where is freedom?

For the first time in 41 days I am alone. I am sitting at a table with only my computer and this blessed liquid that we call espresso. How I have waited for this, for the time to stop and reflect, to pen some piece of the experience. Of course, my expectation is that words should be flowing freely, that all I have tasted of in the past 6 weeks would compile itself with ease onto this blank screen. Contrary to expectation however, I sit here and my head feels vacant. But I have had an entry in mind for the past 6 weeks, so I commit to writing something, even if it says nothing…

By simple logic, I find myself to be a contradiction.

For starters, I began my morning with the purchase of an Adbusters magazine at Chapters (somehow buying a non-conformity magazine at a corporate checkout seems a bit sardonic).

Of more concern however, the one that has been heavy on my mind, is the fact that I am a military officer that cannot make sense of waging war in the 21st century. Trying to understand my placement here has been the biggest challenge thus far. I have tormented myself with hard questions over the past six weeks. I have driven myself nearly mad with all of the ‘whys’ racing through my mind. Most days I feel like I am drowning in my tired body and my tired head, and I question how I will stay afloat for the remainder of what is to come.

War.
This wretched thing.
The word keeps bobbing in my head, and I wonder what part I will have in it.

I want to study it.
I want to photograph it.
Not because I want to learn how to wage or win it, but because I see it as the most hallowing of human experience.
I want to document the devastation.
I want to study it to somehow have a hand in preventing it.

And now I’ve climbed into it.
I wear the uniform.

What does that mean?
I have entered to better understand it.

I went to the National War Museum two weeks ago and I returned at the end of the day weeping.

I thought that it was going to be a drab building full of old tanks and shells from wars of yesterday.
I was wrong.
The architecture of the building was magnificent; the lines, the colors, the materials – all were brilliant; as were the displays. It was remarkable to see the lines of Canadian military involvement, and read history plastered on walls with our mark intertwined and celebrated. We do have something unique to offer the world; we have done it in the past, I only pray that it can be preserved. It was an odd thing to be wearing combats and a Canadian flag on my shoulder amongst civilians in such a place. I wondered as they looked at us what they thought, what they really saw. Canadian soldiers, sailors, and air men and women. What do they think when they see us? Are they proud of what we represent? Do we represent them? Their interests? I pray that it is so.

As I stared at monuments and read stories, I was proud of what we have done - but it didn’t soften my disposition in finding myself here. I have been moaning and complaining since arriving.

Nothing here is comfortable.
Nothing.
The days hurt.

Reveille is 4:30 am…well, pending that we don’t have a middle of the night wake up call caused by the unrelenting occurrence of fire alarms as of late … or, an important inspection the next morning, which requires us to wake earlier to ensure sufficient time for starching sheet corners at a crisp 45 degrees.

The days fill themselves quickly. With walls to scale over (quite literally), stairs to climb, boots to shine, and push ups to crank out, midnight always meets us fast.

Nothing is mine to decide here. Not my dress, not my words, not my time.
I have felt captive, my insides longing for tiny tastes of freedom. But I realize now that outside of these rigid walls I cannot understand what that word, 'freedom', even means. I cannot know the value of freedom until I lose some part of my own. I study this concept, but I fool myself in thinking that reading a few books would allow me to understand the lives of those who are truly captive, held by injustices and political prisons.
I know nothing.
I’ve been here for 41 days – and this is a mild taste of freedom lost. My reality is soft in comparison to most of the world’s people.

I have blamed these walls for my feelings of captivity,
but it is I who have allowed the holds to remain,
it is my sick disposition that has kept me captive.

I felt captive before ever arriving here – bound by different lines, but bound nonetheless.

Caught up in addiction, restlessness, unbelief.
Imprisoned not by walls, but within myself.
I can point my hand at these physical confines, but liberation does not wait on the other side of them; it is dependent on the posture I adopt towards the day.

It is here that I am beginning to see freedom as a liberty not dependent on our circumstances, but rather on our disposition. And it is in that recognition that I am finding gratitude and worship to be our surest path in getting there.

Gratitude frees us. Worship lifts us.

