immediate response to this Jewish man sets his parable directly into this same already-not yet paradigm. What must you do to be saved? Do this- Love God and love your neighbor as yourself and you will live.

In other words, if you want to see God’s Kingdom ushered in in its fullness, here are the practical steps you can take to ensure this happens.

What becomes clear at this point though is that Jesus considers the lawyer’s basic motivating question to be problematic from the get-go. There is no step by step process that can accomplish what this man desires. He is worried about the idea of salvation and is looking to “justify” himself as a God fearing, Jewish man in the eyes of the law, which is the mark of belonging to the Jewish faith and thus as part of God’s Kingdom. In his expectation of what God is doing, or should be doing, the nature of his motivating question requires him to continue down the line of this same problematic reasoning. And so this is precisely what he does. He pushes it further by asking Jesus to tell him, then, exactly what he needs to do in order to be saved, or exactly what is necessary to participate in God’s saving work, the ushering in of the new Kingdom, of the restoration of the Jewish people. So tell me, who, then, is my neighbor. I need to know who exactly “is” my neighbor that the law of God binds me towards so that I can assure I am doing what needs to be done in order to see God’s Kingdom being ushered in and the Jewish promise finally fulfilled. And in case you have forgotten, exile and pagan rule is not a distant reality for this kingdom building reality we are still waiting for.

On this note, there is no reason to think this man was not well meaning, faithful, and honestly looking to the greater good. But specifics and certainty matter much in this line of reasoning, and as the parable unfolds we are going to see that this is a big part of the problem not in the integrity with which he asks the question, but in his ability to ask the right question.

To which Jesus offers him a parable about three individuals passing by a man beaten up on the side of the road. And it is at this point that the passage begins to really turn my old understanding even more completely on its head.

Learning To Ask the Right Question
Jesus takes the initial question, “who is my neighbor” and flips it around to ask the man, “who was the neighbor” in this story?

By doing this Jesus has completely dismantled not simply the lawyer’s motivating question, but his understanding of how salvation, God’s Kingdom being ushered in, must work and indeed has been working. Instead of being a matter of what we must do in order to participate in our salvation, true freedom and expression of this promise of “Kingdom come” flows out of knowing precisely how far reaching this Kingdom is and always has been in its participation. An honest Jewish construct would have understood God to be found in the order of the entire cosmos. From the moment of His first reveal to Abraham and through Moses and Elijah and the prophets, God has revealed Himself not just as the King of a people, but the King of all creation, including all nations, peoples and tongues. The Kingdom come, the expectation of this new rule is not simply a restoration of a people, but of a new “creation”. A cosmic restoration and redemption. This understanding lies at the heart of the Abrahamic promise, and it is a characteristic of God that colors the entire admittedly complicated and messy God-Human relationship that we find playing out in the specific Israelite story.

A chosen people raised up to be a a witness of a God for the world.

And yet as this parable demonstrates, we cannot arrive at the idea of a God “for the world” without beginning with our own story first. For the Jewish man he is likely thinking in a nationalistic sense of “God’s chosen people” first. This is how God has worked in their past. But by flipping the question around on the man, Jesus is forcing him to reconcile the question of what God raised up this people for. It is startling and striking to realize that in this parable the Jewish man is actually the one on the side of the road needing help. And this is not startling because it is a deviation from the Jewish narrative- it is in-fact deeply ingrained in the man’s motivating question. We are on the side of the road. Yes we need saving. This is the work of God we have been waiting for all this time. This is the work I want to take part in helping to usher in. It is striking because of the way it reveals the man’s line of reasoning is what is keeping him from connecting the work of God to God’s work in the world.

And perhaps most startling because of the ways I, and I have to think many of us, seem to miss this in the midst of our own pictures of exile.

What God did for the Israelite people, helping them to see that they are accepted and loved as children of God, He is also doing for the world. This is the Gospel. This is the light that Jesus came to bring into the world. This is what God has been up to all along. And the implication for this God fearing man is this- He is, we are, already accepted and loved as a child of God. There are no distinctions, Jew or Gentile. In the shadow of the temple or in the vast portions of pagan society that surround this temple construct, there are no distinctions. Therefore make no distinction about who your neighbor is in the context of an already-not yet world. The truth of this man’s story, of the tradition and narrative that he would have studied and been informed by and shaped within, is that we cannot see the world the way God sees it unless we first see ourselves the way God sees us in the midst of this narrative. God first found us on the side of the road and declared us to be children of God. And to participate in the ministry of Jesus, God’s breaking into our world, our story in a far reaching sense, is not to limit our view of what God is doing to restore our individual (or nationalist) sense of (Jewish born) exile, but to allow him to use our story of exile and expectation to expand our view of God’s promise being fulfilled in the story of our world.

The truth of this parable is that if we ask the question in any other way but the way Jesus does we leave ourselves open to being trapped by the same line of reasoning that forms the Jewish man’s need to create clear cut boundaries and definitions in order to participate in the work of God.

But the truth of God’s grace in the Jewish and Christian tradition is that it is persistently breaking down these barriers and boundaries. This is what the work of God does. The need to give definition to who our neighbor is is by nature a limiting process. It is an exercise in self control. It sees first and foremost our exile and our restoration, and as such it subtly and slowly exchanges God’s expectation for our own. The nature of the law was always to point us outwards, to teach us how to see the world through God’s eyes. And to truly see through God’s eyes requires us to gain and regain that perspective on the side of the road where our story began. And as the Good Samaritan passage reminds us, it is simply far too easy to bypass that and leave that picture behind in favor of the promised restoration, the saving work, especially when our own exile weighs us down. But when we move too quickly forward, when we need certainty and answers to the problem of our own exile in the here and now, it causes us to see the rest of the world through our own eyes rather than God’s. Call it a result of the human condition, but the problem when we do this is that we end up missing what it is that binds us to a shared and common human experience, which is the very thing that frees us up to participate in the Kingdom work to begin with. Thus our understanding of God’s work narrows rather than expands. We will begin to see God’s Kingdom Come juxtaposed against our own exile rather than allowing God to use our exile as a means of seeing his vision for the world.

And seeing a God for the world.

Who was the neighbor? The neighbor was the one who extended grace to me in my own position of exile regardless of who I am and where I came from. And it is this realization that frees me up to go and do likewise regardless of where I find myself in this world.

The Question of Mr. Rogers: Won’t You Be My Neighbor
What brought me back to this parable as I watched the powerful documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor, is hearing the story of a man who wrestled with this same thing as the Jewish in the midst of our own modern context. Looking around at the state of the world he was burdened by a sense of exile and the brokenness that seemed to prevail in the midst of God’s promised restoration. And for Mr. Rogers, facing this reality causes him to ask the same question as the Jewish man over the course of his ministry (which is how he saw it), have I lived the sort of accomplished life I must live in order to see the brokenness of this world healed?

In other words, have I done enough to be saved? Which is profound because what we see over the course of the documentary is the slow process of this question connecting to his own life and struggle, which is have I done enough to be loved and accepted by God myself?

The mind boggling part of hearing him ask this question is that the authenticity and impact of a man who at one point is jokingly referred to as second only to Jesus, was awe inspiring. There is something genuinely dismantling about considering that, for all that he aspired to be and all of the good he did in this world, and all of the ways he continually put others before himself, he still found himself approaching Jesus with that same prevailing question. What must I do?

Later in his life as he faced down the pressing reality of his own mortality, his central struggle and concern with whether he was accepted and loved by God comes to full fruition, a concern that for all of God’s work he participated in he could trust he is counted as a “sheep”. And this is precisely the moment where we see Mr. Rogers differing from the trajectory of the Jewish man’s line of reasoning. They started with the same motivating question, what must “we” do to be saved, to see this world healed of its brokenness, and it uncovers the same struggle and need to know that I have done enough to be a part of God’s restoration work. But for all the ways he struggled to understand the nature of God’s Kingdom building work, the difference for Mr. Rogers is that he never lost sight of where he stood on the side of that road. He kept that front and center. He never jumped to needing to see himself on the road participating in that restoration work, and in-fact never felt comfortable on the road over the course of his ministry work, and it is because of this that he was able to allow his doubts and  struggles with his own faith and salvation to determine and shape and fuel the ways he lived out his relationship with God in service to world, day in and day out.

Who was the neighbor in this story? For Mr. Rogers it was all the people that continually fed into his life. And it is one of the most powerful moments in cinema that I have encountered to reach the end of this documentary and to see the challenge his life gave to those who worked with him to go and do likewise by recognizing and thinking on and celebrating those who have been neighbors to them.

And then, and only then, go and do likewise.

