Heaven on Earth: Gimmelwald, Switzerland

This post was adapted from a segment in last year's blog post about my trip through Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Certain passages were adapted into a more serious contemplation of spirituality and nature. Enjoy!

To some people, heaven is a literal but unseen plane of existence, the dwelling place of the divine. To others, it’s a fleeting but attainable prize for the here and now, glimpsed in a sunrise or through the shining curtain of a waterfall. To me, it’s both—and I found them in Gimmelwald.

Above the village of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, there lies a hamlet cut off from the inexorable flow of time by a five-hundred-foot sheet cliff. It’s insurmountable but for a dutiful cable car that makes hourly journeys up the mountain. Below, Lauterbrunnen bustles with all the trappings of modernity, but above, the hamlet of Gimmelwald, home to less than a hundred permanent residents, is a place apart.

You’ll find no cars in Gimmelwald, only a few golf carts that traverse a winding road up to the larger resort town of Mürren. Even the largest buildings are creaking, overgrown cabins, and through the trees up the slope you can glimpse cheese-making huts peering down at you. The verdant flanks of the mountain are speckled with cows, the bells around their necks tolling the coming of morning as surely as any rooster call. But even if Gimmelwald were stripped of its quaint charm, it would still be a place I could never forget.

For me and my companions, our initial ascent in the cable car was marred by sinuous veils of rain that hid much of the scenery from view. Still under the cover of an insistent deluge, we made our way to the Hotel Mittaghorn, a dark old edifice run by a nearly deaf old Swiss gentleman named Walter. The coin-operated shower was located in a separate room, but what the hotel lacked in convenience it made up for in homely appeal. Walter—the only employee for most of our stay—made a mean breakfast of sausage and eggs.

In the morning, after we were awakened by the crescendo tinkle of cowbells as the dairy cows made their way underneath the hotel window, we saw what the rain and mists had hidden from us the day before. Our bedroom window framed a view unlike anything I’d ever seen, a massive cliff practically pinstriped with waterfalls, rising from the valley below like a snowcapped bulwark of basalt.

That was when it sank in for us that in Gimmelwald we had wandered into a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. It was as if our front porch was a portal to another world, a panorama of natural majesty whittled from the bare rock by a masterful Creator.

That point was driven home for me as the day progressed. The morning continued with a morning run up the trail to the neighboring town of Mürren, and later a hike down from the Männlichen station down to the resort town of Wengen. That hike provided us with our most stunning view yet. I would never consider myself cultured enough to be an expert on great literature, but I do dabble from time to time, and the descent brought to mind a passage from Frankenstein, where the eponymous doctor wanders the Alps in search of solace after abandoning his creation:

"Still, as I ascended higher, the valley ... was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings."

For me, instead of seeing evidence of some alien race, I saw the unmistakable fingerprint of the divine. The endless vistas lent me a newfound appreciation for the glories of the natural world—and for the powers behind them.  

It’s hard not to look out on the majesty of creation and not feel some small measure of reverence. Even the most avowed heathen feels it, even if they choose to ascribe it to another source. There’s no doubt that the mighty glaciers and jagged peaks and filaments of water cascading down the sheer face of the mountain were created by natural processes, entirely explainable by science, and yet to me the evidence of a supreme Creator isn’t in the sights themselves but in the irrepressible, undeniable deference to the divine we feel when we gaze upon their wonders.

I’ve always been a religious person, but I sometimes struggle to connect with my conception of the divine while sitting in a pew. God can seem a little distant when someone forgot to turn down the thermostat or the kid in the bench in front of me is wailing for his Cheerios. That kind of worship will always have a place for me, but in places like Gimmelwald I can seek the heavens in both a figurative and literal sense.

In the Alps, I felt detached from the fallen earth to which I had been born and could almost stretch my fingers, like Adam in the famous Michelangelo masterpiece, to meet the outstretched hand of God. Atop that mountain cliff in Switzerland, it was as though a mere five hundred feet above the valley floor could lift me to touch the firmament itself.

A Leap from the Lion's Head

Originally posted June 29, 2015.

