Mom and the Bible

The Stream just published a short piece I wrote about Mom and the Bible -- right before Mother's Day!  Happy Mothers' Day to those of you who are.   It made me think about the sort of legacy I would like to leave to my children -- I'm afraid I haven't measured up to my own parents on this score.

Gospel According to John Marshall: The Half-Life of Pie

Chapter Three: The Half-Life of Pie

Patricia Campbell first noticed “Jack” in Study Hall at West Seattle High School.  (Which is just two blocks north of West Side Presbyterian Church on California Avenue in West Seattle, also a similar distance from both their houses, a few blocks east.)  John was talking with another student, maybe a girl, about his Christian faith.  "I sort of listened in on the conversation, and was impressed that he would share his faith."  As a new Christian herself, and either a freshman or sophomore, "I was kind of shy, I didn't have the nerve to go up and talk with him."

They began to get to know one another at West Side, where the young people’s group “did everything together,” and where it turned out Jack also had a mischievous streak:

Enchanted

John and I.  This was my first visit
to these lakes since I was his age,
or before. 

One of the most beautiful series of lakes on Earth, I would guess, is the Enchantments in the center of Washington State.  Rugged and wild granite peaks rise at strange angles as snow fields melt into a series of ten or more blue-green lakes, with crystalline waters flowing between boulders and flower fields from one to the other.  These are ranges dominated by softwoods (I counted nine species), most of which are evergreen.  But these high, relatively dry elevations (the lakes are up to 7500 feet above sea level, with peaks rising higher around them) are also graced with a generous scattering of larch trees, which turn golden in the fall. 



Aasgard Pass is that "flat" spot to the left of the central
peak in this photograph.  I hummed "Ride of the
Valkyries," but none appeared to fly us over it.  At least
we weren't carrying heavy packs. 

But central should not be confused, in this case, with accessible.  Sane people know that three days should be reserved for a visit to the Enchantments: after a hundred mile drive from the Seattle area, a long, hard day up, or two days if you ascend through the backdoor (more on this shortly), then a day of having fun without a backpack on your shoulders, then back down.

So here's fodder for those who question my sanity, or good judgment.  Yesterday, John I hiked up to the "back door" at Aasgard Pass (named after the country where Valhalla is placed in Nordic mythology, full of jewels and gold), into the Upper Enchantments.  We swam in one of the highest of those lakes, and hiked back down again, walking the last mile in the dark.  (John is back to the University of Washington today, so that was his send-off.)

Colchuck from above.  The larch are just
beginning to change color -- though still beautiful. 

In distance, our hike was probably no more than 15 miles.   But we gained some 5,000 feet on the day, perhaps more.  Furthermore, past Colchuck Lake - the gorgeous glacier-fed lake in the first three photos here -- much of that path is (a) over large granite boulders that one must scramble, or small rocks some of which may break loose, (b) almost invisible, with rock cairns marking what path there is, if you can find them, (c) a bit dangerous (such as when we went the wrong way around a rock outcropping), and (d) wicked steep. 

Was it worth it? 

Do you have to ask? 

Two of the first of the Enchantments, descending slightly from Valhalla.  Clearly the land exists, and
really does possess jewels.  The lower lakes are punctuated by oddly-shaped granite peaks, and of course
have more vegetation. 

The Gospel According to Daffodils

T










The Puget Sound Region is one of the most beautiful parts of America, but we have committed our
share of strip-malls. Almost from Olympia to past Bellingham, 150 miles, the main thoroughfare
north to south, I 5, exits lay in wait like traps, with asphalt parking lots and cookie-cutter chain stores ready to snap their jaws down on the souls of motorists.  Having traveled north along this corridor many times, I recognize many beautiful sights: crossings the Skagit and Stillaguamish rivers, mists on the hills above Lake Samish south of Bellingham, Mount Baker rising above the clear-cut foothills around Mount Vernon. And of course off the freeway a few miles, beauty is the rule more than the exception.  But at the exits, Convenience, not Beauty, is the muse to whom the Fates bow lowest. 

At 300th North, some Lutherans found a way to exorcise that witch, and show us Washingtonians what a little whimsy and a few well-spent dollars could create in place of parking lot. 

