Winter

Dikkon Eberhart

I resolve to climb beyond an habitual sin of mine and to progress in imitation of Jesus.

Below, I reflect on this matter by focusing on four ages of my life—when I was twelve, when I was about twenty, when I was about fifty, and when I was sixty.

As I write, now as a Christian, I am seventy-one and am challenged to speak truthfully, succinctly, usefully, and in imitation of Jesus.

Let’s go!

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I was twelve. It was cold.

I came downstairs to the kitchen and noticed that the temperature outside our house was 39 degrees below zero.

I took off my shirt and dashed outside.

Mom spun away from the stove and shouted, “Wait! Wait! Dikkon Eberhart, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

I slammed the door shut behind me.

(Wooden doors don’t slam with their usual sound at 39 below. Instead, they bang and sharply reverberate.)

The door wrenched back open. Mom stuck her head out. “Dikkon, come in this second! THIS SECOND!”

I stood on the porch with my arms spread out. (I admit the air in my lungs had frozen stiff, and I was gasping--but I was out there with no shirt on, at 39 below!)

“Richie!” Mom yelled over her shoulder at Dad, “Richie, come here! Your son—he’s….”

She slammed the door.

We lived in Hanover, NH, which is about halfway up the state, on hilly terrain. Hanover is not so far north in New Hampshire as to be in the real mountains. But last night had been clear and still. We were one day after a full moon. Even in Hanover, it can get cold.

I was a man, outside, naked to the waist, at 39 below.

New Hampshire’s real mountains are the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, which is dominated, as part of a great curving east-west massif, by Mount Washington. Mount Washington is the highest peak in the northeastern United States, at 6,288 feet. Also it is the windiest spot on the globe, having registered a sustained wind of 231 mph at the summit’s weather station, in 1934.

Furthermore, Mount Washington is one of the most dangerous mountains to climb in the United States.

Two reasons.

One, while Mount Washington is not as high as other mountains in the United States, its weather can become lethal, very quickly.

Two, the mountain is located only a three-and-a-half hour drive north of the densely populated Boston area.

So what?

Well, many carefree hikers live in sunny Boston who are just watching for a good day to drive to the Presidentials and to stroll up Mount Washington for a view from its top. However, Mount Washington’s massif divides cold, dry northern air from warm, wet southern air. The two masses of air sometimes pour across the summit ridge, and they mix, and--

Virtually instantly a sunny climbing day is thirty-five degrees, with fog and driving rain, so foggy you can’t see six feet ahead. Nor can you even distinguish up from down. And the wind is now gusting over 60 mph. And you are climbing in a tee shirt and shorts. In an hour you are probably dead.

(Reader, you can't believe not being able to distinguish up from down? Well, I didn’t either—like you, I thought it was a mountaineering tall tale. Until it happened to me.

(Wanna know what to do? Lie down. Roll slowly each way. Your body will tell you which way is up, and which way is down.)

In Hanover that memorable morning, I was a man, outside, naked to the waist, at 39 below.

Even then, at twelve, inside myself I admitted I was cold. But I told myself--feel it, feel it, feel the cold!

The rest of the year is just April, mud, and gardens. The rest of the year is just summer, sweat, and lolling. But this is real.

This is the universe as it actually is.

The universe is empty. It is cold. It is permanent. It is huger than me. It dwarfs my fantasies, my problems, my conceits.

…but now I want to be INSIDE!

It was Dad who opened the door this time. I burst in. The kitchen was so hot it made me hurt.

“So?” Dad asked, grinning, “How was it?”

I wanted to laugh, but I was too frozen to breathe. I coughed and waved my hands trying to signal positivity.

Mom: “You’re crazy.”

Me: “Maybe.”

She shook her head. “Now put clothes on, you dope, and we’ll have breakfast.”

When I came back down—turtlenecked and double sweatered—I was vividly alive. “For the rest of my life, I can say I’ve been outside at 39 below without a shirt!”

Mom included both me and Dad with her disgusted comment.

“Men,” is what she said, and she dished out the eggs.

Later, at age about twenty, three times I climbed Mount Washington, solo. One of those ascents was up the headwall of Tuckerman’s Ravine, in May. During that particular year, May was still winter on that north-facing wall. Partly I was climbing on ice and collapsing snow, with frigid melt water pelting down on me from the boulder wall.

Stupid, but I made it.

(I DO NOT recommend doing this, even if you are someone who is twenty years old, and is immortal. Wait until it’s really summer; then it's still a very stiff climb.)