Who is my neighbor was not Mr. Roger’s concern. In-fact, the idea of such a question, full of all the boundary making, exclusivity and nationalistic implications that come with it, repulsed him in ways that became increasingly obvious throughout his public life and career. His question, deliberately and intentionally and honestly,  was always and remained, won’t you be “my” neighbor. If you have seen the documentary or plan to, don’t miss the sheer power of this question as you consider the story of Mr. Rogers and the witness of his own life and work. This approach to the same question the Jewish man asked in Luke 10 diffuses the boundary making exercise of that limiting perspective. Mr. Rogers question defines the “my” part of the phrase by placing himself on the side of the road, a position that shapes not only the way he sees God working in his story, but the way he is able to invite others into full participation of what God is doing through his unconditional acceptance of them as “children of God” as well. And in perhaps the most powerful sense of all, his dedication to seeing things from this perspective is what frees and empowers these same children to then follow his call to participate in the work of God through the Jesus tinged Gospel by living this out in the world through their acceptance and love of others.

This is what it looks like to participate in God’s saving work. This is what it looks like for God’s Kingdom come. In the throes of a not yet world where the weight of the world’s messiness and turmoil feels far from the already of this ancient and eternal Kingdom promise, it is stories like Mr. Rogers that remind me that God is already at work in my life and in the life of the world and that we are free to participate in this work if only we learn to ask the right question.

I’m not sure exactly what sparked the discussions, but there have been a few threads over the last few days that have emerged some of the movie discussion groups I am involved with that have been talking about the merit (or lack there-of) of Director’s cuts.

Of primary concern in these particular discussions has been the question, how should we (or can we) approach a Directors Cut as viewers, especially when it concerns a movie or movie watching experience that is important and meaningful to us on a personal level.

What makes this particular question a complicated one is the relationship that we have as viewers to the Directors vision for a particular project. That there is no clear rule to what a Director’s Cut is intended to be for us as viewers simply adds possible layers to the ways in which we might or might connect to these altered versions of a given film. It “can”, for example, offer us a clearer picture of a Director’s initial vision for a project, but it can also muddy it. It can (subjectively speaking) enhance the theatrical version, or it can make it worse. It can offer us some insight into what and why certain deleted scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, or confound us by these same choices of edit.

And sometimes it can even end up altering a films narrative entirely, as seems to be the case with the upcoming September premiere and release of Malick’s “Director’s Cut” of The Tree of Life, a film that Criterion director Lee Kline suggests seriously blurs the lines between a Director’s Cut and being a completely new film. Criterion, or the Criterion collection, for those who don’t know, is (to borrow from its official online definition): “an American home video distribution company which focuses on licensing “important classic and contemporary films” and selling them to film aficionados.”

You can see the conversation here:

Indiewire: https://www.indiewire.com/2018/08/criterion-tree-of-life-terrence-malick-new-movie-1201999468/

Reflecting on Malick’s own intentions, Lee goes on to say, “What’s interesting talking to Terry about this [new version of ‘Tree of Life’], I think he still doesn’t want people to think this is a better version. This is another version.” a statement which arrives in reference to the notion that the 2011 version was in-fact the “definitive version” Malick wanted to release.

Which raises some more serious and intentional questions for fans of this complicated but challenging film, like how will this new version change the narrative of the film? Will it keep the film’s spiritual core intact? Open up new conversations and insights about the film’s vision of what it means to be both human and spiritual beings? Will it create (or recreate) the film’s central relationships which remain at the core of articulating this vision on-screen?

As we await the release of this film (on Blu ray in the middle of September for those of us who can’t see it at the premier), it has an interesting exercise to mull this over in my own mind. In that process someone was even generous enough to forward me this link to what they suggested was a definitive “in-process” or “working” version of what eventually became the final 2011 film, which for those willing to peruse the many pages of the script could offer some clues as to where the new version might go with the newly imagined story. That definitely ends up somewhere on the geekier side of Malick fandom, but it’s something I personally have been having a bit of fun with as I try to surmise and predict Malick’s alternate or growing vision for The Tree of Life.

You can see the script here if you click on the link and then click on the blue box:

https://scriptslug.com/script/the-tree-of-life-2011

In any case, and in the meantime, I found myself revisiting the original film along with some of my initial thoughts, through which I was reminded of some timely words I penned in a review of that film 7 years ago:

“The film utilizes the art (or gift) of silence, allowing the visuals to speak through the absence of dialogue. The scenes jump quickly, and then slow, only to be given over to the chaos again and again in almost frustrating fashion. The performances submit, seemingly intentionally, to this same movement, their performances a prisoner to this same degree of chaos. If we gain a glimpse of grace, a break in the unending cycle, it is in the nature of the relationship between Jack and his father.

It is this relationship that allows the film to take the unfathomable, the unseen, the uncertainty, the unknown of life’s great mystery, and to allow it to take concrete shape as a deliberate human process, one that happens on the inside even if not always visible on the outside. Through this relationship we are encouraged, in the moments between the silence and the chaos, to find glimpses of our own inner struggle that pulls between our fallen nature and the grace and love that exists in the often unseen parts of our human (and spiritual) formation. It is this grace that gives worth to what can otherwise appear to be a meaningless endeavor of living in the chaos. And ultimately for each of us, this is what life is. Life is an ongoing battle between these two worlds, these two tensions, with the idea of hope being our single anchor. And the more we learn what it means to hope or to have hope, the more we can learn to see in the silence a means to live above (and in the midst of) the chaos, a vision and idea this film helps bring to the forefront of our own imaginations. In other words, the silence can help us see what the chaos is trying to teach us.”

This goes hand in hand with another piece of wisdom I encountered this morning in a YA Historical Fantasy book by James A. Owen called Here There Be Dragons, where one character (Mordred) surmises that “Shadows cannot exist without the light. But without the shadows, the light has no meaning.”

These are timely words as I continue to adjust to what for me has been a bit of an earth shattering loss nearing the end of summer, 2018. A pair of losses actually that has also offered me some perspective. One material, the other irreplaceable. One a loss of stuff, the other a loss of life.

To re-read these words from a film that 7 years ago shook the senses of a personal career transition, is to let it land for me in a completely new and fresh context. Which is fitting when it comes to the idea of encountering a new version of this film. In the cycles of life that sit somewhere between the silence and the chaos, the process of being able to re-contextualize the lessons of a singular experience is not only important, but also necessary. It is a truly rare thing to see how this might unfold through a canonized film, which makes this an exciting process. But as someone else also pointed out to me (or us) in one of the movie discussion groups, the answer to any difficultly with how Malick might change or mess with the original 2011 film is simple- don’t canonize. And I think what is powerful about this realization (or perhaps mandate) is that this applies in so many ways to our lives as well. As the 2011 film taught me, we see very little in the present tense, it is only in process that we can learn to see more fully by holding past, present and future in opened hands.

There is, I would argue, a human tendency to canonize the different moments of our life, and to thus harbor them and hold them tight for better or for worse, to obsess over, scrutinize, analyze and worry about them as time moves forward, often with or without us. But when we do this we risk getting stuck in the cycle of these present thoughts, and bound by the ways in which they hold us captive to a limited way of seeing ourselves and the world around us. Which, after a recent breakfast with a friend reminded me only leads to the sort of growing cynicism, anxiety, depression and regret that comes with the reminder we are never as in control as we feel we are. To use the language of Malick’s film, in the silence the chaos awaits.

Instead, we would all benefit from learning what it means to constantly be thinking and hoping anew, learning to embrace what it means to be molded and reshaped by expecting the experiences of our life to be re-contextualized in a way that can help us learn and grow as persons into new creations. This is in-fact what also must shape our spiritual longing, because, as the tagline for the movie suggests, in process “nothings stands still”. Time moves forward with or without us. But that shouldn’t leave us without hope. The power of this realization comes in the truth that it is in process that we can begin to trust that we are growing into grace, and growing towards a greater understanding of the ways grace and grace alone is getting the final word.

*SPOILER WARNING FOR THE RIDER

An unconventional film that uses the raw performances of its non-actors to underscore a potent spiritual core. The Rider is not afraid to dig into the human experience without the glamour and the polish. And what surfaces from this rawness are some deeply rooted questions about what makes life worth living.

The Universal Power of Relationships
There are a few ways in which The Rider could compare to another recently released and well received indie film with untested performances and an unconventional narrative style- Eighth Grade. I bring up that film because in the places where I felt that film fell ever so slightly short, The Rider soars, and perhaps the most important aspect is the way it welcomes the audience in on the cowboys experience. If I am not a middle grade, female adolescent, I might be even less of a cowboy. And so the films setting couldn’t be further away from my own experience as a born and raised city dweller. And yet the film is consistent in narrowing in on what lies behind the cowboy and Western motif, the stuff that narrates on a universal level.

Which is really all about the power of relationships, be it with a horse, an estranged father, or a disabled/intellectually disabled sister/brother.

And this is where the film reveals a strong spiritual core, perhaps standing as one of the most Pastoral films I have seen in a long while, certainly in 2018.

