A Glacier and Me
In 2004, I went with my then-partner on an Alaskan adventure. Our group numbered only about fourteen and the crew came to five, so we were in a boat, not a ship. Because of the small size of our vessel, we could go into secluded and special areas to watch black bears catch some of the hoards of salmon swimming upstream. One of the most memorable moments of this trip came the day we motored quite close to Dawes Glacier and dropped anchor. We’d been traveling in the huge glacier’s moraine for a day or so because 10,000 years ago it extended almost into the sound we left to go find it. The water in the moraine was that unique aqua blue green that is unmatched either in nature or art. We got closer, we began to see small land then larger icebergs floating by the boat, going in the opposite direction from us. When the entire glacier came into view, it reminded me of those wonderful dioramas of my childhood that had wrapped around corners and stretched as far as my eye could see. Because our boat was so small, we could go within half a mile of the actual glacier, so winds coming off it brought the temperatures down from the 60s into the 30s within seconds. Our naturalist proposed that anyone who wanted to could go in the skiff over to the shore and then hike closer to the “toe” of the glacier. The terrain was sheer rock and the path was indiscernible even with binoculars, and because the water was well below freezing and I do not know how to swim, and because I was sixty-seven at the time albeit it in fine physical shape, I decided not to go.
As it turned out, that was the right decision because when the glacier finally began to calve (break off huge chunks of itself into the water), I was hunkered down on deck dressed in every piece of outer clothing I’d brought, whereas those adventuresome hikers were situated laterally and so were waiting for the skiff to rescue them. They missed the drama. I sat in my little deck chair a long time, patiently waiting for a calving to begin. At one point I needed to go to the bathroom, so I said to Gary, the engineer who was the glacier’s surface with me “What it if calves whilst I’m below deck? Dear man that he was, he replied, “I won’t tell you.” When I returned in about two minutes, he assured me nothing had happened, so I took up my lookout at the very front of the boat. After two hours and fifteen bone-chilling minutes, the major event began. Huge slices of ice began cascading from the glacier’s face into the sea, producing tremendous thundering sounds followed by tall sprays of water displaced by the falling bergs. Then a wave began forming, visibly, and making its way towards us. When it reached the boat’s side, we rocked like a baby’s cradle for about three minutes. The calving had two phases, the longer initial one lasting about eight seconds followed by a brief second one of three seconds. I was told that is a very long display of reshaping–usually such cascadings last a split second only.
The newly exposed glacial face was a more intense version of the unique slightly ghostly blue associated with glaciers. The added intensity caused by our seeing the face not exposed to any air. The older color is a faded hue because of long and gradual exposure. The naturalist explained, when I asked her what caused the unique shade of blue, that the overpowering weight of the glacier presses on all new and old moisture, forcing every single oxygen molecule out of it. So it is no longer H2O but rather only H2 and H2 is that color.
Today, if I close my eyes and enter memories of my time at Dawes Glacier, I am overcome with sadness and fear. What I saw there literally took my breath away and seemed ultimately spiritual to me, especially as I was by myself on deck for most of the time of my vigil. I have never forgotten that color, that letting go of tons of old material, or that sound. There is an old hymn in the Episcopal church that declares that the voice of God is heard “through earthquake, wind and fire.” Well, I think “glacial calving” could be added, even if it lacks a certain poetic flare. The fact that Dawes and other glaciers are vanishing at a staggering rapid rate because of our failure to take global warming seriously enough is a powerful indictment of us humans as failed stewards of our precious earth. If we do not reverse course soon, there will be fewer and fewer calving moments and the old maxim about something’s moving at a “glacial pace” will no longer apply.
Uriah Heeps Everywhere
Anyone who’s read Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield remembers the oleaginous character Uriah Heep. Described by Dickens as unusually tall and wraithlike, Heep ingratiates himself into David’s world, wringing his hands in false supplication. His motives are transparent–a word much bandied about these days in political circles. He wants to feather his own nest, keep his job, and control through manipulation rather than direct action. Dickens has great contempt for individuals who survive through insincerity and Uriah personifies this noxious behavior for him–and for many of us who sometimes call a contemporary sycophant Uriah Heep.
As I struggle with the latest travesty and/or destructive action taken by the orange man in the White House, I keep seeing Uriahs. Let me just refresh your memory with a few choice examples: When the tape surfaced during the presidential campaign in which he spoke so degradingly about how he approached women, many Republicans spoke to national television cameras and social media outlets decrying such language. We heard from politicians who said they would be ashamed to face their own daughters if they supported such a candidate, yet in due time, they did support him. Ever since the election of someone who relished playing the television persona who got to say with satanic pleasure “You’re FIRED!” we have seen and heard a parade of Uriah Heeps fawning before the president in order to keep their heads above water or to get a position in his sphere or–most centrally–to keep their job and not get a presidential pink slip. One of my favorite examples of the latter was the televised cabinet meeting in which each cabinet member was given a few minutes to speak before their leader/boss. Rather than doing what I assumed they would, i.e., speak about what was happening under their leadership, each one metaphorically wrung their not overwhelmingly white male hands while praising the president in vaguely messianic terms. It was as I watched this degrading moment that I began to think about writing a blog with Uriah’s name in the title.