I LOVE WINTER. I LOVE COLD. I LOVE SNOW.

I have loved any physical challenge in snow. For example, I loved climbing the headwall of Tuckerman’s Ravine, in winter.

Then I became older, in middle life, at about the age of fifty, and what I like best to do in snow is what I imagine is possible by seeing the photo above.

What I see is a long snowy field over a low hilltop. Enough snow to make a slog but not enough snow to require snowshoes or skis. Looking at the photo, I imagine the temperature to be about 15 or 20 above. Little wind. No civilization at all. Midday. Walking alone.

Ah!

Solitude!

Silence!

Looking at the photo, further I fantasize an average day in the middle of my life. I fantasize that there is another mile to trudge across the hill in order to reach the inn, way north—up above that great wall of mountains in New Hampshire.

I’ll be tired when I reach the inn, I imagine, but they have an innkeeper’s reception in late afternoon at that inn, while the day darkens—hot mulled cider or cold beer. Probably sliced sausages with strong mustard on the bar; hard, sharp cheddar.

I miss my wife and children who are back at home, while I make one of my regular sales swings into the far north. I cold-called through this morning, and then I took the afternoon off so as to enjoy my trudge through the snow.

I have three well-prepped sales appointments for tomorrow; two of those likely will close; one of those might close big—I’ve been working on that sale for six weeks.

Here’s the truth. While I walk and I miss my home, I need to be certain not to imagine that the whole of my life is good. Parts of my life are good. Parts, however, are not good.

I must not imagine but instead must be truthful.

Too often I speak too quickly and without sufficient thought beforehand. Not in a sales situation, no; in a marital or parental situation, often yes.

Years ago, undertaking difficult climbing challenges, I took great care to succeed and to thrive by means of truth. Yes, climbing the headwall solo in May with snow and ice still covering most of the ascent is stupid, but the truth was that I had experience, fine equipment, strength and sufficient élan.

Truthfully, I knew I could succeed.

I would need to plan each step with intent and with judgement, that’s all. Not unlike speaking only after each thought I intended to speak has been evaluated beforehand.

For a fantasizing fellow like me, the way to succeed is not to imagine myself at the top of the headwall, but to concentrate profoundly on where I am, at each step along the way.

To feel it; to feel it; to feel it.

Planning the headwall climb, I knew I could succeed because, years ago, at twelve, I had been a hero in bronze—a frozen hero, yes, but—as a man—I had been out on our porch without a shirt on, at 39 below.

Now my fantasy has placed me in the middle of my life but by no means any longer as a hero in bronze. Bronze is just too cold, too stiff.

Yes, in my fantasy, I’m still walking in snow—but now with my family to get back home to. And, since I’ve carefully climbed my professional mountain to possible sales tomorrow, it is likely I will reach its summit, too.

All that part of my life is good.

And then later I am sixty, nearing the end of my professional climb. The truth is that still I sin, and my habitual sin weighs on our family.

Recently, I’ve become curious about this fellow Jesus.

I can’t go back to being twelve again, nor even twenty. But here’s the question. Could I be myself, at sixty, just as I am…and still feel as alive as I did back then?

Could I? With Jesus?

And if I could—with Jesus—would I be able to climb above my particular manifestation of sinfulness?

As I understand it, those who follow Jesus believe all humans are sinful but that believers who are able to trust in Him may live with aliveness and awe even so.

May it be!

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The photo below is of Tuckerman’s Ravine. For scale, look closely at the two dark spots just below the top right hand edge of the ravine. One is about an inch-and-a-half from the right edge of the photo, the other about two inches. Those two spots are skiers. Also, there’s one more skier just above the boulder wall, in the center. Managing that boulder wall in the center of the photograph was part of my ascent that winter, and it was where most of the melt water was cascading down on me.

​To schuss the headwall at Tuckerman’s—ski straight down it—is an act of daring that was far beyond anything that ever attracted me.

[The photo is copied from the Wikipedia article about Mount Washington.]

That Christmas Boy

Dikkon Eberhart

I’ve read autobiographies in which the author describes great Christmas days when he was a child. Sometimes the tale is cute. Sometimes the tale is more than merely cute.

Sometimes the tale has something to do with that boy, you know, with that boy who was born on Christmas Day.

For me, I have a tale to tell. My tale has to do with my father and my uncle and my adult male cousins…and with my guns.