Stuck in the Cycles of our Life
While coping with his own disability through the use of different vices, isolation and emotional outbursts, a disability that was the result of an accident in riding that sidelines him for the foreseeable future, the film juxtaposes Brady’s personal struggle against the different relationships that exist in his life- horse, sister, brother, father.  It then uses these relationships to explore that line between giving up and finding the strength to get up and live another day, understanding that he must do this knowing that he has lost the very thing that once defined him and gave him an identity. And as the film moves forward in this struggle it begins to formulate into a question of purpose, a question that reaches into the very nature of our relationship with God in subtle but powerful ways.

There is a captivating scene early on where, caught in a moment of numbing the pain, Brady and a group of friends pray for God’s protection. And as they pray you can see in Brady’s eyes a growing conflict between the certainty of this moment, sitting under the stars with the grand landscape surrounding them, and the uncertainty of what might come when the sun rises again.

And the sunrise becomes indicative of a process or a cycle that finds both joy and despair in constant battle with one another. And it is the same cycle that Brady sees echoed in his father’s own trajectory towards being lost in the grip of the vices that hold him prisoner. And, as he exclaims at one point in the story, he just doesn’t want that to happen for him.

The Prayers of our Brokenness and our Healing
This reality, this constant battle between joy and despair, reaches into the very nature of our relationship with God in subtle but powerful ways. For Brady it becomes a question of purpose, of one day riding again, but with each new day that question becomes increasingly exposed as a call to see the joy in the midst of the despair, in the idea that he might never ride again. The prayer then begins to turn from an expectation that he will find a way back on that horse to beginning to embrace what God has placed right in front of him in a time of brokenness- relationships.

If you have seen the film you will know that one of the most powerful scenes arrives in a moment where he must choose to put his horse down because of a torn leg. With Brady unable to ride him, the horse becomes so desperate to run he breaks through a barbed wire fence and ends up with a deep, irreparable cut that means he will never run again. Brady can’t bring himself to do this alone though and has to bring his father over to help. And yet even as this is happening you can see the same conflict present in his eyes between the certainty of this moment (that he is doing the right thing for his horse) and the uncertainty of what might come when the sun rises again. And in one of the most gut wrenching scenes of 2018 we see him attempting to explain what has happened to his intellectually disabled sister. He tells her he had to put his horse down today. Her response is a simple and definite “no”. No, that is not how this works, thus in her eyes it is not true. And what her response pulls to the surface is the culmination of this conflict between certainty and uncertainty, the imposing question that continues to haunt Brady of what it means to live when your ability to run, or in his case to ride, or in the case of his sister to be able to function normally in society, is taken away. In the case of the animal they are put down. In the case of their own weakness they are expected to go on living. But why does it work this way? Why should it work this way?

A Necessary Grace
The only real certainty that we find here is that it is in relationship we are reminded of our brokenness, and it is in relationship we are reminded that all of us are broken in some way. And it is this understanding that offers us grace. The grace we need to move forward towards a purpose that stands taller than our ability and circumstance. The grace we need to extend to others, which Brady is eventually able to offer to his father as well.

And in showing us this truth, the film is brave enough to suggest that our true identity, the purpose that God has given each of us in the midst of our own struggle between joy and despair, does not come from our accomplishments or our abilities, but rather from our willingness to receive and extend grace in relationship to those God has placed in our midst. This is why we live. And it is when we do this that we are able to begin to see ourselves the way God sees us as well, both in our brokenness and in our ability to love beyond it.

In The Rider it is this simple embrace of both the joy and the despair that governs the cycles of our lives, the cycles that we find in the sunsets and the sunrises, and it is grace that breaks through these cycles and that makes itself aware in the moments which gives us a reason and the strength we need to face another day.

The sun was getting ready to set, and as we approach the base of the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge we notice an individual, a woman likely in her mid twenties/early thirties, who is visibly agitated and yelling something seemingly towards someone on the top of the bridge. As we got closer we were able to make out that the string of profanity accompanying this woman’s agitation had something to do with the “black nigger bitches” walking the pedestrian bridge above her.

We don’t know what led to this war of words. What we did know was that this woman, clearly agitated and obviously a little drunk, was now occupying the space by the elevator doors we needed to take to get to the top of the bridge.

Lingering in the shadows for a bit while hoping this lady would eventually give up and go away, we eventually were able to follow behind another middle aged couple for whom this seemed to be “just another day in Nashville”. They saw us following up behind them and quickly ushered us into the elevator doors where we were able to make our way to the top.

Both of us were sweating a little. Of course that might have had something to do with the 30 degree weather in Tennessee. Or the 40 degree weather inside that elevator.

Exiting the elevator we emerged onto the pedestrian bridge to see the group of 5 young, African American adults who had been the source of the ladies ire. And suddenly all 5 of them were turned staring straight at the two of us.

No, wait. They were staring straight past us. At the elevator doors.

Turning around we saw the lady from the ground level had boarded the elevator and was now making her way up.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit” one of the younger ones exclaims.

We share the sentiment.

Caught in the middle, we quickly retreated to the side of the bridge where, at the very least, we would no longer be stuck in the middle. The group of 5 retreated downwards towards the base of the bridge and the agitated woman followed after them. We took the opportunity and quickly started heading for the top of the bridge…

Putting ourselves definitely in the middle of someone shooting a music video.

Or a music something.

There was a conductor, who also happened to be the one working the camera. And in front of him is a man and a woman, one with a keyboard and the other with a guitar, both who look like the came straight out of 1980’s Maranatha Church music video.

The conductor, giving everything he as to breathe life into this music video is getting more and more animated while the musicians keep keep more and more straight faced. Aware that we were most definitely not in Kansas anymore, we nudged our way as best we could past the camera. As I did this I looked for some sort of open box that might indicate these guys are playing up a routine to gain tourist dollars, but there seemed to be nothing of the sort. Just this strange scene playing out in front of us as though we had entered an episode of the twilight zone.

Finally getting past this rather odd state of affairs, I turn my head and suddenly there it is. Music City unfolding right before us bringing a little bit of sanity back into the picture.

Welcome to Nashville!

Nashville in July is hot. I know it’s obvious, but I felt it needed to be said.

A peculiarity about Nashville is that to see this city on a budget, which is a necessity if only because this city of music and museums can easily get expensive and out of control if you let it- nearly everything you will end up doing on a budget puts you outside in the heat.

Which is only to say I’m not sure we would visit again in July. Give me the fall or the winter and a good show though and the stuff that clearly makes this city tick would turn into a great experience. As any good tourist usually does, our exploration of this city started with a jaunt down Broadway where the endless Honky Tonk bars are all vying for the attention of the packed streets. And as the sun sets and the lights come up it only gets livelier.

After a drive through South-Eastern Tennessee, which took us through the historic Chattanooga (a fun stop) and Lynchburg (the home of Jack Daniel), we spent the next three days in the Nashville area. Rather than simply reflect on some of what stood out for me in this area, I thought I would do something different for this one and focus more on the vacation than the introspective journey.

Given our approach to the city, I figured I would go through our time in Nashville from the angle of doing Nashville on a budget. It is an expensive city, but it doesn’t have to be. And although ours is just a singular experience, here is at least one perspective on how to see Nashville and maybe save a bit of money while you are doing it:

Tip #1: Take advantage of the free parking
When I was researching Nashville one of the things that kept coming up was that it was hard to find parking and the parking that you can find is either expensive or not available during the day.

One of the most popular pieces of advice I found was to look into parking in one of the lots at the Tennessee Titans Stadium and using the Pedestrian Bridge that sits right beside the stadium to take you right into the heart of downtown (a block away from Broadway). There are (I believe) 2 lots that are free to park in on days where there are no games or other major Stadium events happening. The problem with this, and what this advice did not clearly divulge, is that these spots can be reserved ahead of time. And so unless you are booking way ahead it is tough to actually find an available spot there.

On a fluke though I came across a secondary piece of advice that instructed me not to go into the lots but to instead to enter the Stadium grounds, drive through the lots and turn towards Titans Way, Victory Avenue, or First Street South. All of these streets are either entirely unreserved or have portions that are unreserved and free, unlimited parking on days (both during the days and in the evenings) that are not Stadium event days. And if you don’t find anything on Titans Way (your closest proximity to gain access to the Pedestrian Bridge elevator), just drive up 1st Street and you will find a spot closer to the actual foot of the bridge where you can simply walk up and over to the downtown attractions.

It is also worth noting that parking is free in downtown Nashville after six, but you might have a hard time finding a spot that is closer to the attractions than the stadium lot.

Tip #2: Take the free bus
If you are parking by the Stadium lot (or in the lot) and using the bridge as your entry point into downtown, directly the bridge you will see a bus stop called Music City Star Riverfront Station. There are two buses (the Green and the Blue Line) that you can catch from this station that are free and that make several different stops along the major sights and attractions. The routes overlap at a few points, but there is a map at this station letting you know which one you might want to take.

