The Stairway to Heaven

   During our recent visit to the island of Oahu, Hawaii, my wife and I were being squired about the island by our resident friend, Bonnie Sanders, and her two oldest children, Tabby and Corbin. After taking the H3 Interstate (yes, interstate—I have no idea) through a tunnel in one of the mountains, we popped out on the other side. While the view to the left of us was commanding (looking down onto Kaneohe Bay), my eyes were distracted by the large and precipitous mountain we had just transected. Suddenly, I saw something that seemed to defy reason.

   It was a stairway—a very narrow stairway—beginning somewhere below the roadway and angling erratically up the large face of the mountain before disappearing in the clouds.

   Our host Paul, an Army surgeon, told us later as he reviewed the video that the stairway is called the "Stairway to Heaven." First built in 1943, the stairway allowed workers to first build and then man military radio equipment on the peak. It was replaced by a metal stairway (of nearly 4,000 steps!) in the 1950s. The military installation was decommissioned in 1987, and the trail was closed. Yet the occasional intrepid hiker will attempt the summit.

   Sometimes my spiritual pilgrimage seems to resemble what a climb like this must feel like. No matter where I look, only stairs remain—either up into the mist or down into the gloom. It seems I may never reach the top, while the bottom seems to grudgingly, slowly drop away. For days I never move at all.

   But my theology tells me a different story. It says that, at the moment I realized my ability to climb was futile, and confessed as much, the Master of the mountain took me from the precarious and never-ending climb and placed me at the summit. It is still misty, and I can't really see what's there yet, but I am safe, in a different place.  A different kingdom, as it were.

   So why do I sometimes wake up and think I am on the path again, trying to scale the unscalable?

   Good question.

—Wayne S.

(Click picture to enlarge. For more info, see here.)

Josh Ritter on Inspiration

The monster is the invisible force that decides what you write about. Some people call it "The Muse," but I've never found that to be a particularly apt description for a creature so voracious. This is no gossamer-clad maiden. I don't know much about it, but I know that it lives deep in the synaptic jungle, its tail twitching lazily, its slow-breathing bulk heaving sulfurous sighs as it waits. You have to feed the monster everything you come across, be it books, music or movies, your friends and enemies and any other shiny baubles you find strewn in your path. You shovel everything you've got--a long-handled snow shovel works best--into its big toothy mouth, and it chews everything up and sighs once again. It never says "thank you," and you don't expect any gratitude, but once in a while the monster will taste something it really enjoys. When it does, you'll notice a slight lift of its scaly brow and a narrowing of its keyhole pupils. It doesn't give away much, but if you know your monster, that's all you need to see.
—Josh Ritter, musician, in Paste Magazine, April/May 2010

In any language

My wife and I just returned from 10 days in Hawaii--three on Oahu and seven on Kauai. I am resisting the temptation to show you my 700 or so photos (of which maybe 25 are very good). But I would like to tell you of two observations:

God does His best work in small places: The island of Kauai, at 552 square miles, is smaller than the metropolitan Atlanta area where I live. It is only 25 percent inhabited. Some of it is only accessible by helicopter. Yet in such a small place there is variety in geography, ethnicity, climate, altitude and flora and fauna unmatched anywhere else. Beauty and surprises await around every corner.

God loves to astound and delight His Children. One of our dear friends, who along with his wife accompanied us on the trip, made this comment: "When I see this, I can't help but think 'My Father made this.'" Amen. On the last night of our stay, we went to a luau at the next-door Hyatt resort. The Hyatt is a monument to conspicuous consumption (suites go for $4500 a night), and the luau was no exception. Liquor flowed freely, the food was mountainous in volume, and the mood was festive. That why it came as a surprise to us when the emcee announced to the crowd that, before we ate, he would like to offer a traditional Hawaiian blessing for the meal, as most Hawaiians do. What we heard, in a rich, baritone voice, quieted the crowd to silence, and lifted our hearts.

Here is a version performed by the Kamehameha Schools Children's Chorus, along with just a few pictures of my Father's work. Enjoy and be blessed. --Wayne S.

The Color of Water

The Color of Water by James McBride. A book review.

