Mi-Mi and Pa-Pa (Lois and me) are leaving today on a trip to Alaska. We will be accompanied by Hailey, our granddaughter, who will be a senior at Florida’s Winter Park High School this fall. We thought this summer would be the perfect time to take her on such a unique and extraordinary adventure. As it turns out, I suspect that it is an opportune time for Lois and me as well. Friends, golfing buddies and a few neighbors who have already taken the trip sing praise over the experience. So, together, we are preparing with unrestrained anticipation and excitement and grand expectations.
Author and journalist, Summer Lane, famously wrote in her historical romance book, Running with Wolves:
Alaska was the cure to the disease of my despair.
I approach this trip with the hope that it will ease the dis-ease—even despair—I sometimes feel amid the crises we face as a nation, divided communities, churches seeking to find and use their voices, and individuals longing for our societal nightmare to end.
After watching the opening of the Obama Presidential Center and Campus in the south side of Chicago last week and listening to the speeches, in particular, Michelle Obama’s eloquent, masterful address, I was all the more in touch with some of my heavy-hearted feelings. An excerpt reads:
The Obama Presidential Center is a living testament to the power of choice, y'all. The historic example that millions of you gave the world about what this imperfect democracy has strived for and achieved. And an urgent call to go out there and do it again.
So I hope that when you walk through this campus and bring your children here, you are reminded of the power of choice and the steady work of change. The arduous, unglamorous march up that mountain one foot after another, day after day, generation after generation, but I also hope you fully absorb the elation of achieving something together.
You know that feeling when you clear the tree line and see a vista that takes your breath away? A feeling that can never be erased? And I know that can be hard to grasp right now when everything feels so upside down. When fact and fiction run together. When folks seek to stifle speech, limit access to education, devalue diversity, erase the inconvenient parts of our history. When our phones constantly buzz with the latest outrage.
So I hope that this place can offer a respite from all that, at least for a little while.
I hope it can reignite the optimism and empathy and ambition that has always powered this country's greatest change.
So we want you to come here and put away your phones
My phone, iPad and desktop buzz all the time because we are a society beset by one outrage after another. Everything feels so upside down. The suffering of too many is so significant, so public. My last blog post lamented the fusion of fact with fiction. The present administration and its complicit allies exhibit no sense of right and wrong. Their corruption and greed is pervasive and perverse. Seemingly, no one feels the slightest inclination to tell the truth about anything. Indeed, ‘the buzz’ is constant, loud and disheartening. It would be nice to have a respite from it. I think that I will try to put my electronics away on this trip. I know the feeling when you clear the tree line and see a vista that takes your breath away, and I am hopeful to have that feeling renewed by the wilds of Alaska and the companionship of Lois and Hailey.
Kristin Hannah is the award-winning and bestselling author of more than twenty books including the international blockbuster, The Nightingale. In 2018, she published the New York Times’ #1 best seller, The Great Alone, a novel that is set in the Alaska wilderness and explores themes of survival, familial tensons and the effects of isolation. She once wrote of Alaska:
Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become.
I hope that proves to be true for us. I intend to assist the process by remembering Paul’s words to the Romans:
2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.[a]
3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, 5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6 We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7 ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8 the encourager, in encouragement; the giver, in sincerity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
Marks of the True Christian
9 Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; 10 love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly;[b] do not claim to be wiser than you are. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. 18 If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. (Romans 12: 2-19 NRSVUE)
What a wonderful biblical admonition and challenge!
The greatest test and task of this age, a time of crisis, conflict, corruption and chaos, marked by the buzz of outrage, is not to be conformed to it. We cannot give up or give in! We must go on, commit ourselves to the work of change and embrace a future filled with promises.
I expect to see some impressive mountains and breathtaking vistas, glaciers and wildlife and a way of life that is much different than our own. And somewhere in the midst of it all, I hope to have reignited within me, ‘the optimism and empathy and ambition and faith’ that enables me to engage and transform the world in ways that will please Christ.
Alaska's state motto (North to the Future) was adopted in 1967 during the Alaska Purchase Centennial. The motto is meant to represent Alaska as a land of promise. It was suggested by journalist Richard Peter, who stated the motto "...is a reminder that beyond the horizon of urban clutter there is a Great Land beneath our flag that can provide a new tomorrow for this century's 'huddled masses yearning to be free'." We will be arriving home on July 3, just in time for the fourth of July boat parade on the lake. The lead vessel will have an inflated Lady Liberty in its bow, beaconing a nation to aspire to its highest principles and most trusted expressions of virtue. I will be thinking of Alaska’s lesson, namely, there is a new tomorrow awaiting us, filled with the promise of freedom and a renewed sense of community, one in which love, humility and gratitude are genuine, and we live peaceably with all.
Today, however, Lois, Hailey and I are off to Alaska- north to the future-to be welcomed by the spirit.