The only place in the downtown district these buses don’t go is to Music Row. It does however take you within reasonable walking distance.

Tip #3: Plan a morning at the free museum and Bicentennial Park
This might not be the greatest idea when it is 35 degrees in the middle of the day, but if you do get out early before the midday sun this is a decent option for getting familiar with the history of Tennessee and taking in some of downtown Nashville’s public spaces. The free bus takes you straight to Bicentennial Mall and there is a lot to see in that area, including the downtown farmers market, the free Tennessee History Museum, and the more affordable (and I heard many argue more interesting) Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum located between fourth and fifth avenues right beside the Tennessee State Capital (also something to see).

Tip #3 Plan a sunset Walk in Centennial Park
If you are content with simply seeing Music Row and not doing the Studio B tour (which is really the tip of what becomes a long line of really expensive museum exhibits), take some pictures, grab a treat from the famous Goo Goo Candy store downtown,some of the famous Hattie B’s “hot Nashville Chicken” (two locations, one that has parking a little further from downtown, and one that is hard to find parking closer to downtown) if you are so inclined, and head up to Centennial Park for a picnic and a viewing of the rather breathtaking, made to scale recreation of the Parthenon. If you never make it to Greece this might be the next best thing. And it gets more glorious in the sunset after the lights come on.

The park is free and you can walk all around it for free. But one bonus during the day is that for a small fee you can actually go inside and visit the gallery that is houses, which includes the largest statue ever made. 

Tip #4: The Museums are expensive but the music itself is affordable
Take a walk down Broadway and you will realize you can take in show after show for free. And this is because most of the places where bands are playing are opened up to the street. You can waste an entire evening lingering here and enjoying the venues and not spend a dime. 

Should you want to actually go in and find a seat in one of these places though, most of them do not have a cover charge, which means you only need to buy food.

Also of note is the famous Bluebird Cafe. Really hard to get in, but if you want to spend a portion of your day waiting in line (being there around 2 or 3 hours early would give you a good chance of snagging one of the unreserved spots which are first come, first serve. We were there just over 2 hours early and no one was in line yet), this is a mostly free venue where you can catch great music (with a minimum $10 per person drinks/meal along with the odd fundraiser that sometimes costs $10 or $15 per person).

Also for later nights is a place called Cafe Coco. I bring them up because they are known for good music, open late and they are a cafe, which means you can choose from a more dessert oriented menu.
http://cafecoco.com/

And it’s Nashville. It’s all about the music all the time. Research what’s going on downtown on any given evening/weekend and there is a good chance you will encounter more opportunities for free music. And if you track down where the locals like to peruse, chances are you will find an affordable evening with the best of Nashville’s music along the way as well.

Tip #5: See the Gaylord Opryland Resort for free
If you don’t really care for the high end shopping centre while you are out seeing the legendary Grand Ol’ Opry (extra tip: there is a book for sale in the Opry gift shop for $25 that essentially photo ops the entire backstage tour. If you want to take the tour but you don’t want to pay the price, linger a little bit and page through this book, or purchase it. It will make you feel like you’ve taken the tour and seen the Opry: https://www.opry.com/backstagebook), then wander over to the Gaylord Opryland Resort. Park at the far end of the mall and Opry parking lot and you will see a walkway that takes you through the wall and into the resort grounds. Follow this walkway and you will eventually arrive at the side entrance of what is a very, VERY big resort. Once you are inside, don’t be afraid of feeling like you are inside a hotel where you are not supposed to be. Keep going forward and you will enter the central plaza. This is the area, or multiple areas, that is housed by that glass dome visible from the freeway. There are maps at every entrance into this central plaza area, and you can follow the trail from there through the waterfalls, the garden, the town, etc., and it will even take you to the grand front entrance. 

It might sound odd, but it is definitely something to see. And you can wander, stay, sit, shop, peruse as if you were actually paying the money to stay in the hotel.
https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/bnago-gaylord-opryland-resort-and-convention-center/?scid=bb1a189a-fec3-4d19-a255-54ba596febe2

Tip #6: Take in dinner and a movie (and maybe some pretty fantastic ice cream) in the Hillsboro Village District. 
Along with The Gulch downtown (https://explorethegulch.com/) and The Arcade downtown (http://thenashvillearcade.com/) where you should track down the boiled peanuts, a Southern delicacy, Hillsboro Village is another great place beyond the downtown borders to wander and window/culture shop.
http://www.visitmusiccity.com/visitors/neighborhoods/hillsborovillage

If you are from Winnipeg, think Corydon Avenue atmosphere. And there are places to park!

The Belcourt Theatre is a great little indie theatre where you can see more independent movies and hang (and chat if you aren’t too introverted) with some of the locals. A cheap night out in Nashville. And in the area are some popular restaurants, including Fido and the Pancake Pantry (Nashville is known for their pancakes along with their hot chicken).

And highly recommended would be a stop at Jeni’s Splendid Ice-Creams, just down the block from the Belcourt Theatre.

Their cake ice cream is even gluten free, and so, so good.
https://jenis.com/ 

The great thing about heading to this area out of downtown as well is that it gives you an opportunity to drive through the Belmont neighbourhood, which is also where the Belmont Mansion is. Again, if you are already spent on museums and can’t spend any more, driving through the neighbourhood and by the mansion is a great Sunday drive that gives you a sense of its history.

Tip #7: Use the Greenways
If you are mobile enough to make use of the Greenways, look up Nashville’s greenway system, connecting the Opryland to downtown. It’s a cheap and affordable way to get around we well and gives you some great views of the city.
http://bikethegreenway.net/

That’s all I have for our budget trip to Nashville. I’m sure there is plenty else one could add, but for a first time to Nashville and as someone who wanted to see the big sights but not pay the big prices, these tips were a great way to feel like we got up close and personal with this beautiful, quirky, lively and very hot city without breaking the budget.

 

 

There are a lot of museums in Tennessee. And a lot of them are not cheap. In Nashville alone, two persons could easily drop more than a few hundred dollars within a couple block radius on museums.

We had to pick and choose which ones we were going to see and which ones we were going to pass up fairly early on. I tend to ask two questions when deciding which Museums are worth the money and which are not.
1. How much do I already know about a particular person or place of interest
2. Does the museum showcase a particular artifact or object of interest that I feel I need to see in person

From those two questions I am then able to measure that against the dollar value and the travel time/investment.

And of course when there are two of you travelling together it is also helpful to be able to match these questions with a shared interest in a particular place.

Long before leaving we knew there were two museums that we both really wanted to see during our time in Tennessee- the Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge and the Jack Daniels Distillery Tour in Lynchburg, and thankfully we got a chance to visit them both.

I figured I was going to enjoy them. What I didn’t expect was to be so captured and moved by their collective stories, both of which brought to light issues of class, slavery and heroism in their own way.

The Titanic Museum
The telling fact about this museum’s attention to detail is the scaled down replica of the Titanic that houses the exhibit itself, including the worlds largest lego Titanic.

And to say it is scaled down is definitely not to say this thing is small. It would be near impossible to miss the massive ship looming over the Pigeon Forge Parkway.

We didn’t realize it at first, but when you enter the museum you are walking into a recreation of the ships grand staircase. You are quickly turned towards the back of the ship, but there will be two more visits to this staircase along the way. And it is a neat experience to walk through, especially after the exhibit has brought the ship to life and given it context.

Along with this grand entrance you are also given a boarding pass for a single individual. This is the character you play along the way, and the museum is set up in such a way as to keep the fate of your given name a mystery until you happen upon its reveal. It plays to neat affect as you are intentionally viewing the exhibit through the lens of that particular story, attentive and aware of how he or she fits into the bigger picture. Were they a part of first class or third class? Were they part of a wealthy family or struggling immigrants. What brought them onto the ship? Where were they coming from? Where were they headed?

All of these questions are opened up before you as you wander the different sections of the ship itself. You learn about how each level housed different classes, and of how many more third class residents there were than first class. I think this is something that really stuck with me, is just what this ship represented to so many struggling individuals anticipating the promise of a new life. It makes the harrowing reality of the sinking ship that much more painful to experience, and a part of what this museum does is allow you to really gain an appreciation for the experience itself, whether it has you standing at the bottom of a stairwell watching the water rushing towards you, walking up that Grand Staircase or attempting to walk and stand on the ships deck at the different points of angle during the ships gradual and inevitable sinking.

And then you come to the bow of the ship where you are able to touch a man-made iceberg and immerse your hands into the water to feel how cold it would have been when the ship sank. Standing under the stars and looking out at the expanse of the ocean ahead of you, the stories of all the individuals on the ship really come into perspective at this point in the exhibit.

