It must have been a helluva sales pitch. I don't remember what was said, but I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Both a momentary lapse of caution and a collapse of my instinct for self-preservation.
How else can I explain the whitewater rafting trip I took a couple of years ago on the Ocoee River in Georgia with the youth group at St. Francis? I had been on the Ocoee previously, on another trip almost 20 years before, and knew EXACTLY what to expect, so I can't claim optimistic ignorance. Consider the facts as I knew them. Probability of being unseated and falling overboard during the rapids? High-and since it had happened on the first trip, I knew already exactly how unpleasant it is when the boat runs over you. Constantly soaked with 50-degree water the entire length of the trip? An absolute, teeth-chattering certainty. Probability of aches and soreness following the run? A virtual guarantee, since the most common posture is an uncomfortable kneel braced against the side of the boat for the entire two or three hour trip.
I don't remember who sold me on the idea of going on this suicide mission, but whoever it was MUST have been astoundingly persuasive. Not only did I go, but I also talked Sarah, my youngest, into going as well. Sarah, who is neither suicidally adventurous nor particularly outdoorsy unless a campfire and 'smores-a-plenty are involved.
All the trips down the Ocoee, with its thunderous Olympic-class rapids, are led by a guide. These are incredibly fit and incredibly skillful daredevils who take group after group down the river daily, and the common rule is that the guide is the absolute and unquestioned dictator of the run. The Czar of All the Russias held less control than the typical guide; since they protect your life-or at least can keep you from being tossed out of the raft at the drop-they command instant attention and obedience.
During the run, we sat in the boat, either perched precariously on the seats or the sidewall, or we knelt in the bottom. When the guide/Emperor bellowed out "DIG!" we paddled as hard and as furiously as we could until the order came to stop. If the paddlers followed the commands as indicated and were more or less in rhythm, and kept on pulling even while dropping five or six feet, we would pull through with only a moderate soaking. If the instinct for self-preservation made us quit digging in and cluster in the boat like lemmings suddenly come to our senses, we would lose our momentum and either founder or flounder or capsize.
Here's the thing-it is so wet, so foggy, and so humid that your glasses become useless within the first 1/4 mile. The boat spins round and round, so that you quickly lose orientation and don't know quite whether you are facing forward or backward. Blood pounds in your ears, and the roar of the spray fills your senses and deadens your hearing. All you can do is wait for instruction, for the command. "Dig left" or "dig right" or "dig two" or "dig three". All you can do is suspend your own need to process what is happening, to make your own decisions, to be in charge.
All you can do is TRUST. I know the phrase "blind trust" is overused, but in this case, BLIND TRUST is the only term that fully describes it. And then you have to REACT. Immediately. Without interposing your own will or your own understanding or your own judgement. You just react, because to wait means you are lost. And not just you, but everyone else in your boat.
I'm always seeing metaphors in everything that happens to me, and this whole episode struck me as a grand one. What does it mean? I'm not totally sure, but it speaks to me on whole lot of levels. Of trust in God to call the shots even if I am blind. Of trust in each other to do the deep digging in we have to do every day to move the world along. Of trust in ourselves to keep to the task even if we cannot even see what is going on around us, even if we can't be sure that everyone else is digging in too, or if we are alone.
So I try to take my lesson with me in times of doubt, when I can't hear anything over the thunder of the river and the blood pounding in my temples, to listen intently through the chaos for some sort of life-saving instruction:
DIG! DIG! DIG!
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