Enduring Things

High up a winding alpine road, at almost the very top of a narrow canyon, stood the 1920s log cabin my parents purchased in the early 1990s. They were just becoming empty nesters, and they relished being able to drive from their desert home in Las Cruces, NM, over the Organ Mountains, through the heat of the Tularosa Basin (home of White Sands, now National Park) and into the cool air of the Village of Ruidoso, some 7000 feet in altitude, in the shadow of the Sierra Blanca range and the Lincoln National Forest (home of Smokey the Bear). Over the years, whenever my siblings and I were home, we’d always make time for a trip to the little cabin with the red metal roof and the gorgeous stone chimney. 

After my mother died, my father still retreated to the cabin some time most every week for the next 20 years–cross-country skiing in winter, hiking in summer. Situated steps from the Rio Ruidoso, the cabin had a steady parade of wildlife in front of the porch, including the bears who provided my dad with quite a few tales to tell. We nicknamed it “The Bear’s Den,” and we continued to gather there as a family, whenever we could, under the red metal roof and in the warmth of the gorgeous stone chimney. 

Eventually, now in his 80s, my dad decided going up alone each week to the mountains probably wasn’t the wisest choice and so, he made his young near-neighbors—who owned a cabin rental business—a deal on our beloved cabin with its red metal roof and gorgeous stone chimney. 

That happened just pre-COVID. I followed the cabin rental business on social media, and after everyone emerged from lockdown, it was gratifying to see that a new generation of people were enjoying our snug little getaway. 

But you may have seen that Ruidoso was in the news recently because of the devastating South Fork and Salt Fires that engulfed the town last month, forcing everyone to evacuate, and eventually, killing two people and destroying over 25,000 acres and 1,400 structures–including what had been our cabin for 30 years. The canyon was especially hard hit, both by the fires and the flood that followed, and the folks who own the cabin rental company sustained heavy losses to their livelihood.

As they reported on the aftermath of the fires and flood on social media, they included pictures of “The Bear’s Den.” The scene of wreckage was intense. Still, after 100 years, the only thing left standing unscathed was the gorgeous stone chimney.

When I reported the survival of the chimney to my (social media-less) dad, he wasn’t surprised, given its craftsmanship. And he said something that struck me: “You’ve got to honor the guy and his crew who built such an enduring thing.”

I imagine it hit me because I wonder how much we do honor all the hands, mostly anonymous to us over the centuries, that strive to build for the long-term. Often when I sit in a millennia-old church in Italy, as I did in May, I wonder about all it has taken (the meetings, the compromises, the fundraising, etc) to keep the doors open, century after century. The real, unglamorous work of real human hands. Living stones used by the Spirit to accomplish divine building projects.

Abstract critique is easy. Actual construction is difficult.

It’s funny: this past spring, it was reported to me that someone had characterized me as an “institutionalist.” To which I responded, “did they mean that positively or negatively?” The usual take, of course, would be negative, code for the unquestioning “company man,” the faithful factotum, the toady to the powerful, always willing to place the wishes of the institution above all else. Not very flattering. (When I told this story at a workshop recently, there was an audible gasp in the room at the term). 

My interlocutor wasn’t so sure of the intention. And I began to wonder then at the ways I would define the term positively, even as I acknowledge that institutions themselves, like all else in the fallen world are very broken (an obvious assertion, if there ever was one) and that sometimes it is absolutely imperative to leave them on principle or work against them for reasons of justice. I do not believe in institutions for institutions’ sake–nor do I underestimate the real damages familial, ecclesiastical, political, and every other kind of institution have done throughout history (and that continue to do). 

Still: I am that increasingly rare person who has, so far, spent an entire career at one institution, deeply invested in its welfare. Over those twenty-six years, I have served on endless committees and task forces, written all kinds of university documents, taken on different leadership roles. I guess that makes me an “institutionalist,” by one measure. But I have not done this work in order to preserve or defend an institution, but instead to try and contribute to a place where the living stones I live with, my colleagues and my students, are being fashioned together into a edifice pleasing to God and the work God has for all of us.

What I love about my father’s statement is that it recognizes these efforts–of both the individual and the community–to do the hard, unglamorous work that institutions require. One of the gifts of Reformed theology is that ours is a generous hermeneutic, one that says we do not believe in a top-down interpretative mode, but one where we act like the Bereans, studying together to see “whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). This takes sustained institutional structures to do well, but with them in place, asking questions and searching for answers with my colleagues is a richly Reformed project of building towards shalom, not the opposite. Loving God with our mind is active and engaged–not passive consent to a checklist. This mode of working, I continue to believe, even in an imperfect place, is the best thing we’ve got to accomplish our shared mission.

We are at such a critical time in so many institutions, big and small, right now. And I’m under no delusion that much of what is being built will, no doubt, be consumed in refining fire. The challenge: what are we building? With whom? And will it be the enduring “gorgeous stone chimney” that we hope?

Photo credit: Mescalero Apache Tribe