And this is really a big part of what made this museum so effective, is the way it tells the story. Using elements of all the senses, it really becomes an emotional experience. The stories of the children on board were probably the toughest to read, but you also get to read and hear about largely untold stories of individuals like whom sacrificed themselves for others, whom were transformed by the experience, whom represent immense loss in terms of spiritual voices, family members, mentors and innovators.

Speaking of the tragedy of the Titanic against the even more immense tragedy that would soon follow, journalist Tony Parson writes,

And yet we remember the victims of Titanic in a unique way. We remember Titanic for more than the senseless loss of life.

Like the casualties of 9/11, their tragedy seems to mark a turning point in our history.

When the icy, black waters closed over the Titanic, and when the last of the screams of the freezing and drowning had finally stopped, the world would look a very different place.

The old world feels like it died with the Titanic – the good and the bad.

The unforgiving class system of Titanic is part of its myth, and gives it immense symbolic power – we may have lost the age of chivalry with Titanic, but we also lost the age of deference, and serfs who were content with their lot, who would cheerfully tug their forelocks while they died and their superiors lived…

Every generation discovers Titanic anew, retells her story, tries to find meaning, and sees some reflection of its own time.

Jack Daniels Distillery 
Perhaps the most offsetting thing you learn about Jack Daniels (Which, as they will point out is the name of the distillery, not the drink. If you want to describe the drink it is “Jack Daniel”) is the fact that Lynchburg, the small town that houses the Distillery, is a dry town.

In fact, Jack Daniels is literally the only place in town you can go to get a drink, either on a tasting tour or from the gift shop. And the only reason that is the case is because of a loophole in the system. Technically, and for legal purposes, they are selling bottles, not alcohol. What’s inside the bottle is beside the point.

Unless you live in Lynchburg and want Jack Daniel. Then what’s inside the bottle is all the point.

That and some mutually beneficial economic legislation.

The other most striking thing about this nearly 90 minute long tour of the Distillery in action is the degree with which they have turned Jack into something of a humanitarian. He’s not. In fact he seems like he was quite the troubled individual. A bit of an assuming “ladies man” as they put it subtly and delicately. And yet Jack Daniel has grown into an institution that proudly continues to aspire towards the family name all these years later. As the tour will inform you, most of the workers in the Distillery are connected to the blood line that started the institution. It is in a very big way an undying family business that functions using the same underground spring (that refuses to dry up) an the same recipe that Jack used all those years before.

Now, this might sound weird, but my wife Jen turned me on to the idea of considering a theology of Jack Daniels. She casually noted how the story of Jack Daniels, and really the larger history of Whiskey that permeates the area (and the whole Kentucky Bourbon/Jack debate is a hotly contested issue to be sure), plays into our understanding of faith as Christians. And she was right. The more I thought about it the more this made a lot of sense.

So here are 3 ways in which Jack Daniel is theology:

1. It’s about spiritual formation
A word on how they make Jack Daniel.

They will tell you over and over again on the tour that Jack Daniel is not a bourbon – it’s a Tennessee Whiskey. To makeJack Daniel they drip it through, very slowly, ten feet of packed, sugar maple charcoal (mellowing process) and then put into charred oak barrels for what they describe as the maturing process. This maturing process is defined by elevation. Barrels on the lower level get a certain label for a certain taste. Barrels on the higher level get another label for another particular taste.

It is this slow drip process that sets Jack Daniel apart from Bourbon.

Just don’t tell them that this is a technicality under regulations. As far as regulations are concerned, Bourbon is Bourbon no matter how you make it.

There is something to be said for this process though. Kentucky Bourbon, and Moonshine to an even greater degree are much quicker and much easier to make. In reality Bourbon arrives via international travel and trade, but in 1964 the Kentucky Bourbon enthusiasts declared it to be a distinctly American drink. Only, as they say, everyone knows that by American they mean Kentucky.

Jack takes time. It take patience. Just like our spiritual life. To be transformed from Kentucky Bourbon into Jack Daniel we must be formed by the spirit using that slow drip process. Drip, by drip, the spirit shaping us and molding us through our experience of the sacred in the every day process of living.

2. It’s all about grace
A noted thing about the Jack Daniel distilling process is its attention to mastering the craft. And the master craft really comes down to controlling the taste. In the case of Jack Daniel it is about ensuring that no matter which bottle is sold and where we buy it the product tastes the same. So that when we are buying a single barrel or double mellow, we know precisely what to expect.

The analogy is not perfectly applied to our spiritual lives, but I think what is striking is just how much this attention to detail shapes their love of the of the product. If it is not right it goes through the process again. And every part of the process has a role and has a use or is reused. The barrels, the sour mash, the charcoal. There is no wasted part of the process. Apply that to our spiritual lives and I think we are given a picture of how the spirit shapes us. There is no wasted product. You do not discard imperfections. You simply go about the process again. And as we go through this process, the stuff of life, we trust that we are being made and shaped more and more into the sons and daughters of God we are already known to be.

3. Whiskey brings us together

There is a healthy debate that exists across state lines between what is whiskey, what is not, and how that Kentucky and Jack differs. And these debates spill out of what has become a recognizable part of the culture.

Get close to the Mountains and talk about Moonshine, and the conversation pushes even further yet. Moonshine is the stuff of raw experience, unaged and unfiltered. The sort of drink you risked drinking and that shaped the plight of the drinker. And yet it is still Whiskey, even in its rawest form.

And the truth of all Whiskey, whether Bourbon or Jack or Moonshine, it all shares the same source, the same origin. And when it comes to the sour mash, it is akin to sour dough, with a single, seemingly eternal source giving life to endless creations.

And as spiritual beings we all share the source of our strength. We are all equally seen and loved and adored by our Heavenly Father. We are all equally welcome to participate in the sacred.

And this is hugely important to recognize when it came to the Jack Daniels tour. I didn’t realize it at the time, but one of the most compelling notes of the tour is the subtle mention of a slave that accompanied Jack in coming up with his creation. It’s significant because until recently this slave was never mentioned on the tour, that is until a woman stood up and made a difference. You can read her article here. But suffice to say that it is a powerful reminder of how we are being shaped and renewed and transformed over time, whether that be as persons, including the raw, unfiltered life of Jack himself, or as a nation. And in God’s light we are being shaped and transformed according to His spirit, His love and His unifying acceptance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I lift my eyes to the mountains. 
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
Psalm 121:1-5

The summer series at our Church is fittingly centred on the the idea of a pilgrimage. We are reading together through Psalms 120-134, and the invitation is not simply to read them but to go on a “journey” with them. To even utilize some ancient practices in scripture reading. The invitation is to follow together through what is known as the Song of Ascents, to allow them to evoke a sense of forward movement and growth. To capture the idea that as we read we are actively moving upwards in order to gain a bigger and better picture of God and God’s relationship to us and the world.

Thinking back on our pilgrimage to Nashville, this image of the final ascent into the Appalachian front sticks in my mind as particularly meaningful. The ride from Louisville to Knoxville, partly known as the Bourbon Trail, but also leading to the entranceway to the Smokey Mountains, is beautiful. But it is not until you enter the greater Knoxville area that, to borrow a popular phrase, “the hills come alive” in their full splendour.

In a most recent sermon my Pastor spent a bit of time reflecting on the idea that in the ancient world Mountains held slightly different meaning than they do for us today. Today we tend to see them as a place of retreat, a place of solitude and contemplation. They are a backdrop of nature that allow us to think on the bigger picture of life and questions and doubts and wonder.

In the ancient world mountains were seen as mysterious and apprehensive places. They were obstacles to be conquered as one either fled from or journeyed toward a particular place. They were were wars were fought and they tended to be places that evoked a strong sense of fear and wonder and apprehension. They were the home of the gods as they say (which is also why they were also given the names of different gods).

Author Walter Woodburn Hyde in a work he did titled The Ancient Appreciation of Mountain Scenery suggests the possibility of discovering something of a pattern in the ancient world when it came to their relationship with the mountains. A pattern that I felt could appropriately speak to our modern experience.

There is a sense in which history sees our growing relationship to mountains in the light of how we see and understand ourselves. In a spiritual sense this can also be understood as the way we see and understand ourselves in relationship to God. There is something about the grandeur of the mountains that awakens us to something bigger than us, something mysterious and incomprehensible. And I think what often accompanies us on our “retreats” to these places is a return to this sense of mystery in the modern age as we retreat from the pressure of daily life and the onslaught of information that barrages us every day.

But I also think that what we can learn from the ancient world is that these retreats can also be considered an ascent. A pilgrimage. A means of growing and moving forward as the change in environment helps us to understand ourselves in relationship to God and the world more clearly. And I think in an explicitly Christian sense, this ascent is connected directly to the idea of growing in our understanding of God with us. We ascent into the mountains in order to challenge the feeling of God being far away and to remind ourselves that God is near.