I curse this place. And that is what has kept me a prisoner.
Every morning when the alarm sounds I have woke with the same sick stream of thoughts moving through my mind, “I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life”. I forfeit freedom when I take such an ungrateful stance. I have to find a way to thank these walls for what they are granting me.

As I push through these days it is gratitude that will release me.

Audeamus –‘ let us dare’ to say “thank you”, to seek liberation in worlds that appear to have suffocated freedom.

escaping the self

I have a delightful companion that awaits me on the opposite side of my front door. I’ve known him for some years now; his availability remains consistent where mine often falls. He is a better measure of a friend than I, though he seems to hold no grudges.

Many days I open the door and neglect to acknowledge his invite – instead of joining him, I step over him. I walk on.

But other days I anticipate our reunion. I know he will be waiting, and I know he will understand whatever I have to bring to him.

His dress varies greatly, but he is unchanged.

In days past he has worn layers of dust-emitting gravel, providing soft landing for my legs to trot upon. On separate occasions he has come clothed in ebony asphalt with dashed yellow lines fracturing him down the center. Other times he has been nothing more than an open field of prairie grass and an invite to tread faster.

Today he was draped with a thousand fallen leaves where Vancouver’s streets were patched with the palette of the season and half submerged in sweet rains.

An afternoon spent under fluorescent lights in a plastic pen had already decided for me - I knew when I stepped inside the front door today that I would just as soon return to the other side.

I had to meet my dear friend. I wanted nothing more than to kick my feet through leaves and wet streets.

I had to run.

______________________________________________________________________

My affections for this thing called running however, did not sprout in soils of ‘like’.

For the greater part of my years I have hated the act. I remember junior high cross-country races through gopher-ridden trails. I remember well the pasture that stretched itself out beside our little school and its beaten path that would always beat me. I remember the three hills nearing the end of the route (which if I returned to today would barely be called hills, but my memory paints them tall and insurmountably steep). I remember the defeat those inclines waved in front of me before I ever reached their toes. I remember the shame that came with finishing somewhere near the end of the pack. I remember the burn in the back of my throat and the subsequent taste of blood that would insist upon staying for hours, or so it seemed – it was an enduring reminder whispering in my ears, “You’ll never be one of them. You’ll never finish first”.

I hated running. Not with a mild distaste, but with a whole-hearted, ‘fire-in-my-bones’ kind of hate. Running made me feel small – incapable.

______________________________________________________________________

There are too many ‘in-betweens’ to tell of how affections have turned. But it at some point when I decided that I wanted to defeat this thing that had so many times defeated me.

I didn’t expect to like it, not even a little bit; but nonetheless, I wanted to run.

I’m not built to be a runner. My legs are in complete disproportion to my body. My physique is the farthest thing from that of the all-star runners that glide over the sidewalks at sub-human speeds. I am not fast. And my track record from the past few months, which details a few bloody falls, would suggest that I am not so graceful either.

But I have come to love that which I first loathed.

I have come to escape to the very thing I once tried to escape from.

I am a runner.

Not because of any capability, but because I love the sport. The transition from ‘walk’ to ‘jog’ to ‘run’ isn’t measured by the count of time taken to cover a mile, nor by the beats per minute at which ones heart pounds. The runner is not defined by the grounds his feet trace over, but by the posture he assumes toward the sport, by the way he enters into it, by the reasons he has for lacing up.

I run in pursuit of ascending something.

a hill.

a distance.

ultimately, myself.

I run to feel.

pain.

glory.

anything.

I run to feel something move and pulsate through my body.

I think it is fitting to consider running a fierce endeavor.

Running makes my insides groan.

It chafes both my skin and my ambitions raw.

It hurts - but it delivers.

I run to find my weakness. I run to breathe heavy, to exhale that which I wish to be free from.

But, there is a subtle danger when I am unable to determine if I am running toward something – or rather, away.

Where do I hope to arrive? Am I trying instead to depart?

Do I lace up to find freedom? Or do I leave to abandon myself?

There is a place where my remedy can also become my sickness, where my daring act becomes one of cowardly self-divergence. There is a point where sitting in the still is more venturesome than moving feet onward.

Audeamus -'let us dare' to run towards ourselves in a world where it is so easy to forget our names.

For what? For whom?