We were mushing our way north, and ran into a traffic jam.  After pushing through at five miles an hour for ten minutes, a sign alerted us to the cause: the road narrowed a mile ahead from three lanes to one.  A permanent sign just a few feet before that marked an exit at 300th Street, also about a mile north.  Could we get off the freeway, and take some back roads around the traffic jam?

Yes!  And a hundred yards up a little hill at right angles from the freeway, a mass of yellow caught my eye. 

This "Free Lutheran" church was founded in 1900.  Set on 20 acres, the caretaker, or manager of the

property had a few dollars to spend.  "We didn't want this to become just another strip mall," a man I met on a side road told me.  (I think his name was Collin.) 

"I told him about this place in California called the Mountain of Flowers.  A woman had started planing daffodils 70 years ago.   They kept spreading."  The caretaker went to see the mountain, and called Collin and said, "We've got to do this!"

Not wanting to wait 70 years -- we are still Americans, after all -- they planted thousands of bulbs right away. 

And this is the result. 

"Preach the Gospel always.  Use words when necessary.  Otherwise, use daffodils."

Or tulips (we did make it to Mount Vernon, mostly by back roads past homes and horses and the occasional bicycle in a tree.) 

Didn't God give us the job of gardening? 

The North Cascades on X-Country Skis

There was a forty-percent chance of rain yesterday, and the Mountain Loop Road is well on the watery side of those stats.  But John is home from college for the week, we'd never been there in the winter (is this still winter?) and we had to try. 

 

 

 

The plowed part of the road ended three miles to the west. We skiied up the road without knowing exactly where we were, and found ourselves at the picnic area by the little trail leading to the Ice Caves.  These caves are quite a sight in summer, barely 2000 feet above sea level, formed by avalanches sliding into a land of shadows off of Big Four Mountain.  

 

 

That's John, and Jake, and that's Big Four Mountain, down which the avalanches feed into
the ice caves.  You can see the trees have been snapped off where we're standing in
the past.  Not a good idea to get any closer, in late March, with 200 inches of
snow pack at the top of that mountain. 

Back across Snoqualmie River to our home.  In a week, these trees should all be a soft green.

Goodbye, Dad, for now.

At our elder son's high school graduation this June.  (His
name is also John; that is not a coincidence.)

John Quincy Marshall (1932-2012) went to be with the Lord last night, at home in bed, surrounded by a few of those who love him. 

Dad's last days were not easy.  The pain had been under control medically (thanks, Big Drugs).  He seemed to feel little hunger, though he had eaten almost nothing for a month.  (A few bites, some of which he regretted, a little grape juice.  One of the last things it seems he ate was a tiny piece of the 50-pound king salmon my brother Steve recently caught by his home on the Columbia River.  He said, "That smells really good.") 

I spent Tuesday night and Wednesday morning at their home, helping in the middle of the night when needed.  Dad was seldom fully conscious, and seldom fully unconscious.  He felt increasingly nauseous.  Not everything he said could be understood: he lacked the strength to speak clearly, and he may have seen a few things that weren't there, though it was hard to tell for sure.  (He mentioned Paris to me, I don't know why.  "You mean in France?"  "Yes.")  He repeatedly told Mom, "I want to go home."  He told me Steve had been offered a job near his home (he commutes on a weekly basis to patrol Seattle's subway for King County, now), and it turned out this was true.  He also said, "This is the worst I've felt in all my life."  I said, "You're a tough man, Dad."  He answered, "I don't feel tough."  But he also thanked me for what little I could do to help. 

Other people filtered into the house, and I left to give them time, and keep the crowd to a minimum. 

When I got ready to leave, I went into Dad's bedroom and said goodbye, and "I love you."  He raised his hand to say goodbye.  But people were outside the bedroom talking, and I couldn't leave right away.  I went back into his room.  He grasped my hand with surprising strength.  I said, "God be with you, Dad."  He said clearly, forcefully, "The Lord be with you." 

I left with that blessing ringing in my ears, as it will for a long time, I think. 

Dad died that evening about 7:40, with my brother Peter attending him, just a few minutes after we had prayed over dinner back home for a peaceful outcome. 

