"I Don't Want to Go Down the River!"

Something from the tackle box:

       I am not anyone’s slave.  But I have become a slave to everyone, so that I can win as many people as possible.  When I am with the Jews, I live like a Jew to win Jews.  They are ruled by the Law of Moses, and I am not.  But I live by the Law to win them.  And when I am with people who are not ruled by the Law, I forget about the Law to win them.  Of course, I never really forget about the law of God.  In fact, I am ruled by the law of Christ.  When I am with people  whose faith is weak, I live as they do to win them.  I do everything I can to win everyone I possibly can.  I do all this for the good news, because I want to share in its blessings.  (1Corinthians 9:19-23 CEV)

a man happy in his work

       My oldest son, Zac, is a geologist living in California.  Now at the age of thirty-four, he has either been studying or working in the geology field for sixteen years.  Undergraduate studies at Western Michigan University, Graduate work with the Mackay school of Mines at the University of Nevada, work doing EPA mandated monitoring of industrial and landfill sights in Michigan, precious metal assay and evaluation work in Nevada, and now, helping the state of California deal with their ongoing water shortage problem as fairly and humanely as that crisis will allow.  In addition to the states mentioned, his profession has taken him to places in Mexico and Australia for study and work experience.

Zac in the field again

       Zac is a good fellow and a nature loving outdoorsman.  As a lad he was active in scouting from tiger cub through star scout.  He was often off exploring the woods, camping, or canoeing with his good friends, Craig, Ben and others.  He thoroughly enjoys the ‘in the field’ aspects of his work, as well as spending time on retreat to commune with God in the quiet nature surrounded settings of various monasteries near the communities that he has lived in. Being outdoor activity loving people too, his mother and I are very, very proud of our son and how he has turned out.  But we were not so sure that he would turn out this way in the early days of his life. 

       We will always remember one of the very first times we took our son on an outdoor adventure.  Zac was only three and a half years old (or was it two and a half) when Kathy’s older sister Connie, along with her husband Thom, invited us to join them, their three year old son David and a few of their other friends, on a weekend trip that would include an afternoon paddle down the Little Muskegon river through the woods of the northern lower peninsula here in Michigan. 

       It was to be a soft and pleasant introduction to living the adventurous outdoor life for both young boys.  The section of the Little Muskegon we would be canoeing was deep and gently flowing run.  The occasional rock had to be avoided, but even a pair of beginning canoeist could navigate the stretch without too much danger of upsetting their craft.  Zac would sit in the middle of our canoe, lifejacket firmly strapped on, and enjoy being ferried on his inaugural trip through a wonderful stretch of Michigan’s great outdoors.  -  Or so we thought. 

       It started out fine enough.  When we arrived at the canoe livery to be transported to our starting point, Zac was in great spirits.  He and his cousin David were glad to be on an adventure, playing and bantering together as happily as only three year olds can.  The ride in the canoe livery van pulling the rack of canoes behind us was marked by high spirits all around.  Who could doubt that a great outing lay before us!

       The tenor of the day began to change as soon as the canoes were being unloaded and set up on the bank of the river for we adventurers to board and depart on our trip down the Little Muskegon.  We had gotten all of our lifejacket firmly fitted on when, as she was carrying him down towards the river and the waiting canoes, Zac grabbed his mother's face in his hands and turned it to look into her eyes as he asked, “What are we doing now?”

       “Why Zac!  We’re all going to go down the river in those canoes!” was her appropriately smiling and cheerful reply. 

       Zacs little face went very serious at this news.  He looked at his mother.  He turned and looked at me.  He looked back at his mother.  He thought, then took her face in his hands again and very somberly whispered, “But I don’t want to go down the river.” 

       “Oh Zac!  It’s going to be such fun!  You’ll like it!  You’ll see things you never saw before!  We’re all going to go down the river together!”

       A look of dawning anxiety started to come over his face.  He looked at me.  He looked back at his mom.  He looked back at me again, and said a bit more emphatically than before, “But I don’t want to go down the river!”

       “Oh Zac.  All you have to do is sit here on this pad and hold on to this bar in front of you," I said as I placed him in his seat.  "You’ll have such fun seeing new things.” I continued with a confident smile.  “We’re all going to have a wonderful time going down this river.” 

       And that’s when the wailing started.  As I shoved off and got in the stern seat to steer us towards the other canoes, already heading downstream, the declaration, “I don’t WANT to go DOWN THE RIVER!” was being made repeatedly and in double forte volume.  It continued this way despite his mother and my constant stream of cheerful reassurance. 