For fourteen days I met the morning at 5am with heavy eyes and heavy feet to become acquainted with my new reality. I ran with the early colors of the day creeping over the horizon to illuminate holy hues of oranges and pinks and purples. I felt the chaffing burns from the same pair of oversized jogging shorts rub my skin raw; healing each night only to tear open again in the morning. My arms failed me daily under the weight of a body unprepared. No mercy was gifted to my overtaxed, fully tensile hamstrings; their request for a days reprieve remained muted under the bellow of voices demanding more from me. The output of two weeks time was measured by my standard of bed making and boot shining, by the speed of my stair climbing, and the precision of the 90° angles exemplified in my knees when marching.

Each morning I peeled off shades of invariable grey PT wear infused with perspiration from the early workout to slide into ‘uniform’ – my fingers leading my arms through heavy combats in the same way my toes led my legs. I mastered the quick pull and tug of black laces to secure black boots. I zipped up, buttoned up, and tied up the fashions of a uniform that caused me to question: “Who would I become under new and unfamiliar threads? For what did I climb into them? For whom?”

A uniform – one form, one mold, one frame.

When handed those seamed combats I was hesitant to put them on – fearful that I would drown in anonymity; believing that I would fade away to a place concealed, unrecognizable both to myself and to the ones who know me. With my hair held down by product and secured in masses of bobby pins, there was little distinction left amongst myself and the other female figures with our tightly wrapped hair. Outward fibres and chosen colors are not mine to choose here, complimenting lines cannot be painted on faces where marks of flair are verboten. What characterizes here is character itself.

I expected to feel buried and nameless. Forgotten.

Counter to all presumptions however, I felt dangerously exposed.

Not hidden – but undressed.

The irony of dressing oneself in uniform anonymity comes with the simultaneous greeting of the distinct self; these new threads do no defile individuality, but rather authentically define it. The figure in the mirror I have spent a lifetime dressing up so wonderfully now stands stripped before me – I stretch my hand out only to shake my own, to meet myself in raw, uncompromising, uncovered form.

I cannot hide when purchased pieces of identity are removed, where the cost of clothing oneself in fine threads reaches far beyond over priced tags. Adornments such as integrity, honor, and virtue are not freely handed out, there are no coupons to be had; to be dressed with decency will cost all comfort.

There is no shadowing truth, I am what I am here: naked. My efforts thus far have merited no garments for wearing. Character is all that will carry forward.

This fragment of time has been one small exposure of what I am about to enter, a mere fourteen days. But as told to me by the Sergeant Major in response to the distaste worn on my face during a grueling morning push-up session, “this is my life now.”

My days (and now that I have signed on that line, my years also) will play themselves out in this bureaucratic playground, the kid with the sandbox authority continuing to remind me of who I am within it. My tongue can make me nothing more here; my words are dead, as are the vocalized ambitions that will sit silent until a platform to speak is earned. Compliance, submission, obedience – these words are no longer available for use at my convenience, they are pivotal in how I conduct myself.

My old world sits with safety on former horizons of the well worn and well known. My feet do not know this land, nor are they granted the liberty to explore at their leisure. However, it is here in the face of a thousand obscurities that I feel strangely at home, or closer to it. I feel a resolve to the question, “for what have I left old grounds?”

I have left to escape ordinary.

I have left to separate myself from the comforts that silently and subtlety kill.

I have left to learn discipline from the voices that bite at my heels, that move me faster than if I was left on my own.

I have left to learn through service the means of duty, of honor, of loyalty.

I have left to excavate something within myself that I hope like hell is there.

I leave those old grounds for me - to put to rest the torment of wanting to become what I will never be outside of them.

Audeaumus – ‘let us dare’ in the face of all unknown to follow the voice that has commanded - the voice that in light of our doubtful humanity, so graciously confirms.

Foreign Grounds - Familiar Wounds

There seems to be a screaming cacophony playing itself about, a cry for reconciliation – both within the walls of my small world here and in the lands beyond them.

