Life!

September 1998

It was the most glorious service! Before he died, my friend Bill had asked that his memorial service be one of praise with lots of music. It was. Wow, was it wonderful! From the opening Jesus Loves Me,” sung by three great-grandchildren; to “Taps” by a single trumpet as this WWII bomber pilot’s wife, Bonnie, was given the carefully folded American flag; to more songs by family and friends; to “Reveille” on the trumpet at the very end, the service was a perfect reflection of Bill’s life. A life lived in praise to God.

I met Bill and Bonnie when I returned to the U.S. when, in 1991, post-polio syndrome made it impossible for me to stay in my adopted country. For seventeen years I had been a missionary in the remote interior highlands of Irian Jaya, Indonesia. I was located in a little valley called Korupun, accessible only by foot or by single-engine aircraft which landed on a little grass and gravel airstrip. I had come to love the Kimyal people of Korupun. They live in simple grass huts and grow sweet-potatoes for their daily food. They don’t have the technology of the Western world, but they have a zest for life I seldom see in my home culture. They are volatile, animated, fun. Their language is much richer than English, full of graphic word pictures. They taught me much. I still miss them terribly.

In my corner of the U.S. it is hard to find many people who can relate to the life I had, and understand the impact of losing it. But Bill and Bonnie could. They, too, had been missionaries in a remote, “primitive” area of the world. Their setting was very different from mine. They had been at the northern-most point of the north American continent at Barrow, Alaska. But they knew what I was talking about when I spoke of the joys and challenges of working in a face-to-face culture of day-to-day survival.

But most of all Bill and Bonnie understood the joy of loving God, which was the motivation behind our taking on the challenges of living and working where we had, and was the sustaining strength we drew on as we faced new challenges. For me, that meant learning to cope with the limitations of post-polio syndrome; for them it was learning to cope with the challenges of the “senior” years, then Bill’s cancer and now Bonnie’s grief at losing him.
We had another tie. Bill and Bonnie have a daughter my age who has PPS but whom they couldn’t see very often. Teena lives on a one-family island in the delta of the Colville river as it flows off the north slope of the Alaskan arctic mainland. My PPS helped Bill and Bonnie to understand Teena’s and know it is “cope-with-able.”

A few days ago, as all of this mulled around in my head, my mind flipped the Kimyal switch and brought up a picture that illustrates the whole package. Actually, it played back a whole incident that took place my last year among the Kimyals.

In my “Mountain Transport System” (MTS)

An important church function was about to take place at Duram, about a two-hour trek away on the next mountain to the west of Korupun. As usual, the Kimyals would carry me on my pole-and-sling-seat carrier. I called it my MTS (Mountain Transport System). Even at their best, my polio legs couldn’t carry me around those mountains. Two to eight men, depending on the difficulty of the trek, would put the poles on their shoulders and off we’d go. I had made the trip to Duram many times. No big deal. Except this time.

Anticipating that over 1000 people would be trekking over and back from Korupun, for weeks the Korupun church leaders had grumbled about the condition of the bridge over the Erok river between Korupun and Duram. The pole-and-vine suspension bridge had fallen into such disrepair that even the Kimyals considered it dangerous. But no one on either side seemed to want to take the responsibility for it’s rebuilding.

Knowing the state of the Erok bridge, I had written off any thought of attending the function at Duram. The Kimyals were very careful about where they carried me, always staying within the limits of what they were sure they could do safely. Well, safe in their eyes. I knew they would not ask me to go to Duram. I was wrong. A few days before the event, they pleaded with me to go. I reminded them about the bridge. They said, “Oh, we can go through the water.” I protested that the river was way to swift and deep to be crossed that way.

They assured me, “No, there is one place we can go across. We do it all the time. We can do it. It just makes the trail longer.”

“But if it’s too dangerous that day, you’ll bring me back, right?”

“Oh, it’s good. We’ll get there fast.”

“Well, all right. I’ll go...”

I hung on tight as my MTS dipped and swayed in rhythm with a trail that was either a mere scratch on the mountain-side, barely wide enough for two feet, or a plunge at nearly perpendicular angles down some wet cliff face. I loved the wild thrill of it and the beauty of those sheer mountains. In an hour we reached the Erok.

I had been carried through rivers before, but never one like this. In this area the Erok races over and around huge boulders. I could see my carriers’ neck muscles tense as they eased themselves carefully onto the wet boulders, every fiber of their bodies concentrating on staying erect as their toes gripped invisible handles. My ears seemed to shut down even the roar of the river as my eyes took over my senses, watching each trembling foot as it’s toes grasped the next boulder, then the next.

That I’m writing this tells you we made it and began the long climb up to Duram village. Once there, we joined the celebration, ending with a feast of pit-cooked pig and vegetables. Yums! Then it was time to join the hundreds on the trail back to Korupun.
When we got to the point on the trail where we should have gone down to the river instead of on to the bridge, my carriers didn’t go down.

“Friends! Where are we going?” My voice came out a little too high-pitched.

“People went over the bridge,” they said. “It’s OK.”

Protest was useless. They had decided and I was not in control. When we came to the bridge I saw that, like a wounded ship, it listed to one side. A couple with a child stopped before they stepped onto it. The man took the baby from its mother, and sent her over alone first. In a crouched position, hanging on with both hands, she slowly crept across. Her husband followed just as carefully, holding the baby tightly. Normally the Kimyals go over those bridges with the same ease as a stroll through a village. “OK” they called it? If others wouldn’t cross even two at a time, how did they think the bridge would hold two carriers, my MTS and me all at once?

We stepped onto the bridge 30 feet above the river. If the bridge broke or we slid off, we wouldn’t be in pain long. Here the mountains on either side of the river seem to squeeze the Erok out of their restrictive grasp, shooting it into increasingly wider river beds as it dashes to the lowlands. The cliffs on both sides throw down the huge boulders that help churn the Erok into a foam in its excitement to be free.

Somehow, inch by inch, we made it across. As soon as my carriers’ feet stepped onto the opposite bank, the cliffs bounced with shouts and claps. Looking up, as far as I could see on the trail on both sides of the bridge, all traffic had stopped as everyone watched and willed us safely across that bridge.

“Great,” I thought. “So it was as dangerous as I thought!” Then I reflected, “And if we hadn’t made it?....” I had long since learned to dismiss such useless questions. For instance, “What if I hadn’t had polio?” Well, for one thing, I would have missed the marvelous adventure my life is. No, I prefer to look at life ahead - life sparkling with promise. Life pictured by the Erok itself shooting out of the mountains.

Maybe that’s why thinking of Bill made me recall this episode. Another thing we had in common is this joy of lives lived with the kind of abandon and freedom that our love for and by God gives. Knowing that even as we laugh, cry, groan and sing in our headlong plunge through the narrow mountain channel of life on this earth, we’ll eventually shoot out with even greater, purer joy and liberation into the wider channels of real Life - eternally. WOW!