I will share a poem below, that will tell you what you need to know about Dad.  But first, a few superficial facts:

Dad served in the Army during the Korean War, in what is now Eritrea, and was then part of Ethiopia.  He long displayed the head of a gazelle from Africa that he and his friends got hunting, on the wall.  Though he didn't go hunting often, he treasured his two years in Africa, and often spoke of those hunting trips.  (Along with his later moose hunting trip near Yakutat, when we lived in Alaska.)

Dad built houses and, occasionally, apartments.  He specialized in building new homes on steep slopes, surrounded by trees, which he tried to save.  During the economic downturn in Seattle after the Vietnam War ended, we moved to Alaska for five years, where there were plenty of slopes and trees, but also lots of cold rain and mosquitoes.  We enjoyed the slopes; Dad endured the rain and the snow, when it came, working outside in a cold-weather parka.  (Construction is most difficult when it is raining, winding, and snowing just above freezing, which it often is in Juneau, then again with a bitter cold wind well below zero, as it sometimes was in Skagway). 

Dad was a Presbyterian elder and one of those Calvinists who actually reads Calvin.  He loved gardening, even just a week ago picking over the tomatoes I brought in from his last garden, and putting some on the window sill, though he couldn't eat them.  He was a Seahawks fan, the kind who watches to the end even when they were behind by three touchdowns.  (Though he might have missed last week's come-from-behind victory over New England -- he saw the first part of the game.) He  was a Republican and strong Mitt Romney supporter.  I even remember a Richard Nixon bumper sticker on the wall of the basement bedroom we three boys shared, growing up, by the window. 

Much of what I am, comes from Dad: my love of the mountains, of gardening, of sports, my political interests. 

I'm not a Calvinist, but I also treasure our Presbyterian heritage, a sane, book-loving, politically-involved, historically-informed subculture.  Dad and Mom met at Westside Presbyterian in West Seattle, left that church for a while, then spent the last twenty years or so at it again, deeply involved in many ways.  West Side is what they call in the evangelical community a "missions-minded church," which in practice means they have lots of interesting people from around the world come in and go out.  (Maybe that also helps explain me.)  One of the pastors, Ron Rice, builds wheelchairs for polio victims in Nigeria, for instance, and also helps develop Christian Ed curriculum for parts of that country.  The great mission physicians, Dr. Paul and Margaret Brand, "retired" to a third or fourth life of service at West Side, as did Don and Martha Wilson from Thailand: these were among my parents' close friends. 

But so are a lot of other people, including many who had no claim to fame at all.   

Thus we come to my poem. 

I cheated, as you'll see.  Someone else wrote the first draft:

Even though I read classical Chinese or programming languages for Microsoft editor, but have no love, I am noisy as a Heavy Medal Thrash band, or a jackhammer on 35th. Even if can forecast an El Nino winter, and have faith to put a Republican in the White House or pay off the National Debt, without love, I am nothing. Even if I pay for AIDS drugs in Mozambique, preach to New Atheists on the Internet, or chain myself to Old Growth Douglas fir to save it from being murdered by Big Timber, but lack love, it does me no good at all.

Love puts up with lawyers from Family Court, without losing its temper. Love does not shout guests down at the Thanksgiving dinner table. You find love with a cheerful face and a "Good morning" on the couch in the living room at 6 AM, with an open Bible. Love picks people up at the airport. It does not count apple pie slices or put greedy guests on its Enemies List. Love refurbishes boats, cleans out houses, fixes leaks, builds garages. It loves the truth. It bares tough news without wallowing in self-pity, even by affecting a phony Stoicism. Love holds to faith without giving up, hopes under dire circumstances, -- even when the Mariners lose their star right fielder, or a Little League team loses its tenth straight game 16 to 1 – and does not lose hope during losing streaks in real life, either.

Love never fails. As for MA and PhD degrees, they are just piles of paper. As for bank accounts, they drain like leaky pipes before you call the apartment manager. As for languages, they will lose out to Google translator. As for books, Kindle is conquering the world, unfortunately. For our research is fragmentary, and our grasp on empirical data uncertain and incomplete. But when the real manifests itself, the psyche-enhancing memorabilia we cling to scatter like "epistles of straw" in the wind.

When I was a child, Captain Kirk was my hero. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the childish need to be grownup. I still enjoy Star Trek, but have found better heroes. Now, we see what really matters indistinctly, like trying to shave without glasses. Then we will see face to face. Now we know in part, and most of what we think we know needs to be fact-checked. But then we shall understand as we are now understood.