Hyde argues in his article that that the ancient world provides glimpses of this natural progression from places of fear to places of admiration and contemplation as we look at the historical record. Much like a mountain climber does with intention today, on the other side of this ascent into the mountains for the ancients, even if unintentional, tended to be the emergence of a recognizable introspective process that saw the mountains as not something simply to conquer, but a picture of grace and wonder to embrace. A place that can tell us something about ourselves and about God rather than simply withholding us from the mystery of that relationship.

Interestingly enough, particularly when it comes to the Southern Appalachian front, both the early settling of the area and the civil war follow this same idea or pattern of ascent. Where once the mountains were something to get over and to conquer in order to expand further West, the Mountains eventually became a place to settle and to grow, and in some redeemable sense a place to live in communion with the indigenous people that called it home. Today theses town are reflective of a chosen lifestyle and culture and a place to remind one of the horrible acts that were enacted on the indigenous people.

And where the civil war turned those same mountains into a battleground and a place of uncertainty and danger, eventually the Mountains became a safe haven for broken soldiers and a divided nation. A place to heal.

Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg: A Conversation of Contrasts
Immediately to the East of Knoxville are the twin cities of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Two cities that hold very different representations of the areas history.

Gatlinburg is the Mountain town that sits right outside the gates to the National Park. In earlier years it represented both a settlement for the early settlers and became an important battlefront during the civil war where the union troops that eventually settled in the area (and that remain represented today) encountered the challenge of a heavy Confederate force.

And what’s really interesting about the politics of Gatlinburg is that it is a pro-union (today that reads liberal) town that didn’t see eye to eye with its confederate supporting founder (Gatlinburg of course). In fact he was ran out of town.

Pigeon Forge by contrast holds the remnants of the areas industrial roots, being built around this old iron forge that eventually was shut down and turned into an old mill that is still functioning today. 

This also explains the areas obsession with pancakes.

And so Gatlinburg is largely recognized as the cultural heart of the area, while Pigeon Forge represents the industry. And it could be noted that the minute you drive into Pigeon Forge this becomes immediately obvious. The industry of yesteryear has grown into a hugely over the top tourist destination full of museums, grandiose buildings and multi-level go cart tracks.

Think Clifton Hill on steroids.

And yet there is a sense that for all of this tourist attraction, the area remains indebted to its roots. We stayed at a small, independently owned hotel on the edge of town called the Tennessee Mountain Lodge. Just far enough from all the lights and noise to gain a sense of the mountain culture, but close enough to be a part of the attractions as well.

And immediately next door to our motel was what they call the Old Mill District. It is here that Pigeon Forge owes its roots, the once Iron Forge turned milling house. It is a well preserved symbol of what once built the town as the settlement expanded from Gatlinburg to Knoxville, and as I mentioned still a functioning part of what drives their industry today.

And just beyond the Old Mill, just beyond the sightline of Dollywood (which provides nightly fireworks Disney style by the way) is what they call The Island, an entertainment mecca that mixes an old style shopping district full of unique and independently owned store fronts set against the backdrop of restaurants and a giant ferris wheel. A fun place to linger into the late hours of the night (they stay open until 11:00).

Gatlinburg still has some of the flashiness of Pigeon Forge built into its village streets, but it mostly revolves around getting you up close and personal with the mountain experience. What largely sets Gatlinburg apart is in fact its village like atmosphere.

Wandering its main streets is a little like stepping back in time into a still thriving mountain culture. Aspiring musicians lingering and playing (and they will refuse your money if you try to give it). Lively streets packed full of people. Authentic Moonshine spots vying for your attention. And decorated torch light style old Victorian village sections with all sorts of local shops, candies, chocolates, and coffee.

Or take for another example the Arts and Crafts Community.  Formed in 1937 the Arts & Crafts Community is a union of artists and craftsmen that they describe as “a living, breathing tribute to the history of Tennessee.” The sign describes this group as carvers, weavers, watercolor artists, casters, soap makers, potters, silversmiths and many others, and the way you participate in this arts and crafts community is by driving the trail that takes you through a bottom section of the mountains. It’s a beautiful idea in a beautiful spot.

Understanding Our Roots
So while talk about protecting our roots comes alive in Pigeon Forge’s history, a town that has changed drastically from what it was but which has continued to struggle to maintain its image as an authentically grown family town built on industrious pursuits, Gatlinburg actively lives it out by celebrating its heritage in a more unrestrained, lively, rebellious atmosphere akin to its Moonshine roots.

And isn’t that what forms our pilgrimages. Knowing where we came from, the obstacles of our past, facing the figurative mountains that have shaped us in unique ways and becoming transformed on the other side? This is what our ascent does, is bring greater clarity to these things much in the same way that the identity of these towns remains a vital part of who they are. And we strive after this sort of clarity, often in the modern day by “retreating” to the mountains so that we can also be molded into something new. So that we can grow, spiritually speaking, as God’s children.

I spent time praying for the students who were embarking on their own pilgrimage as we made the final ascent up into the Smokey Mountains. And as we reached the spot of highest elevation I imagined them having the opportunity to gain a better picture of who they are. To consider their roots and the ways in which their pilgrimage might be able to grow and transform them as well.

I admit, I am not a huge fan of Mountains. Call it my Prairie bred roots, but my own sense of retreat often comes in places where I can see far down the horizon. Endless Prairies. The quant rolling hills of Pennsylvania or Eastern Canada. The Ocean side. These often are where I get drawn into the mystery, the bigness of this world. And yet as we engaged with the Smokey Mountains I was taken by the elevation. The idea that we could journey from one side to the other and have taken a pilgrimage of some significance. And it inspired me to consider that whether we are travelling to Nashville or spending time in the Psalms, God is with us, forming us through our experiences into more cultured and loving persons regardless of the past that we carry with us. And often precisely because of the ways these mountains give these pieces of our past more clarity and purpose.

 

 

 

When travelling, one of the ways I measure an experience of seeing a new place is through asking, how disappointed am I to have to leave and how eager am I to visit the place again.

Spoiler- I was disappointed to leave and I want to go back Louisville.

Driving the 165 to Louisville
Approaching the Indiana/Kentucky State line from the North, the 165 runs straight through the heart of Indiana. There are National Parks to the east and the west, while smaller towns and cities such as the self declared “mid-century modern architecture “mecca” of Columbus, Indiana, dot the interstate itself.
(Pictures of Columbus, Indiana, including the Common and the Mill Race Park, a form industrial area converted into green space)

(Photo by Leonard Perry)

Or take Lafayette, the quiet, unassuming home of Axle Rose and Purdue University, the school of choice for a number of famous people including Neil Armstrong, and perhaps most importantly the birth place of the “chicken nugget”.
(Photo by John Schanlaub- Downtown Lafayette, Indiana)

It is here that those familiar with indigenous history and relations can pass through the battleground for the Battle of Tippecanoe at Prophetstown State Park, a major turning point in the ongoing efforts of the Indigenous Peoples to create a functioning Confederacy that could withstand the ongoing push of the American conquest and settlement, a battle that essentially paved the way for the war of 1812.

Lafayette also represents a familiar characteristic of many of the towns and cities that mark this route, which is preserved or redeveloped historical river fronts and old, Victorian era architecture that follow these towns all the way into Louisville. Now mere remnants of a failed dream, Lafayette used to be an epicentre for the longest canal ever built in North America, the Wabash and Erie Canal that closed after operating only for about a decade. It becomes a bit of a treasure hunt to track down traces of the old canal these days, but one of those places is a restored 10 mile historic section of canal trail that connects to Delphi along the Wabashi river, a short drive from Lafayatte. You can even take a wonderfully quaint canal ride on a restored canal boat or walk the trails to gain a glimpse of the canal’s grand past.

You can see the canal tour here:
https://www.homeofpurdue.com/attractions/wabashanderiecanal.html

Also worth noting is the restored canal in Indianapolis.(Picture from Indianapolis monthly of the Indeanapolis Canal)

Which brings us to Louisville, where an unintentional detour (also called missing our exit) took us straight through the heart of downtown, an experience that became one of my favourite moments of the drive.

Welcome to Louisville
Our initial destination in Tennessee was Knoxville, the point at which we would be dropping off our group of students at a conference and splitting time between the Smokies on the East and Nashville on the West before picking them up and making the journey home. Arriving in Louisville, our planned stop for the night en-route to Knoxville, the interstate junction offers you two options- the 165 heading straight to Nashville or the 164/175 route veering East/West. We needed to take the East exit towards the infamous horse mecca of Lexington situated on the Western side of the Daniel Boone National Forest, and then eventually continue South on 175 to Knoxville.

Crossing the Ohio river ahead of this junction gives you a great view of the downtown skyline and Louisville Waterfront Park. But it was our missing our 164 East exit, which would have veered us directly away from downtown Louisville, that offered us a spectacular up close and personal view of the park, the skyline and the Big Four Bridge (a joint effort to connect the Indiana/Kentucky state line which is divided by the river) right before looping us back through the heart of downtown in order to get us heading back East.