Here’s how it goes--

It is early afternoon on Christmas Day. My father, mother, sister and I have been at Grandmother’s house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the past few days. Dad had annual posts at various colleges—where he served as Poet in Residence—but, wherever we lived during any year, almost always in order to celebrate Christmas we came back to this house—to this house where my mother was born and raised.

That year, I was either seven or eight.

Christmas morning had gone very well. My most important present had come from my pacifist grandmother.

Earlier in December, my mother told me that Grandmother had asked her what I most wanted for Christmas. Easy answer. What I most wanted was the double holster belt with two shiny cap guns that I had seen in a store.

However, a few days later, Mom sat me down. “Dikkon, I spoke with Grandmother. You know there’s just been a very bad war, and that’s why your daddy was in the navy, and a lot of people were killed by guns.”

This was the kind of talk that grown-ups used sometimes. They referred to something I could not understand, but, because they were talking with serious faces, I knew I should try to understand.

“Yes?”

“Well, your grandmother loves you very much, and she knows the guns you asked for are just pretend guns, but she’s troubled about whether she should give them to you. She wants to know if there is something else instead that you really want.”

I loved my grandmother, and I wanted to help her out…BUT.

That holster belt and those guns!

The guns were shiny, and the holsters had silver stars on them, so I knew they must cost a fortune. Way more than my parents would spend on me…though they loved me, too, of course.

Grandmother was my only chance.

Then I had an inspiration. (Later in my life, I made my career as a salesman. You’re about to learn why that was my obvious career choice. At seven or eight, I knew intuitively how to engage with and how to counter the objection of my customer.)

Here is my earliest sale-closing statement of my life. “Tell Grandmother it will be OK. Tell her I’ll only to shoot people who are already dead. I promise.”

That cracked my mother up, and she told me years later it made grandmother laugh, too, though ruefully: Grandmother really was a pacifist.

But I got my guns!

So, it is early afternoon, and relatives and friends begin to arrive for Christmas dinner. My mother’s brother Charlie is one of the first to arrive, along with my Aunt Aggie, and their daughters, Kate and Susan, who are my close pals—we three and my sister were accustomed to spend hours wrestling around with one another like puppies in a box.

I stand in the vestibule, wearing my guns.

One after another, these tall men come through the outer door, smelling of cold snow and winter wind, their faces red. They all wear overcoats, which they doff as they trade greetings with Dad, who acts as host since my grandfather died two years before. The overcoats smell of the outdoors and swirl a cold air as they are swung off shoulders and hung among others already there.

These men are well dressed, good-looking, competent. They chat with one another as though they are all members of that enviable club—the club of adult maleness.

They notice me; they greet me.

More than anything on earth, I long for membership in their club. I would give up my guns to be a man in an overcoat arriving out of the snow from a world in which I know how to make things happen.

If you are a woman, you will have had much to consider about men. We men, I can tell you, mull a lot over women. But first, when we are seven or eight—and at later times, too—we mull a lot over men.

As we boys come up, we encounter the lives of our fathers. For most of us, we encounter the well-lived lives of our fathers. Our fathers are decent men, who tried, and sometimes failed, and then tried again. On the whole, our fathers are men who succeeded, much of the time.

Along the way, our fathers made their mistakes of course. Eventually, all fathers display their weaknesses to their sons. However we sons already know what those weaknesses are.

When I was six or eight, I imagined I knew Dad’s weaknesses because of visceral sympathy between the generations. I experienced soulful accord with Dad. Here’s what I thought. I know Dad (comforting and cozy); he knows me (sometimes, not so comforting and cozy).

Anyway, Dad and me—we know one another’s weaknesses because we are father and son, and when our eyes met, we transcended the detail of the moment, and we were just…male.

But there is both a sager and a more godly explanation for this communion of maleness between the generations--sin.

At seven or eight, I probably knew the word sin, but it had no context for me. In our family, we were Episcopalians, after all, as high as could be. (This was long before my wife’s and my venture into Judaism.)

More to the point, my father was a poet, whose heart was tuned, really, to the muse. Sin had nothing to do with anything that had to do with us.

Yes, a shaft of jabbing badness cut at my guts, sometimes, and made me keep secrets. But—I crouched inside myself in confusion—perhaps boys keeping secrets is just the way things are.

Jabbing badness could not be in my adult uncle and cousins who wore their Christmas overcoats. Nor in Grandfather, who had been so kind to me before he died. Nor in Dad. How could there be jabbing badness in Dad—who was Dad! Nor in my favorite uncle, Charlie, who knew so well how to play.

I was the only one who kept secrets and who experienced that jabbing badness.

