it might have had something to do with the ice cream and peppermint tea at dinner with friends. or maybe just the fact that the precipitation coming from the sky wasn't frozen. nevertheless, as i walked home on this last day of january, my feet felt like they were moving independently from my body. i felt like i was along for some sort of ride, walking back to my apartment from downtown at 11pm on a weeknight. i ended up walking along the gwangju river. in fact i walked for so long that i passed the big street going towards my house and just kept on walking. then finally at one point, by a particularly charming little waterfall i just stopped and stared. and couldn't stop smiling. then my mouth started to move independently from my body as well and i just looked up at the neon-light reflecting sky and said "I don't know!!!" and grinned like an idiot some more.
Because I really don't know. I really don't.
I have no freaking idea. I have no idea how I got here. I have no idea what purpose it all serves. And yet there is such a huge and pervasive sense of OK-ness about it all. like the river I'd been walking by for 45 minutes. it's wide and deep and it just keeps going. even when it stops, it turns into something else and you just have to be ok with that. at that waterfall moment, a line from the bon iver song i was listening to said "its just like the present to be showing up like this". and i listened and laughed and smiled some more. you can't really make many solid plans in life. we just don't know. but life is still somehow so cyclical in it's divine OK-ness. it reminded me of the poem "the song of the river" by W.R. Hearst that Bopoo had framed for Momoo on their who-knows-which anniversary.
faith is such a strange thing. trust is such a strange thing.
we have to just step out, step wildly out into this unknown grand canyon and hope that our wildest, deepest, most innate and profound desire will be met.
love is real. but we love because we are loved. NOT for what we've done, or how we compare to others. for nothing external. not even for anything really internal.
we just are.
and god just is.
and he is love.
and we are loved.
and that's it. it's that simple but it's the hardest thing for anyone to do because we still torment ourselves with this lie that we'll step out and it won't really happen and it will be all our fault. but it won't be. it can't be. because the love you experience wasn't deserved in the first place. you didn't do anything to get it and you don't have to do anything to keep it. we're swimming around in it whether we choose to acknowledge it or not... it's holding the planets together. it's holding your cells together. it's proclaiming itself over you with every single breath you take.
I spent the first fourth (third and fourth 1/4ths forthcoming) of my time in Korea doing a lot of rock climbing. i went several times to this one place called yeongsopokpo (it means grace waterfall in korean, by the way....). anyway it's just stupefyingly beautiful. it was this fourth time rock climbing at this same place (probably my 7th weekend rock climbing here in Korea) where i finally realized that it's pretty easy to die rock climbing. i was about halfway up a 5.10a grade climb, 50 feet in the air with my fingers wedged into the crack of a cliff and my knees banged up from repeatedly falling and trying to scramble back up the bare face when i realized "wow. my life is literally hanging by a rope right now". i realized several things i do each time i climb, that i hadn't realized before:
#1, i trust a person i've never met. someone, at some point (probably a korean person) climbed up to the top of my route with a drill, and drilled an anchor bolt at the top, a bolt to which my rope is currently connected.
#2 I am trusting myself (a thing i rather dislike) with the figure 8 knot i tied, connecting that rope to my own harness.
#3 i'm trusting my belayer to pay attention to my climb and catch me if i fall. not to mention, have hooked the rope correctly into their harness/ATC device. and (probably most importantly)
#4, i'm trusting the rock. and let me tell you something about the rocks at YeongsoPokpo....they are really, really, really flaky. The rock-loosening is worsened by the constant waterfall precipitation, and chunks fall off with just enough frequency to be off putting. Someone actually accidentally dislodged one my last time climbing there and it rolled down a steep hill and hit me on my back, on top of my spine. I was ok, but the thought of what could have happened is really frightening.
So I just don't think about it.
Which brings me to the real point: being aware of the risks, making peace with them, then being willing to step out in faith anyway. all of the previously listed climbing dangers are things climbers are aware of and have made peace with. the people i've been climbing with (and most people in the climbing community) are generally REALLY smart, aware, safety-oriented people. they communicate, talk to each other, double check everything, and take extra precaution to warn anyone about unsafe routes or loose bolts/anchors.
but they STILL CLIMB. they climb every effing weekend. they are in love with it. they are good at it. they keep pushing themselves and they get better and better and better all the time. the've taken really scary falls. and all of them are still climbing. with all of their limbs, completely alive, and feeling alive and loving every single minute of it, even though, yes there are dangers involved, and yes freak accidents occur, and yes i guess you could honestly say they could die doing it.
you can die standing at the bus stop.
you can die in bed lying on your back.
you can die choking on a grape.
why not die after hanging by a thread 100 feet off the ground with a view like this.
love is real. and faith is real, too. and they are both definitely a choice. but it's a pretty damn visceral choice. so even though i don't know where my feet might take me when i step out my front door, i'm still going to keep walking further up and further in. because you never know.
you just never know.