At the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana (played by Harrison Ford) and his father (played by Sean Connery) have reached the ancient hiding place of the Holy Grail just in time to be captured by the Nazis. In order to motivate Indy to retrieve the Grail (which bestows mystical healing powers to those who drink of it), the head Nazi baddie shoots Indy’s father. Realizing he has no choice but to brave the three devices of lethal cunning that bar the way to the Grail, Indiana Jones sets out into the booby-trapped temple. He gets through the first two challenges and reaches the third. It appears to be an impassable chasm, yawning menacingly in Indy’s path. 

“Impossible,” he mutters to himself. “Nobody can jump this.” 

He recalls the cryptic instructions his father gave him for passing this obstacle: Only with a leap from the lion’s head (which is carved near the brink where he stands) can he prove his worth.  

Indiana gazes uncertainly at the gap between himself and the far end of the chasm. Outside of the temple, his wounded father gasps with what may well be his dying breath, “You must believe, boy. You must believe."

Indy can shy away from the challenge, but that will cost him dearly. Only with the Grail’s power can he save his father, and only by taking a literal leap of faith can he advance.

How many of us have been at this same spot? How many of us have faced our own bottomless chasms, too terrified of failure to move forward? I know I certainly have. For years, I was poised on the edge of that abyss, doubting that God would sustain me. Specifically, I showed a distinct lack of faith that my Heavenly Father would one day allow me to find my eternal companion.

This perhaps isn’t the time and place to fully expound upon the length and breadth of my insecurities, but let’s just say that I’ve had my share of doubts that I’d ever find my mate. At the beginning, when the first of my friends started to get married, it started as a niggling little fear in the back of my mind, a whispered uncertainty that I would ever be as happy as the smiling couples whom I watched join their lives together in blissful matrimony. Later, it became a dull buzz of fear, an ambient clamor I couldn’t quite block out as more and more friends left me behind in their unhindered quests to get married. Eventually it amplified into a full-blown roar of panic in my late twenties when I realized I was among the last of any of my groups of friends to find The One. 

The doubts came. Through His authorized servants, God made the promise that I would find the right person someday, and yet I couldn't believe. God meant for some people to be happy, I reasoned, but not everyone. Some people would have the chance to meet their special someone, but that was a treat reserved only for the good-looking or the lucky. And I believed myself to be neither of those things. I longed to meet Her, The One, that special girl who would make all of my doubts flee. I know what it is to feel like half a song, a lonely melody that waiting in vain for a harmony to complete it. I know what it is to desperately miss someone I’ve never met, like being homesick for a place I’ve never been. For years, I sank into a morass of despair, watching my options shrink and my prospects dry up. My friends all got married and had kids. All the girls I’d liked and pursued found guys way better looking than me and got busy churning out children. 

I lingered for years on the edge of my own personal chasm. As the voices of people I loved quietly reassured me, “You must believe, boy,” I ignored them, unable to move forward. I saw only the depth of the gulf before me. 

And so I stood there where Indiana Jones stood, facing the same choice that lay before him: show a little faith, or never move forward.

Indiana, naturally, makes the right choice. With the admonition of his dying father ringing in his ears, Indy steps forward into nothingness . . . 

. . . and alights on a hidden bridge, perfectly sculpted and fashioned to blend in with the rock of the chasm. John Williams' epic score swells, and Indiana, his faith rewarded, walks across the bridge to the final chamber where the Holy Grail awaits.

There’s still another test ahead of him—he has to choose the real Grail from amid a host of impostors—but he has made substantial progress, putting his faith into action and seeing the rewards thereof. (Does he find the Grail and save his father? If you haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil the ending, but I find your lack of pop culture disturbing.)

As for me, there wasn’t ever a certain moment when everything changed, when suddenly the light flooded my mind and thrust the right path into sharp relief. It came slowly over the last year, when at some point I reached my darkest extremity and realized there was no way to go but up. Somewhere along the path, I realized that if I didn’t step blindly forward and take the leap from the lion’s head, if I never showed my faith by cheerfully going on with my life, I would simply never go forward. That was the beginning, the seed of faith from which sprang the kernel of hope.

From there came the moments when my faith was rewarded, when I stepped forward into nothingness and found myself supported by unseen forces. They were small things, like the day when I felt an unnatural surge of happiness for no reason, or the day when I came home frustrated and then found myself supported by kind, loving friends.  