Middle Eastern news reports speak of sham democratic elections in Iran, now leaving the country in a spotlight of quandary. Drug wars and the hands of narco-politics are replacing affiliations formerly held by Westerner’s who thought of Mexico as a convenient and safe winter getaway. Nepalese in Kathmandu question the legitimacy of their new government as Maoists refuse to bow out of office quietly and threats of returned Civil War are rising. Accounts of soaring unemployment rates and bankruptcy have become the background hum of our days where fret and fear are hyper-inflated to full capacity.

The momentary ground I sit on is one at first glance disparate from those making headline news – but a closer looks reveals common cries emanating from worlds sitting in counter hemispheres.

Unlike the streets of Tehran, rural Alberta hosts few protests to challenge voter efficacy – but as I walk through my known avenues of ‘home’, a thousand silent rallies march about in my mind.  The causes differ, but I believe them worthy of a voice.  I’m sad for these streets – for the stories and lives that flow through them. I’m sad for the fight here. I’m sad for failed marriages, for brokenness in families that I knew so well - for the happiness that I remember they held. I am sad both for what has changed and what has not. I am sad for the knowledge that much of what I now see, really has always been.  Like the Iranians, my prestige for where I come from is suffocating under a truth that continues to ripen and expose, I am sad for the realization that our home can also possess our hell.

Narco-politics is a foreign term in my prairie town. We do not commonly experience the carnage that comes with drug related violence, nor do we witness known political corruption where a shiny profit can be turned for an easy exchange. Transactions of substance are calculated differently here – but they are not absent, and they certainly are not free of death.  Relationships are severed where a bar stool is more worn than the empty seat at a dinner table.  Addictions and their harrowing consequences are passed off as being recreational pastimes in a town where it is commonly said “there is nothing else to do.” ‘Fun’ and ‘amusement’ however seem temporary, withering under the reality that control is lost to the user, now a slave to a substance, mastered by a need. Like the people of Mexico I see that those I once respected and believed to be outside of it are not, I see that we are all people bound by addiction, myself no different, and that our worlds and are securities are contoured by the vices we wish to be free of.

Neither war, nor serious conflicts have touched the ground of my country for centuries. We have sent men to fight many fights, but we live mostly free of the the fear of national violence. I sleep at night with the sounds of prairie winds blowing the leaves outside of my window and coyotes barking into the black – I do not know the sounds of a country in terror. However, when I curl into bed at night to end my day, I cannot deny my internal conflict – a civil war within myself, a wanting to be good, an ongoing brawl to knock down my demons. Like the Nepalese I recognize that in spite of heartily seeking peace my old tyrants will surely rear their heads, I acknowledge that power is never easily dissembled. Like the people of Nepal my hope is that goodness will prevail.

Media fixations tend to center themselves on corporate bankruptcies and government bailouts – but the global recession has left no corner of the world untouched.  The bounty of Alberta’s oil money has dried up with the receding sea of drilling derricks that no longer adorn (or disfigure) our wheat fields. Our highways are given the grace of a lightened load where service equipment traffic continues to decrease - but our pockets feel much lighter as well. In times of terrifying economic uncertainty these headlines are not far from home – and the question they pose is more paralyzing than the financial fear attached to them – will we dare to ask “who are we without our money?,” “Who will we be when we cannot afford the toys and the lifestyles that we use to define ourselves?”  I am certain that one can recover from the downfalls of economic regression – but less sure that one can recover from living as a stranger to oneself. I pray that we will ask ourselves who we are and that our answers will provide reconciliation to reality, to ourselves, and to one another.

A thousand stories. A thousand subjects. A thousand lands.

Different, yet the same.

Segregated, yet connected.

Theirs, yet ours.

Humanity cries for reconciliation, for wholeness.

I know it only in their stories because I know it also in mine.

audeamus – ‘let us dare’ to recognize our collective humanity.

May we see that our torments are communal, that foreign grounds bear familiar wounds, and that reconciliation is possible.

 

 

 

 

a daring sky

I find myself again on the prairies where the weather becomes the fixation of most all conversation. I remember it always to be this way.

“We sure could use some rain,” plays out in harmonious floods through every local conversation; as soon as the words close on one set of lips, they start again on another.  “Sure wish the run-off could have filled the dug-out this year,” “Hope the moisture is on its way.” Most days the skies tend to withhold their bounty in spite of constant verbal requests.