I have a huge appreciation for skylines, and one of my favourite things is the experience of driving into view of a city skyline for the very first time. And there is little question Louisville is a beautiful city. There even happened to be a festival going on in Waterfront Park at the time, and as we started our descent off the elevated freeway and towards downtown we were offered a perfect view of Jimmy Eat World playing on stage with the Ohio River and waterfront situated right behind them.

                                          (Image Source: Practical Wanderlust)

Getting off the interstate took us right past a series of quaint and stylish downtown streets known for their pedestrian friendly atmosphere, old Victorian architecture, the Lousiville Slugger Museum and of course the downtown bars and distillery’s (one third of all Kentucky Bourbon comes from Louisville).

Worth noting and one of my big regrets is that in getting back on the 164 from this point we drove right past Cave Hill Cemetery, the gravesite of Muhammed Ali, on one side and the historic Frankfort Avenue on the other, two places I would have loved to get out and spend some time in.

We stayed just outside of Louisville that night, but that brief time in Louisville was more than enough to capture my attention and leave me wanting to go back. It reminded me of our time in Omaha City, a place we expected nothing from but fell in love with at first sight because of the pedestrian friendly downtown and downtown life, the canal and the incredible river front, along with the interesting history seemingly existing in the middle of nowhere.

Louisville: A City of Welcome Contradiction
As we started our ascent the next day into the Appalachian Mountains, the story of Louisville would turn out to be a great foreshadow for what was to come in the Knoxville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg area, otherwise known as the entry point to the Smokey Mountains. Not unlike those towns, which I hope to talk more about in my next blog, Louisville is a place of seeming contradiction and misrepresentation, which is largely a product of its close confluence with the Mountains themselves.

One of the things I learned on this trip is that it is the are stretching from Gatlinburg through to Virginia and North Carolina on one side and through to Louisville on the other that was most impacted by the civil war because of the way the Southern Appalachia of the way the Union and Confederate loyalties congregated in these areas. This led not only to heated battles over these different ideologies, but it also led to intermixing in the mountain towns as well, resulting in an odd conglomeration of ideologies, a reality that surfaces most visibly in the different historical narratives you tend to encounter as a tourist. And this oddness reaches well into the Louisville culture, a culture that often gets associated with Southern stereotypes and sensibilities, but in actuality represents a rather eclectic and unrestrained cultural voice that in a sense deconstructs those sensibilities.

This characteristic reaches both forwards and backwards into many aspects of the Southern Appalachia.

Take Daniel Boone for example. His story has developed into a legend that appears to serve both sides of a competing political view, on one hand as an icon and symbol of conquest and Western expansion who is depicted brutally scalping and murdering the “savages” threatening their progress and their lives, while on the other hand representing someone who shunned images of early American civilization and development by removing himself from these areas and establishing positive relationships with the indigenous people in a life lived isolated from the ignorance of the cities themselves.

In the reality it becomes apparent that the real  Boone was somewhere in the middle, and perhaps an even more heroic figure than the legends on either side give credit for. Louisville remains an homage to Boone’s role in positioning America’s Western expansion through important and necessary civil discourse and civic development, while at the same time fostering and supporting healthy relationships with the indigenous groups that shared the land with them. He was in a sense attempting to reflect the hopeful aspirations of both worlds.

And as with the Knoxville/Gatlinburg area that lies ahead, modern Louisville’s tendency to be in constant ideological flux affords it a neat and intriguing, if confusing atmosphere that is at once progressive and refreshingly moderate at the same time. Often misunderstood based on its Southern roots, the city is in actuality a largely undefined, cultural expression that carries through its attempts to speak through the divided lines of North and South.

As journalist Jeffrey Lee Pucket puts it in an article for the Courier Journal discussing Louisville’s complicated character,

“Despite siding with the North in the Civil War, Kentucky didn’t abolish slavery until after the war was over, K’Meyer wrote. It then chose to be Southern in order to grow the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, instituting a Jim Crow system which was just slavery-lite even as Louisville gradually built a community that embraced religious diversity and immigration.”

Also suggesting,

“In its heart, Louisville is a Southern city primarily because it desperately wants to be seen as Southern, meaning friendly, slow-paced, elegant.

But Louisville also clearly wants to have its cornbread and dip it in Vermont syrup, too, because it has long identified with big-city aspirations associated with Northern culture, such as civil rights, cutting-edge arts and sarcasm.

We’re Southern when it suits the narrative and greatly enjoy adopting a persona dressed up in string ties and hats that double as flower arrangements. But when it comes to the South’s more deplorable legacies – racism, segregation, poverty – we’re quick to look northward.”

And this long standing relationship with pre-civil war history, civil war history and the modern age continues to shape the life of the area today, permeating the stories of its many cultural markers from horse racing to Whiskey and Moonshine heritage. All of which makes it not just a beautiful landscape, but also a beautiful tapestry of the sort of unhinged and multi-cultured expression that can help reshape our imaginings and stereotypes of the South while perhaps playing a role in healing a divided land. And after engaging with this city over the last number of years of armchair travel, seeing it in person I can’t help but begin to understand what enchanted spiritual giant Thomas Merton back in 1958 towards this same end.
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“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time.”
– Thomas Merton (Conjectures of An Innocent Bystander)

*unless otherwise noted, photos courtesy of visitor pages

A little known fact about Chicago, home of the tootsie roll and Wrigley’s Gum (of course) is that it happens to be the official candy capital of the world, which I only became aware of after recently reading through the book Candy: A History.

And as you leave Chicago heading South on the I65, the first indication you have that you have crossed a State line is not the welcome absence of the toll roads, but rather the large interstate signs that practically beg you to take the upcoming exit to visit the Albanese Candy Factory, noting it as the home of the “world’s best” gummi bear (of which I can now attest).

Bookended by the Albanese Candy Factory on one end of the Indiana State line (the only company to offer 12 flavours of gummi bears by the way) is Schimpffs Confectionery located just before Louisville also on 165. This is the oldest family owned candy shop in the U.S and also where they make those legendary Red Hots.

Also worth mentioning, monitoring the Indiana middle state, is Abbott’s Candy Factory set in the racing capital of Indianapolis, a confectionary whom played an important (emphasis on “important”) role in perfecting the caramel, for which I am eternally grateful

A Small Bit of Candy History
Following the 1893 world fair in Chicago, which would go on to revolutionize the industrialization of the candy industry by subsequently opening the door to market the first wrapped candy (tootsie roll) and candy bar (Hershey) along with the world’s first “combination candy bar” (the Goo Goo Cluster from the Standard Candy Company in Nashville), the nostalgic picture of candy and the candy store that we know today started to take shape.

Truth be told though, there is a lot of interesting material to be gleaned from all this candy obsession aside from simply being kitchy and touristy and perhaps a bit indulgent. For example, one of the things I learned from reading Candy: A History is that these candied institutions that are pining for your tourist attention all along the interstate were once and still are at the forefront of America’s larger story. Dig a little deeper beyond the wrappers and what you will find are stories of immigrant families striving to make a new home for themselves on American soil, such as the story of a Bavarian family whom turned their old, romanticized version of a penny candy store into an area institution called Schimpffs Confectionary. And like so much in American culture, dig a little deeper yet and you will also find America’s long standing, socio-political struggles and successes well represented and very visible.

Roadtripping and the American Ethos
Which is one of the things I find so fascinating about road tripping through America. The American ethos is so well preserved and celebrated from town to town and city to city that its hard not to appreciate the intention with which they tell these collective stories in incredibly personal ways. Ask someone in America a question about their national history and they are almost always willing to share, warts and all. This is in large part (I think) because they remain personally connected to their (collective) story in a real way. Something we as Canadians, I think, can learn from. And I am often amazed at how great American’s are at telling stories. Intermixing lively legends with history and lasting questions, there is a joyous spirit that often permeates the fashion in which they bring these places to life in knowledgeable and entertaining ways, often touching on honest and revealing depictions of the nation and people they desire to be.

And although this might feel foreign to my own particular slice of Canadiana (where being from the “slurpee capital” of the world is a fact one is likely only to find buried on wikipedia somewhere under “useless pieces of information”) I feel like at least part of the reason Americans tend to be so vocal about these fun little cultural factoids and trademarks is because these places, in some form or another, do represent an innate and inner desire to understand and know where they came from and where they are headed. And the chance to mark these stories and tell these stories is a chance to truly express how they feel beyond the politics and the unfortunate caricatures. The fact of the matter is that the people who started these places and sill work at these places and that value the identity of the towns and cities that house these places are real people with real values with often long standing generational ties that shape real hopes and real fears that I can’t pretend to know and understand without actually talking to them and being willing to step into their shoes, if only for a moment. And road tripping through America is, if nothing else, a chance to actually talk to them, to walk for a moment in their shoes. And the truth is, in a silly and almost preposterous way, sometimes it takes something as seemingly trite and silly as gummi worms to remind me of the humanity we share across borders and nationalities, the same humanity that shapes each of us no matter where we come from.