What makes Dickens’ character so disgusting is his utter insincerity and willingness to perpetuate the system that has treated him so badly when he was a child. He becomes the abuser, like so many after him, thereby perpetuating the noxious system that grinds people down rather than lifting them up. Sad to say, the present political climate in North America is fostering and promoting just such kinds of politicians–people willing to be appropriately outraged by the latest foul words or deeds tweeted by the orange man in the wee hours of the night or early morning. But this outrage is generally short lived because increasingly such people understand that if they stay morally outraged, they may find themselves out of work. This conundrum means we all might send active support to the few who maintain their sense of moral wrong-doing past the next news cycle, who resemble Dickens’ quietly heroic Mr. Micawber, who works and works until he finally defeats Uriah’s oily manipulations and uncovers Heep’s amoral shenanigans.
My Irish Mail
When I was the age to get a classic red Radio Flyer wagon (1944), the country was at war, so all metal was being used to make ships and tanks and the like. By the time civilians could once again purchase wagons for their children, I was too old to have one. To ease my disappointment, for my ninth birthday, my parents gave me a strange-looking present. It was the right color–fire engine red–and it had four wheels. Otherwise, it bore little resemblance to the wagon I’d so wanted.
An Irish Mail was sort of like home-made box cars that little boys constructed in those day and raced down any hill they could find. Low-slung with a seat on which the user sat, this contraption moved when the person in that seat pumped their arms and steered with their feet firmly planted on a horizontal bar connecting the front tires. It went very fast but you needed to stay going in a straight line since turning was distinctly unwieldy. Invented by one Henry Hill, this vehicle caught on and Henry soon formed his own company, Standard Manufacturing, to handle the clamor from buyers. Needing a name for his invention, Henry chose “Irish Mail” after the Irish Mail Train which held the distinction of being the fastest train in the world at that time–the early 20th century. First built in 1902, this toy had its heyday in the 1950’s, precisely when I got mine.
I stored my treasured machine on our front porch and then took it inside on Halloween night since neighborhood boys always egged the houses on my block and sometimes dragged porch furniture out onto the owners’ lawns. My mother worried about my riding it, since she liked to keep me on a pretty short leash. Our house was at the top of a perfect hill so she feared I’d careen into a light post or, worse, into the street. But I became adroit at maneuvering the little red buggy, so no harm ever came to me. It let me pretend I was off to exotic places even if I always wound up at the bottom of Holly Court in Fairfield, Alabama–not exotic at all. I never minded the somewhat demanding chore of dragging the Irish Mail back up the hill because the reward was simple–I got to ride it back down again with the breeze in my face and escape in my imagination.
At some point I must have outgrown the Irish Mail. I have no idea what happened to it, but when I Googled “Irish Mail” before writing the blog, there was a picture of a little red machine that looked just like my “wheels.” I should add that no other girl I ever knew had owned one and Henry Hill intended this as a “boy’s toy,” along with BB guns and erector sets (both of which my parents gave me at some point in my maturation process). Had a boy in my world have been seen on an Irish Mail, he’d have been branded a “sissy” of the first order. So, once again, my parents provided me with serious mixed messages about gender appropriateness. But I just loved to sit in the red seat, pump my feet very fast, and steer my personal “train” out of my front yard.
Summon out what I shall be
As we in the congregation at my church leave our pews to process up to take communion, we sing a simple set of words about what we hope will happen as we receive the host and (if chosen) wine. Recently, those words were these: “Take, oh take me as I am,/Summon out what I shall be/ Set your seal upon my heart/ and live in me.” I can’t get the words out of my head, often waking to their melody’s returning to me. I’m pretty sure the reason lies in the second line; what does it really mean to ask anyone or anything to “summon out” some aspect of one’s being? My trusty unabridged Webster tells me that to summon means “to order, as by a summons, to appear in court.” So am I asking God to order me to be more of what I am capable of being? In a beautiful poem, John Donne implored God to change him through violent means, but God replies that force is not his MO. Rather Donne must love God himself if he wants to come closer to the God-head.
Webster also tells me, however, that “summon” means “to call forth, rouse, gather, collect,” and this seems to illuminate our chant most helpfully. The author of the verses implies that what we “shall be” is already within us, just lying dormant or perhaps dealing with our having pushed that fuller self to the side in order to pursue some smaller, more secular goal. The speaker begins this request of God, however, by knowing that s/he is acceptable as s/he already is, so judgment is precluded from the process. The supplicant also uses the future perfect tense–“shall be–leaving no room for failure. When I sing this, albeit slightly off key, I feel certain that the God of my understanding wants me to be all of which I am capable, to assume full stature. I am even asked to consider how I will become more of my possible self than I am as I walk toward the communion server.
I will be able to answer the summons, sent not aggressively but lovingly, by having my Higher Power set a seal “upon my heart,” not “on” it or “in,” it. I flash to my attaching one of my vast supply of stickers to the front of boring envelopes containing payment of bills or even personal cards. I set those little seals UPON the paper to be a signal to the recipient that I hope they are having a pleasing day as they go about their mundane tasks such as opening my envelope. I also have an image of my going about my life with some temporally invisible but spiritually detectable identifier. If I let God into my life, others will sense the implantation within my heart and I will be able to be what Mother Teresa thought we each was–the face of God working in the world around us.
Though we vary these little verses sung as we take communion on a given Sunday, this one clearly has a profound effect on me. Often, these days, when my larger world seems to be being fractured and shredded by the current president and his spokespeople, I sing these simple words as I walk early in the morning or as labor to quiet my disturbed mind at night as I try to go to sleep. I believe I hear the summons and I work hard to burnish the “seal upon my heart” by acting in concert with others who feel similarly to me.