       Little Zac continued clutching the center brace of the canoe in a white knuckled death grip and shouting at the top of his lungs, “I don’t WANT to go DOWN THE RIVER!” for quite a while.  Until, of course, he ran out of three-year-old steam, and the wailing degenerated into a more pitiful, albeit somewhat lower volumed, sobbing.  “I don’t want to go down the river.  I don’t want to go down the river.  I don’t want to go down the river,”  he wept, as an unstoppable flow of tears flooded down his rosy cheeks to soak the collar of his T-shirt all the while. 

       What could we do?  We were on a river in the woods.  The van and trailer had taken off for the destination site before we had even embarked.  Remember, this was before the days of cell-phones.  We couldn’t even call for them to meet and pick us up at some bridge over the river along the way. 

       We knew how emotionally determined our three year old could be once he was in a particular frame of mind.  We would just have to make the best of canoeing in company with a desperately unhappy little boy repeating his mantra of, “But I don’t want to go down the river,” over and over between sucking air and sobs.  To be sure, it was a visually wonderful and audibly wretched afternoon for everyone on the trip.  

       Finally!  We made it to our pick-up point. The van and trailer were their waiting to load us up and take us back to the livery and our cars. Other than the collar of Zac’s shirt, we had all made the trek as dry as a bone.  Physically, it had been an easy run.  Emotionally, we were all in a state of exhaustion.

       We paddled hard the last few yards to run the bow of the canoe high up on the sandy landing site.  Kathy jumped out, grabbed Zac and lifted him in her arms to comfort the poor little fellow’s belabored sobs.  “It’s alright little man.  It’s over.  We’ll go back to the camp now.  We’re all done going down the river for today.”

       But the sobbing had already stopped!  The second that he was in mom’s arms, with her feet planted on solid ground, Zac gave his mom a puzzled look.  He gave me a puzzled look.  And then, as new understanding dawned on us all, he observed in a calm voice, “We didn’t go down the river.” 

       A big smile broke over his face as he again grabbed his mother’s cheeks in both hands, and this time all but shouted in triumph, “We DIDN’T go DOWN the river!”

Something to take home in your creel:

       As many characters have said, since Strother Martin first said it in the movie, Cool Hand Luke, - “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate!”

       The water was deep and somewhat murky on the Little Muskegon that day.  When we told our little boy that we were going to ‘go down the river.’ and ‘see things we’d never seen before,’ we meant that we would float along with the river, and see the same trees and critters that he could seen from the land, only from a different point of view.   But three-year-old Zac naturally concluded that we were going to go DOWN – to the bottom of the river – and see new things, things that couldn’t be seen from above the surface.  That would have been an adventure that the little duffer was not prepared for, and he told us that he didn’t want to go down the river. 

       Looking back at that declaration, from Zac’s understanding of what was about to happen, neither would his mom or dad want to go down the river!  But how could his child’s mind understand that.  Since we had insisted that we would all go down the river together, he could only assume that we had our minds made up to drown ourselves in community!  What other interpretation could his three and a half years linguistic experience put on it?  What joy he must have felt to be held in his mother’s arms again at the end of that trip – on solid ground!

       A great deal of all the anger, agony, suspicion and grief that takes place in this broken old world is caused by failure to communicate.  As important it is to speak in the language that others understand when you are trying to express your ideas and beliefs to them, it is even more important that you critically examine what you are trying to say, and how you intend to say it, from their cultural, emotional, and cognitive points of view – at least as far as you are equipped and able to do that. 

       You need to understand that, as clear and reasonably as you think you are making your case, others often hear something totally different than what you think you are saying!  Preachers who don’t learn this lesson early on in their calling are in for big trouble!  But don’t get mad about this fact.  Have some compassion on people when they don’t get your point.  It’s probably your fault.  Be humble, try again, and do better.

       As a side note; my son’s anxiety about going down rivers in canoes didn’t last for long.  As a teenager he and his good friend Craig once decided to take one of Craig’s dad’s canoes for a short run down the full, raging, and ice filled Thornapple river – in the middle of a Michigan winter!  They overturned, got soaked, and nearly froze solid trying to get the canoe righted and out of the water.  All four parents of these wayward explorers were aghast, and doled out appropriate punishments, once the facts became known.  But Craig and Zac both considered it a grand adventure to have done it, to take in all of the wondrous new sights on hand, going DOWN such a gloriously beautiful river.