Just three things stay with us, in the end: faith, hope, and love, no more than these. But the greatest of these is love.

Though hope is pretty awesome, too.

Thanks, Dad, for helping us see the things that count.

Coyotes at the Dunes

Last night (update -- Thursday night) we camped at Bruneau Sand Dunes in Southern Idaho.  It was a sparse landscape, burnt brush and sand, buttes and several sand dunes where one might expect Peter O'Toole and a troop of Arabs on camels to ride in to epic theme music, but "Western" when one points the camera away from the dunes.  We arrived after 7 PM, with the temperature still above 90, and a single baby aspen lending barely a gesture of shade at our site.  We just had time to cook and decorate hamburgers, set up our tent, clean up a bit, and look around , before dusk came on.  As the sun released its last rays through a band of reddish clouds on the horizon, then disappeared, the top third of a pumpkin-like orb appeared resting on the far horizon. 

A full moon brings out wolves, and in the middle of the night coyotes (their lean cousins) began to hunt.  We wondered where they'd been hiding, or even where their prey had been hiding, the landscape seemed so barren. But the next morning, climbing up one of the dunes, and hiking around the little lake that lay beneath the dunes (ruining our Far Side "crawling through the desert dying of thirst" poses), multiple little footprints crossed the sand between soft-green bushes and desert flowers.  Many were of strange, non-mammalian shape, like little "x's."

The desert is alive. 

Congratulations, John!

John Marshall and his proud parents at his graduation from Mount Si High School.  (The mountain in the background is the namesake Si, a rocky peak with much the aura of a Sinai or a Tai, despite its mere 4000 + foot elevation.)

John earned about a 3.85 GPA, aced six Advanced Placement exams, and is pumped about studying Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Washington next fall.  Of course we're glad he's not going any further than that.

The proto-scientist.

And here, just a few months ago, is a photo of John showing his early interest in science.  "Is this the North Pole?" He asked, standing at the shore of Mendenhall Lake, facing Mendenhall Glacier, just north of Juneau.  Now he's holding a chunk of highly-compressed glacial ice.  (We used to use it to make ice cream -- Alaskans love ice cream.) 

This is what the North Pole ought to look like.

Spring in White and Blue

Mount Baker, if you can see it.

One of the great things about the Northwest is that the best of winter so often overlaps with the best of spring.  Here we are in Alvin Plantinga territory -- read his books, and you'll often see references to places like Mt. Shuksan (upper left) and Mt. Baker (right, sorry I couldn't fit these all in one left to right panorama).  I'm at the top of one of the more rugged runs at Mt. Baker Ski Resort.  More than 300 inches of snow lie on the ground under our feet.

New cherries, old grapes.

John looking cool, even
on a warm spring day on
the snow.

Here, meanwhile, are some flowers coming out at home, and a shot or two of John and James learning how to ski -- and doing pretty well, on just their second downhill outing. 

Mt. Shuksan: the most photographed, under-recognized
mountain in the world.   Posing with us.   

From the Marshalls

In China this fall, I often stayed at a new chain called "Like Home" hotels. I joked that one way they reminded me of home, was that I sometimes had to chase young men working there off the computer provided for guests, where they had been playing video games, to access the Internet. Now I'm back at my real home, chasing my own boys away from the computer, instead!


John is busy with the real world right now, though. He's begun sending out applications to universities. He woke Mayumi up in the middle of the night when I was still deep in jet-lag, to announce top scores on "subject tests" for SAT physics and advanced math -- he's interested in a scientific or engineering course of study, something to do with airplanes. I've also begun to take him out to practice for driving: so far nothing interesting to report, like the young man who took the gas for the brake, and put a hole in the post office across the street from our house, a few months ago.

James is also studying well, his first year in high school. He's good at reading and writing, but his favorite class is PE. Unlike John, who often waits until the deadline nears to bare down, James usually takes care of his homework as soon as he comes in the door.

We're also playing a lot of ping-pong on the table the boys got for Christmas: it's true winter in Seattle, with the dark and the rain outside, and now people are regretfully taking Christmas lights down.  Why does Christmas only last one month? 