   In one sense, it is a remarkable story about a mother who married two good men and raised twelve children, among them medical doctors, university professors, journalists and musicians. In another, it is a story of faith, as Ruth McBride goes on, with her husband, to co-found a Baptist church in New York. Yet it is made all the more noteworthy because Ruth was a white, Jewish woman, and both her husbands were black. In the ultimate sense, therefore, the most redemptive part of this story may be how God raised her above prejudice—Jew against gentile, white against black, black against white, even dark-skinned blacks versus light-skinned—and gave her, her twelve children, and her grandchildren a wonderful gift.

   Ruchel Dwara Zylska, the daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, fled her native Poland with her family in 1921 and settled in Suffolk, Virginia. Her father was a cruel man who abused his crippled wife and mistreated his daughter. Along with this harsh treatment, she and her family were ostracized in the South because they were not white, but “Jews.”

   Working long hours in her father’s mercantile store in a black community, she began to identify with the black children her age, also marginalized and discriminated against. Ruth Shilsky (her Americanized name) fled persecution once again when, at seventeen, she moved to New York. There she met Andrew Dennis McBride, a violinist from North Carolina studying music. He was a deacon and choir member at a Harlem church, where she began attending, and where something else happened:

   In 1942, Ruth said to Andrew Dennis McBride, “I want to accept Jesus Christ into my life and join the church.”

   Dennis said, “Are you sure you want to do this, Ruth? You know what this means?”

   I told him, “I’m sure.” I was totally sure.

When it became apparent that Ruth intended to marry Dennis, her Jewish family sat shiva for her, proclaiming her dead to them. From that moment on, her community was the black community of her husband and her soon-to-follow children.

   The author, James McBride, tells his own story beside hers. Her vivid recollections, dictated reluctantly at first, match perfectly James’s story of growing up with “the strange, middle-aged white lady riding her ancient bicycle.” In places the story is hard (both of Ruth’s husbands die, leaving her with eight and then twelve children to raise; James faces the hurdles of inner-city gangs and drugs), and finding their way was hard for both James and Ruth. Yet it is a powerful story of God’s grace. James became

a jazz musician, journalist and author, and Ruth earned a B.A. in Social Work at age 65.

   The evocative title comes from a conversation between mother and son:

[O]ne afternoon, on the way home from church, I asked her if God was black or white.

A deep sigh, “Oh boy…God’s not black. He’s not white. He’s a spirit.”

“Does he like black or white people better?”

“He loves all people. He’s a spirit.”

“What’s a spirit?”

“A spirit’s a spirit.”

“What color is God’s spirit?”

—Wayne Steadham

Christians are the best--and worse--argument for faith

The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness.  But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians--when they are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.  But, though it is just to condemn some Christians for these things, perhaps, after all, it is not just, though every easy, to condemn Christianity itself for them.  Indeed, there are impressive indications that the positive quality of joy is in Christianity--and possibly nowhere else. If that were certain, it would be proof of a very high order.

—Sheldon VanAuken, professor, poet and writer, in Encounter with Light.

Elie Wiesel on Jerusalem

   For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture — and not a single time in the Koran. Its presence in Jewish history is overwhelming. There is no more moving prayer in Jewish history than the one expressing our yearning to return to Jerusalem. To many theologians, is IS Jewish history, to many poets, a source of inspiration. It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city, it is what binds one Jew to another in a way that remains hard to explain. When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming. The first song I heard was my mother’s lullaby about and for Jerusalem. Its sadness and joy are part of our collective memory.

...

   Today , for the first time in history, Jews, Christians and Muslims all may freely worship at their shrines. And contrary to certain media reports, Jews, Christians and Muslims ARE allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city. The anguish over Jerusalem is not about real estate but about memory.

   What is the solution? Pressure will not produce a solution. Is there a solution? There must be, there will be. Why tackle the most complex and sensitive problem prematurely? Why not first take steps which allow the Israeli and Palestinian communities to find ways to live together in an atomosphere of security. Why not leave the most difficult, the most sensitive issue, for such a time?

—Elie Wiesel, quoted by Jennifer Rubin at Commentary.

Buechner on grace

After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.

   Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There is no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

   A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

   A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.

   The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you.. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you.

   There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace is yours only if you reach out and take it.

   Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

—Frederick Buechner, from Wishful Thinking, a Seeker's ABC.