That’s not to say I never have a bad day or a moment of weakness when I wonder why God is taking His sweet time leading me to my wife. I’d like to end this post by telling of the miraculous way in which I found my wife after showing my faith, the way in which I finally drank from my personal Holy Grail. But of course that’s not the end. No, there’s still more ahead for me, more trials, just like there was for Indiana Jones. But unlike before, I really do believe that this will end well. 

Yes, I still have my bad days, those times when I flirt idly with despair, but I can pull myself out because I trust God to lead me in the right direction. If you asked me for that assurance a year ago, I couldn’t have given it to you. But now I can say with a hard-won certainty that there’s someone for me, because I have received that promise from my Heavenly Father. 

I may not meet her soon, but most of the time I trust that God does have someone wonderful in store for me. I’m okay with a little waiting, because I know she is out there, probably navigating her own treacherous obstacle course in her quest to find me. And if she doesn’t mind gratuitous Indiana Jones references, I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.

And so on those hard days when I wonder what a guy like me has to do to get a girl, I remember the timeless advice from the lips of Sean Connery:

You must believe, boy.

Note from three years later: I met her. :)

Why Trials Don't Have to Get You Down

Originally published August 19, 2016.

Imagine this: you’re giving a presentation in class. Or in front of your clients. Or you're trying to win the affections of that doe-eyed cutie who’s gotten your heart all a-flutter. Whatever the task, it’s crucial that you make a good impression, that you do your best to be witty and charming, or at least avoid sounding like a Porky Pig in the midst of a stroke. You open your mouth to speak . . . and suddenly, your words meet an unyielding wall. You struggle for a moment, trying at first to ease the words through, as though smuggling them past some fleshy blockade, and when that fails you resort to force. Your face scrunches up with the effort, but your mouth and tongue ultimately prove uncooperative. As the shattered fragments of your prepared speech finally eject themselves, piece by piece, from your mouth, you notice people are exchanging uncomfortable glances. Are you having a seizure? Are you reeling from some sort of demonic possession? Are your cybernetic circuits glitching? And how are you going to get through both the immediate difficulties and the ensuing embarrassment? 

No, it’s not any of those things. And as for getting through the immediate complications and deflecting the eventual humiliation, it’s tough. As a foremost expert on trying to be witty and charming while your mouth stalls like an old Buick at an intersection, I know a thing or two about the inevitable frustration.

I stutter. This manifests itself as an inability to get my words out when I want them to come out. It’s hardly a new affliction. The ancient Greek philosopher Demosthenes stuttered. (True story: he kept pebbles in his mouth in order to cure his impediment. Speech therapy has sure come a long way since then.) Bruce Willis, Joe Biden, James Earl Jones, Winston Churchill, George VI of Britain, and a host of other famous people have stuttered at some point. Being among such distinguished company, however, doesn’t exactly make me quiver with unbridled gratitude. 

It began at some point after my birth, as these things so often do. I don’t remember a point in my life where I didn’t stutter, so I sorta assume it was always there. We still don’t know exactly what causes it. A little later in life, when other kids asked me why I talked a little funny, I had several answers, blaming my disfluency on things like early-life alien abduction and severe trauma relating to my potty-training, but I still really don’t know what caused it. I went on an LDS mission, during which I met a self-professed shaman who told me—after she told a story about guiding spirits to the Great Beyond and used some sort of crystal to divine my aura—that some ancestor on my mother’s side had eaten some weird herb, which had consequently caused my disfluency problems. (If that isn't a reason not to eat your vegetables, I don’t know what is. You never know what impediments you may be inflicting upon your hapless progeny.) She was the second of four people on my mission who also tried their hand at addressing my speech problem or seeking to cure me, a group that also included a nice Pentecostal couple who tried speaking in tongues (that’s a trippy experience, if you’ve never heard it for yourself), a Navajo medicine man, and an old LDS guy in my last area. 