Mayumi is still working at Bellevue Children's Academy. The school is a few blocks from the Microsoft campus --just over the civic frontier in Redmond. Mayumi and the boys enjoyed their trip back to Tokyo and Nagasaki again this summer, visiting hot springs with relatives, museums in Tokyo. Like Christmas, the annual visit to Japan involves a bit of a ritual: they would be sorry to miss anything on the list of things to do, people to visit.

For me, it's been a long, sometimes difficult, year of writing -- sowing, in the biblical metaphor, with the sometimes frustrating hope of doing some reaping before too long.

Mainly I've been writing my dissertation, which is now almost complete. I believe this work may change how people see the world. Studying the history of Christianity in Asia, the lives and thoughts of great missionaries, and how the Gospel touches the deepest parts of "alien" cultures, it has been a great adventure to knit these threads together into an explanation of how Christianity relates to other religions.

We've also almost completed my next book, Faith Seeking Understanding, expected to come out next September, published by William Carey library, and written in honor of Dr. Paul Brand and Dr. Ralph Winter. Since I'm the book's editor, but author of just one chapter, I can boast more shamelessly than usual about how wonderful I think it's going to be. Contributors include Philip Yancey, Oxford historian of science Allan Chapman, Miriam Adeney, Earl Palmer, Yuan Zhiming, and interviews with Rodney Stark and Don Richardson -- along with other wonderful writers.

The Truth Behind the New Atheism came out in Spanish this year, and I've been working on other exciting book projects.
Do have a wonderful New Year.

David Marshall

Where the world is young: Nugget Falls, Alaska

John is a senior in high school now, but he and James will never forget our visit to this spot -- one of the most magical places in the world.   

In the background is Mendenhall Glacier.  Like most of the two dozen or so glaciers that pour down from the Juneau Ice Cap (the main exception has been Taku Glacier), Mendenhall has been retreating for a long time.  When I was a boy, living a mile and a half to the west, the glacier partly obscured the waterfall.  You can still see signs posted every couple hundred yards, warning visitors to get no closer.  When we lived in Juneau, a woman was, in fact, crushed to death by falling ice, but that was in winter, I think, when Mendenhall Lake freezes over a couple feet.  You can't easily get that close in the summer.

John has been here twice.  The first time, he stood by the lake across from the big glacier and asked, "Is this the North Pole?"

The cliffs over which the water falls, are in places streaked with quartz.  Look closer at the rocks that the glacier has left in its retreat, and you can still find garnets in the scheist, and other beautiful stones. 

Follow the East Glacier Trail around the falls into a valley towards the backside of Thunder Mountain.  I never made it as far as I wanted -- some day I'll return. 

Go into the visitor's center, point the scope onto Boulder Mountain behind Nugget Creek, and sometimes you can find mountain goats, little white specks thousands of feet above. 

A magnificent stuffed timber wolf now also stands in the center -- hit by a car, they told me. 

There are plenty of live animals around, too.  As we walked up the ramp to the Visitor's Center, a small but adventurous bear was coming down.  He went over the rail, and clambered down the rocks to avoid us: the boys were deeply disappointed.  Beavers created a pond out of another little creek that flows into the river just beyond the parking lot.  Bright red sockeye salmon fight their way up the creek every fall, attracting bears.  Even the plants in Mendenhall Valley enchant: the freshly-washed cottonwoods, the deep mosses, the pink flowers establishing themselves in white sand when the glacier has past.  Of all the places in the greater Juneau area, hundreds of square miles of mountain and fjords, the smell here seems freshest, as if the world had been created this morning.  And who can deny it -- with mists rising off the mountains, water pouring down from deep mossy hills, many-colored mushrooms popping out of the green?  Here indeed, where the glacier passes, the world comes to life anew. 

Mom and Laurel on return to East Glacier trail:
Mendenhall glacier and lake,
Mt. McGinnis and Stroller White -- I still remember
the names of the mountains,  and the
lakes we foolishly slid across in 8th grade, when the
ice was still only an inch and a half thick. 

Tourists off big ships that tower over downtown Juneau climb out of big buses half a mile from this spot, but never get here.  They don't climb the rocks and bath unclothed in the little ponds up in the glacier-scoured hills, as we did when we were boys.  They don't chase the salmon.  They don't ski across the lake, because they don't come in winter.  They should do these things: here where the world is still young.