144-Just Reach Your Hand To The Sky...

As I salivated for the pad Thai noodles in a large glass serving bowl intentionally placed on the table before me, I could hear the cook making a final remark about our meal, “Remember, chicken is a garnish!” She said it so sweetly, how could you be upset?  The spread of sautéed peppers and onion, chick peas, rice noodles, chicken and sweet-chili-sauce was not only delicious, but my only sustenance until 6pm.   The same bell and two clunks on a rusty steel pipe from the 1900’s signaled I’d be 5 minutes from breaking this metaphorical bread once again (sometimes literal bread, baked fresh with butter and honey).  Meal time at Beyond Malibu was a treasure in 2002 and the tradition and feelings are cherished today—forty plus people gathering around several 4x8 tables, covered in checkered table cloths and placed outside end to end to form the longest family-style dinner in history.  It’s quite a scene.

“Zone defense Matt,” Henry reminded me as someone from the next table down asked for more noodles.  We love each other, but we also love to eat.  Pad Thai lunch around the chatter of work projects, trainings, hopes for mountain routes, and family stories blended together into an ensemble of pleasant noise; the kind of noise of home, causing unease when it’s too quiet.  Before long the sound of scraping serving bowls and plates signaled it was time to get back to work.  Fun work with a great crew—you can hardly call it work when you really think about it.  Deep inside I know that this is how life is supposed to be, the “thin place” as the Beyond director puts it; like Beyond is a community that exists somewhere suspended between heaven and earth.  I like that.

The afternoon June sun warmed the inlet that acted as the front door for Beyond, foot traffic only once dispensed by boat onto this small, flattish plot of temperate rain forest surrounded by the Coastal Mountains that rose seven to eight thousand feet out of the ocean.  The sound of the 4:30 bell signaled our “daily office,” three minutes to contemplate that morning’s scripture reading, followed by the end of the work day.  After a quick break that could encompass a jog, swim, nap or hack session (yeah, the 1990’s are back!), we find ourselves gathered once again under the tall mossy maple and conifers at the front of the barn, affectionately known as “The Beyond Hilton.”  Dinner satisfies the palate as always and then the big announcement that can cause a wave of mixed emotions down one side of the grand table and back on the other: “We need 6 volunteers for dishes…”  There is typically at least one hand that shoots up to the blue sky without hesitation to kick things off, but for others it can be a contemplative effort.  I already did dishes twice today for my work details, or I’m exhausted from raking every single leaf off the ground all day long (wet and dry), or we have Bible study tonight so this will be my only window of free time until tomorrow around this time… there are plenty of reasons to keep your elbows on the table.

There is another side to this coin:  this could be my chance to talk to someone not in my bunk area, or I’m here to serve and this is my chance, or I wouldn’t mind some more music in my life… I take these examples from my own mind because I think that every one of them crossed it at some point.  In these heavy moments, it was obvious when character was stretched like pizza dough that you have to continue to work toward the edges of the pan, trusting it won’t tear.  And even if it does, it’s nothing that can’t be repaired.  Can we relate people to pizza dough? Sure, why not?!  I saw one of my guys raise his hand over and over again, regardless to how draining his day.  These are the moments when self takes a backseat to the community.  Community at Beyond Malibu is everything, a focused crew serving teens and sharing the Gospel of Jesus through mountaineering and sea kayaking trips.  When you have a bigger picture in mind, doing dishes for the third time in one day is not even a thing.  Enlarging our view takes our eyes off of our discomforts and temptation to spew complaints to ourselves or others, and creates moments for others to thrive.  That’s what God’s only son did for me, and I don’t recall any scripture that reveals any complaining about His disposition.   I know we are not God and I can’t pretend to put that pressure on us.  However, Paul comes along a few years after Christ and calls all of us to “look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” and a few verses later in Philippians chapter 2, to “do everything without complaining and arguing.” 

What can we say then?  Be the pizza dough at a Friday night Beyond Malibu dinner table—and you mind as well volunteer for dinner dishes, too.

-Matt