But perhaps soon I could stop keeping secrets. After all, now I had my guns. Maybe my guns could keep me safe from jabbing badness.

Oh! Wait.

What is it about that boy who was born today? Did he have jabbing badness and keep secrets, too, like me?

There was something different about him, everyone said so. Even angels said so, from heaven itself! About him, there was something more powerful and more holy that I didn't understand, something more powerful and holy than my everyday jabbing badness.

Yes, I had my guns, and they would surely help, but maybe that boy would help, too.

Before we sat down for Christmas dinner at Grandmother’s long table we sang songs about that boy. That just shows how important he is.

What were those songs we had just sung, about how quiet was the night outside, and how holy it was…and what was it about a Star?

​Maybe…if I try really hard to know something about that boy….maybe....might the jabbing badness go away?

Ripples

Dikkon Eberhart

Remember throwing pebbles in the water when you were a child?

My wife and I have four grandchildren living with us now. The three of them who are six, five, and two are excited to throw pebbles now, and the five-month-old will almost certainly join in with his brother and sisters as soon as he learns how to walk.

When I threw pebbles, I remember being fascinated by the concentric ripples. I loved to watch as the ripples spread out across the water’s surface and diminished in size while still continuing with their energy, gradually slackening until they were gone. But if the ripples reached the shore, they kicked up tiny breakers there, which wetted the sand where it was dry.

Of course, I was a strong boy, and I loved big rocks, and I wanted to make the biggest splash. A big splash and big ripples made me feel good. But here’s a secret answer. I would not have revealed my secret answer to you, if you had asked me, at ten, which I liked better, a big splash or the smaller ripples.

Honestly, I liked the smaller ripples better. They had subtlety. You could see how their effect impacted the water for a long, long time.

I’m thinking about ripples right now because of a Facebook post I read a few days ago.

A woman Facebook friend of mine received a message from someone else out of the blue. With her permission, I reproduce it here verbatim (names have been removed).

I'm not sure you remember me. I met you 20 years ago outside of Women Services on Main St in (location removed). I was only 15yrs old. You saved my sons life ❤ I was alone, there to start a two day procedure. Day one of the procedure he would be termination they instructed me to wait at home come back the next day and have it completed. However, that night I felt my son move. The next day on my way into the building I met you. If I'm not mistaken I believe you read me some scriptures and made me aware of other options. So I decided to have the laminaria removed and continue with the pregnancy. That day you took me home and you never left my side, took me to your church, linked me to several agencies. You were truly a blessing to me. Today my son (name removed) is almost 20yrs old away at (name removed) College beginning his sophomore year. I miss him so much he's the best thing that ever happened to me. When I think of him I often think of you. I often wonder how many other women you have been a blessing to. You have always held a place in my heart. Peace, love and blessings always ❤

What a delight this was to read!

How mightily the Lord has blessed the woman who wrote to my friend, and her son.

My friend was the Lord’s pebble.

The Lord splashed my friend down in that town. Ripples began. My friend spoke to a fifteen-year-old. The fifteen-year-old was preparing to abort her son on the morrow. That night, a ripple passed through her womb, and she felt her son move. The next day, another ripple brought my friend to the Women’s Services building, again, with a Scripture. And so the ripples continued to widen.

My friend had made a friend for life…for LIFE.

She had made a friend for her own life, of course (which fact remained unknown to her until she received that Facebook message), but most importantly for the life of that fifteen-year-old mother and her son.

And yet the ripples from that single splash continued to widen. Twenty years passed. Twenty years!

Perhaps during those twenty years the writer of this message has told other people how that ripple of the Lord broke against her dry sand and wet her parched soul. Wet her and refreshed her enough that the ripple reached her womb and floated her son inside her, so she felt and thereby knew him.

And more to this.

When I read this message, it had been public for two days. In that amount of time, 874 likes had occurred, and 143 comments had been written, not a single one of which deplored that the Lord had dropped a pebble.

May the Lord be praised for dropping that single pebble that He dropped twenty years ago.

And last.

The Lord keeps right on dropping His pebbles. His will be done.

Faced as we are today by a secular culture that preaches the rightness of aborting babies, many of us Christians feel stymied and afraid.

​But twenty years ago, a friend of mine whom I did not yet know -- she spoke in a timely way to a fifteen-year-old girl, which caused the love of the Lord to flow into that girl and to stop her in the very act of killing her son.

And so, for at least those three persons—and twenty years later, for 874 others--the world changed.