The farmer’s fret blisters under this prairie heat where the absence of falling water will determine again what he will reap of a life sown in his beloved ground. The farmer’s yield is dictated by the ruling of an element he cannot control. He has surrendered; he works and tills and labors a land whose fruit ultimately is decided by a hand not his own.  The farmer is a man assembled in faith; he plants his hope with his seed and prays that both will rise from beneath their buried resting place.

I must believe that my being born here, calling this place ‘home’ for some twenty-three seasons of seed to harvest (well, to be exact, I guess I missed that first seed, as I ‘came to be’ somewhere smack in the middle of growing season) has put in me a potent wanting of those falling skies. My recollections of the earliest years are hazy – but what I do remember as constant, is a cry for rain. I remember parched grounds desperate for a swig of something that would keep them prolific and alive.

Little here has changed.

Bodies and the soil alike plead for rain. My petition is drawn for different reasons than that of the farmer, but we both yearn for a facet that will spill out mercy, for a gracious deluge that will feed something buried. Like the farmer, I pray for rain.

I like my sky the same way I like people: with depth and varied color, with dynamic character and pockets of surprise. I like a sky that stretches to define itself, a sky that will banner wondrous blues and then blow in dark corners to keep you guessing what it holds.   

I like a sky that refrains from overcast obscurity, one that keeps from that dreadful color called ‘gray’- which does little but ooze apathy in its choosing to be neither dark nor light. Gray must be avoided, for it is a compromise of what needs to be fully asserted in light or in darkness. Gray is half-hearted. I crave a sky that is about something – a sky that will boldly state that which it wishes to say.

In the face of wanting a torrent of rain - I temporarily love the soft skies, the happy skies; they remain calm, reserved for the exhibition of goodness where light transfers without effort, where warmth is blinding, and where creation manifests itself with brilliant blues and delicate brushes of white.  The light spans of sky are composed of modest strokes, they are humble in their presentation, they are quiet, and submissive to something beyond themselves. Soft skies are open, they are inviting, and they benevolently offer beauty where a distracted eye may easily miss their allure if not turned upward. Their message is not loud; it is one of beauty existing simply for the sake of the glorifying the beautiful.

Blue skies are lovely indeed – but their bestowal would go unrecognized and inadequately praised without the latter presence of their dark cousins. And often I find it is the dark that delivers. I crave that shaded transition; I hunger for what I hope will fall from weighted clouds.  I yearn for something fierce.

 

With a heart hungry, my beloved rain returns.

Forfeiting a solo performance, it comes accompanied with lucent flashes and hollers that captivate. I love the boldness of the storm, its raw expression. I love that it decides.  Dark clouds do not wait for you to finish your run when three miles of gravel separate you from your front door, they do not care that your car was washed just two hours ago and will now display murky spots instead of your gleaming efforts, the storm cares not that you left your clothes on the line to dry – it simply comes, self assurance streaming from every drop.

The storm is an activist for its anomalistic nature; it pickets luminescent skies and strident crashes of sound. We cannot deny it our attention; its beguiling nature pulls us from the places to which we have drifted, it brings us back. The storm demands our focus; it makes us aware - for it has something to say.  With such a hallowed performance I believe it worthy of my listening. 

I listen as rain pounds pavement, as it floods grasses and congregates in already fallen pools of itself. I listen as tiny drops jointly compose rhythms of deliverance where matter falls and is freed, and the fortuitous bystander gets to drink of the liberating waters.  It is here that my senses overload, incapable of devouring quick enough the sight of falling water, the kisses met upon my skin, the aroma of wet life.

It is here that my gaze is anchored on this masterful sky, on the beads of grace that fall from them. My romance with this storm rests upon just that - grace, upon an undeserved cleansing that frees me, upon waters that quench what has long been dry. 

Under His reigning sky something sprouts.  It is here that I know darkness capable of delivering life, that I am boldly reminded of grace and goodness disguised, and like the farmer I find that reaping what I sow is a matter of faith where my hands must be removed.

The storm beckons me in its boldness; it is daring. It calls us to live as it does, to shower dry grounds with truth, to extend mercy as it is so freely given. 

Audeamus – ‘let us dare’ to live stormful lives. 

May we be gracious to a world parched and waiting for rain.