Also worth saying is that this is what makes these stories of immigrant families and diversity, freedom and democracy, opportunity and creativity all the more important at times when these same values and this same shared sense of humanity could be perceived as being threatened and challenged.

The Backroads and The Kitchy
As a visitor to the United States there is something to be said for having endless opportunity to take that long detour through the country backroads just to witness Jack Daniels still making whisky, or winding through a long forgotten section of an old Kentucky suburb just to stand beside a sign commemorating Col. Sander’s very first “cafe”.

Or pulling off the interstate to walk through the doors of the very first Cracker Barrel Country Store and Restaurant. These are the things that are afforded equal participation right beside the bigger name cultural attractions like Churchhill Downs or the Indianapolis Speedway, and I personally find this to be a neat aspect of Americana to revel in and enjoy.

That and it simply makes road tripping a whole lot more fun.

So in a curious way, like the quintessential American road trip, candy brings us together much like a horse race. These iconic pieces of Americana that began as a a subtle craft and labour of love beckon us to veer off the freeways and take a break from the bustling pace to revel for a moment in simpler times. The walls of candy concoctions that line the Albanese Candy Factory for example intentionally elicit feelings of those old penny candy stores, even if it also happens to boast a large chocolate fountain as its “can’t miss it” centre piece. Open factory windows where we can watch the candy being made bring us back to a time when candies were made in a shop just down the road and where the delicious concoctions used to sit in the open air for excited eyes to peruse and behold, young and old.

And when we were done perusing, we simply got back on the freeway refreshed and newly determined to keep our eyes peeled for the next opportunity to explore. And lucky for us, the 165 had plenty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jen and I often refer to Minneapolis as our adopted American home. We’ve been down the main roads and the backroads, shopped until we dropped at the outlets and the mall (which for me doesn’t take much) and experienced wonderful sunsets sneaking behind the downtown skyscrapers as we drove the river road. We’ve attended concerts, toured gangster hide outs and the Old Mill District, hung with the Peanuts gang and wandered the expansive natural wonderland that is Minni’s waterfalls,  lakes, Mississippi and Apple Rivers and Stillwater origins.

We’ve shared a lot of great moments on the way down and in that particular city, but by far one of my favourite memories has to be a once infamous and spontaneous stop at the downtown Sculpture Gardens where we decided to masquerade as potential home buyers by hunting down open houses in the row of old, stately homes that dot the hill behind the park. For our purposes we happened to be “relocating for work” and “considering something centrally located to downtown” with “a spacious backyard and at least 3 bedrooms in a quaint and quiet neighbourhood.”

We found some good potential, but we were pretty sure they weren’t going to take our idea of a low-ball bid.

Getting Lost and Getting Found in a 13 Mile Radius
One of the things we anticipated about this most recent trip was the opportunity to be stand-in-tour guides for our group of students as we navigated this neck of the woods, or at least as far as Chicago. But it turned out the only thing they were truly interested in was the Mall of America. I won’t lie. The wind was taken out of my wannabe-tour guide sails for a bit. When you’ve done the mall (I’m sure) 1,000 times (okay, a slight exaggeration) the last place you really want to be is back at the mall… 3 times… over the course of a single trip.

But I was quickly reminded by forces greater than me that I wasn’t there for myself. We were there for the students, and as Jen rightly pointed out when I was their age and embarking on my very first trip to Minneapolis guess where I wanted to go? The mall.

All of this was good though, because as it turned out my personal pride in knowing the area backwards and forwards was about to take a serious hit. Apparently Minneapolis has taken a more recent page from Winnipeg’s book and decided to close off every known street leading straight to the mall.

And, no I don’t believe it is an exaggeration to say “every known street”.

We arrived in Minneapolis 2 hours ahead of schedule (Dave pats himself on that back for ignoring those back seat calls for that last washroom break), and just as we texted the parents to let them know we were arriving at the mall safely? Complete gridlock.

Being no less than a ten minute drive from the mall in regular traffic flow, we would end up spending the next 2 hours being led in a continual circle by a GPS that refused to recognize the road closure.

The only solution when this happens to be the one time you forget to bring a physical copy of a road map with you? Try and get far enough out of the way for the GPS to recalculate and choose a different road.

And yes, that’s much harder than it sounds when you are, literally “trying” to get yourself lost.

And then came the monsoon. That didn’t help matters either.

The running joke in the midst of all this mayhem and frustration was that no matter how hard we tried to get ourselves off track the GPS remained determined to keep us exactly 13 miles away from the mall. We eventually had ourselves a little celebration when it finally rolled over to that 12 mile mark.

At the very least, on a positive note, I did finally get to exercise my tour guide alter ego. The GPS at one point rerouted us straight through downtown, and so the kids got an up close and personal look at the big city, and my commentary:

Dave- “And did you know this building…”
Jen- “Dave, they’re not listening.”
Dave sheds a tear.

Going in Circles and Finding Our Way
As I mentioned in my previous blog, one of the big takeaways for the students that attended the conference in Tennessee was the charge to consider what it means to carry the experience of the conference into everyday life on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains. It can be difficult to return to daily routine after such an elevated and hyped up experience, and it can take a certain determination to keep from feeling like one is simply going in circles with exercising and growing their faith at work, in school and with family and friends.

And yet these are the places that faith has the most opportunity to become real and honest and relevant and measured.

Along the way down to the Nashville area and back we stayed at a few different places, including a Church and, on our first stop in Minneapolis, a house of a particular couple who provided me personally with a good picture of this same faith challenge.

They are a Canadian couple currently living in the United States while actively ministering abroad. And one of the things they mentioned when asked about why they chose to move to Minneapolis was that, alongside some personal reasons, they felt that they needed a place to take root. A home base to serve from and serve out of, even if they weren’t there very often. When pressed about what taking root meant to them they proceeded to give examples of their ongoing struggle to cross certain relational barriers in a place that they didn’t share much history with. A place that also happened to be where those relationships tended to be most important. And the fact that they weren’t at “home” very often made it doubly hard to even begin building this history, particularly at the Church they were now attending.

But for them, having that home, that compass to centre them and lead them back in the midst of their constant travels, was still hugely important. It just meant that in the little time they did have at home they needed to be far more intentional about pushing themselves out of their comfort zones and having those necessary conversations, inviting people over and joining small groups.

In truth, and as a part of their personal confession, their collective GPS seemed to know its way around the middle east, their main point of ministry, far better than at home where it could be easy to simply set course and keep hitting the same obstacles over and over again rather than looking for creative ways to recalculate towards a more fruitful investment and trajectory. And as they acknowledged this, they continued to share inspiring stories of how they were challenging themselves to look for new opportunities and pushing themselves to gain every new mile with a sense of purpose, efforts that they felt were translating into progress and new relationships, however small they might be in the moment.

And this, in my eyes, included their hospitality towards us.

Recalculating And Getting Back on Track
As we eventually left Minneapolis and headed towards terrain that was quickly becoming far less familiar to us, setting us even more dependent on a GPS that for some bizarre reason still picks up Sasha’s thick Ukrainian accent long before our own made in Canada dialect  (AAGGHHHH, It’s CHICAGO… QUICK, TELL IT TO AVOID THE TOLLS, AVOID THE TOLLS, AVOID THE TOLLS), I couldn’t help but feel like the metaphor we were bringing with us across the Minnesota State line was turning more and more relevant. Relevant as I processed some of my own life. Relevant as I prayed for and considered the experience of these students in the week ahead, one of them being my own son.

On that note, I know for both Jen and I we are constantly wrestling with how to offer Sasha a clear picture of the Christian faith and the Christian walk, something that can hopefully make sense to him as he wrestles with his own questions and finds his own way in this crazy world. Something that can help him build a solid foundation for him to carry on his personal journey. And being a first time parent of an only child, I confess the weight of this responsibility feels terrifying even on our best days. And yet we knew that for whatever this once in a lifetime trip was going to be for him, continuing to be there to help him navigate his questions and his struggles on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains in any way that we could, especially as he enters Grade 11 and holds his first job this summer, continues to be our most important role as parents. Helping him to know that, just like gathering together with five thousand plus students South of the border who all share a similar connection and desire to understand the Christian faith in some capacity, we as a family are likewise on this faith journey together, through the ups and down, failures and successes.

And isn’t that what this journey of faith is really all about? One step at a time. For all of us. Together. Up the mountain, in the mountains and coming back down that mountain. Yes, it’s true. The makings of a good road trip also happened to awaken in me the makings of a good, faithful and fruitful Christian walk.