So I don’t know its causes. All I know is its effects. All I know is that in stressful situations, my tongue and lips go on strike. (No, I'm not going to give them more paid vacation. They should stop asking.) These stressful situations may include, but are not limited to: job interviews, introductions to new people, speaking in front of crowds, speaking in front of attractive women, or speaking in front of any human being I might conceivably desire to impress. As you can imagine, first dates are stressful. (Actually, “stressful” is only a good word to describe my first dates if it’s also the word you use to describe manned Mars landings.) If I’m allowed to get to know and grow comfortable around a person, my stutter tends to ebb, allowing me some freedom to express myself as I want, but by that time the damage is often already done. Incidentally, if you’re a girl/woman and I’m having trouble speaking to you, take it as a compliment. It means I wouldn't mind having you as my co-pilot on an eternal spaceship of love, if you get my meaning. 

For example, the other other night I was at ward prayer, a time-honored institution among LDS singles’ wards designed, apparently, as a sadistic experiment to observe the the pre-mating rituals of a group of sexually repressed young adults. I spotted a girl I’d seen a few times who had struck my fancy. I initially avoided her, because I wasn’t having a good day as far as fluency goes, and I didn’t want her first impression of me to be of a tongue-tied simpleton. (Sometimes I just charge in and talk to girls, but this one was cute enough that I hoped to postpone a first impression until a night where my vocal faculties were a little more cooperative.) However, the fates conspired, and at one point I ran right into her, face to face. I thought I might escape her notice if I didn’t make eye contact, but she cheerfully waved and introduced herself. “I’m Galadriel,” she said, which is obviously made up for her protection and not her real name, unless her parents were super big Lord of the Rings fans, in which case she deserves your sympathy. 

I opened my mouth to answer Galadriel. Predictably, my name refused to come out. The R sound can be really stubborn sometimes. I briefly considered telling her my name was something a little easier to say, preferably something that started with a nice, easy vowel, like Ichabod. But then I’d have to persuade everyone else to start calling me Ichabod, and if we ever got married or anything, I’d have to perpetuate the lie indefinitely, which would just get awkward. So I stuck with Ryan, which took a few seconds to get out. By this time the typical what’s-wrong-with-him look was beginning to contort Galadriel's pretty face, but she recovered quickly. “So what do you do?” 

Once again, the truth was wedged somewhere midway down my trachea. By the time I managed to say writer, Galadriel was looking at me with a sadly bemused look one usually reserves for a puppy with its head stuck in a fence. At this point, a little alarm in my brain was starting to wail, Abort! Abort! I wanted to get out of there—and maybe try talking to her again next week wearing a fake mustache and goatee. At this point, I could also pretend I was having some sort of medical emergency. There were also candles nearby in case I wanted to figure out some way to make it look like a spontaneous combustion. But I was committed, hesitant to light myself on fire, and not very good at faking a heart attack, so I blundered on. Eventually, the conversation ended, Galadriel waved and moved on to talk to somebody else, and I retreated. 

So that’s basically how things are a lot of the time.

Next, let’s get a couple of things straight. First, we do not use the word disability. It’s an inconvenience, an annoyance. Next, if you finish my sentences, I will probably fantasize about stabbing you through the eyeball with a salad fork, or whatever sharp implement happens to be within range. I may cover my annoyance and refrain from causing you any injury, but don’t think you’ve escaped my mental wrath. Finishing a stutter’s sentences deprives him of what little dignity he can manage. Let me do—

do—

do—

—it on my own.

See? You wanted to finish my sentences. You're probably wondering if you've ever been among those to rouse my fury in the past. You may have been. But it's okay. I am merciful, and so I will spare your eyeballs. For now. 

Also, do not exclude me from difficult situations just because you’re worried I might be afraid. I speak in church, I give presentations at work, and I teach Sunday School. My mouth may be afraid of those situations, but I’m not. And whatever you do, do not condescend. I can’t tell you how many well-meaning folks—especially the elders’ quorum president types—have treated me like a charity project of theirs, as though befriending the poor stuttering kid would help them cross off an item on their weekly benevolence checklist. I don’t need your pity. Your friendship is always welcome, but I don’t want it because you’re trying to score some compassion points with the Man Upstairs. 

Living with this . . . ahem, inconvenience . . . can be a little annoying. In addition to my difficulty in the aforementioned situations, it tends to lead to some mild to moderate self-doubt, especially when the women I fancy tend to pass over me in favor of guys who sound a little more like Ryan Gosling and a little less like a video you’re trying to watch on your grandmother’s dial-up Internet. 

And it was tough to be a missionary, believe me. How are you supposed to get out and there and boldly declare glad tidings of great joy when your vocal apparatus behaves a little like the Millennium Falcon with a broken hyperdrive? 

I’d be lying if I said that I never let it get me down. There have been many nights where I’ve punched my pillow like it was the 'roided-up Russian baddie from Rocky IV, pummeling it with all my fury in my desperate need to take my frustrations out on something. I’ve sat in my car and screamed with impotent rage; I’ve wept, wondering what I did to earn this trial. On those countless nights I’ve petitioned God for relief, only to receive apparent silence from the heavens. 

And that’s the end. My life sucks. 

No, I’m just kidding. My life is actually quite wonderful. There are billions of people out there who wish they could live as a stutterer with very few other serious issues in life. So I’m grateful for that. I could be fleeing from my life in the middle of war zone, sleeping on the streets and scavenging from dumpsters, or foraging for meager water in the middle of some desolate village. Or I could be stuck in a thousand less dramatic predicaments, like those poor souls whose job it is to clean up all the confetti in the stadium after a Super Bowl. The point is, I’m doing fine.

Part of that comes from the slow realization of the purpose behind the pain. I’ve gradually seen some of the good that comes from afflictions—avenues in life I’ve taken because of my difficulties, as well as lessons I’ve learned.

About five years ago, I wrote an article while working for the LDS magazine Ensign in which I detailed my struggle with a stutter and related some of the lessons I’ve learned. (You can read it here. The online version doesn't show the visuals, so I included that below.) Because it was in the LDS Church’s official publication and had to therefore appeal to a wide range of people, I had to strip the article of the personality with which I usually try to write. The resulting article is meant to score high on the inspiration scale but is about as entertaining as a hydrogen bomb’s instruction manual. (C'est la vie, I guess.) There was also the matter of length. An Ensign article can only be so long. (I did, however, manage to sneak the symbol of Star Wars’ Rebel Alliance into the Ensign, which I count among my proudest achievements.) 

That was me five or six years ago. I've aged well. 

The full article gets into a lot more depth, but the essence of the lesson I learned goes like this: sometimes God doesn’t release you from your trials. Instead of removing the burden, He strengthens the back that bears them, as the title of the article so pithily declares. I believe our purpose on Earth is to learn all we can so we can be entrusted with much greater blessings later, and only God knows exactly where to break us so he can reconstruct us into something new and improved. He strikes us right at the fault lines of the soul, knowing that when we rebuild with His help, we become greater than we ever were.

Not only that, but sometimes challenges open the doors to other opportunities. I don’t know I would have ever started to write if I never stuttered. When I was a kid, I realized I couldn’t communicate with my mouth as well as I wanted, so I poured my heart into using the written word to convey my feelings. These days, I’m no Shakespeare—I’m not even a J. K. Rowling—but I feel I owe what skills I have to my early frustrations with my speech.

Heck, if I hadn’t stuttered, maybe I would have played sports or something, and maybe I would have been a starting quarterback with dreams of playing college and maybe pro football, and then during my senior homecoming game I might have torn my Achilles tendon and dashed all of my future hopes, and then my high school sweetheart and I would have gotten married, but I would become bitter because of my lost dreams, and she and I would grow distant, and eventually we’d separate and I’d be an old man alone who dreamed all day of his high school greatness and told everyone within earshot of how good I used to be, and sometimes I’d just sit in the dark with my high school trophies and softly sob to myself. 

(Whoa. If you think about it, stuttering really helped me dodge a bullet there.) 

But seriously, there are plus sides to any inconvenience we face in this life. I had a religion teacher in college who suggested that for most of us, if we put all of our challenges into a hat and passed the hat around the room, we’d probably want to take back the original challenges God had assigned to us rather than risk taking on some unknown trials. I believe He knows exactly what it takes for each of us to attain our fullest potential, and our individually tailored challenges are proof of that. 

Even without a religious perspective, your struggles have benefits. You become a stronger person. You become more compassionate. (I have my moments, I suppose.) You become more conscious of others’ struggles, and—ideally—you seek to help them as well. 

Does stuttering kinda suck sometimes? Absolutely. Would I trade it away if I had the chance? Um, yes. Definitely. But am I grateful, in my own way, for my challenges? Yes. I am who I am today because of them, and being who I am today works for me.