Once in a Lifetime

At 55, I climbed my first ... and most probably last mountain in my life. 15 hours of putting one foot over the other, in a seemingly never-ending ordeal of maneuvering through everything from rocks, inclines, mud, slosh, down to waterfall crossings. Never, I repeat, never has this old aunty body been put to such  an endurance test.    

Heck, the only sweat I work up these days is a very brief early morning 20 minute jog/walk on a nice flat grassy playground field near my house about 4 times weekly, 5 if I am feeling not too lazy. My last foray into climbing was back in 2011 when I huffed and puffed my way up and down 700 steps on the 'small' little hill of Sg Lembing, an adventure I swore (then) I  would never repeat, since I honestly don't fancy 'torturing' myself with such heart-bursting muscle-tearing exertion. It's a pain, no matter how nice or fantastic the view from the top.                                 So what craziness possessed me to agree to climb Gunung Nuang, not just a little hill, but apparently one of the highest mountains in Selangor, peaking at 1493m, trailing 19 over km?

Well, I guess this mama got rather gung-ho in her 'old age'. I had just passed my 55th birthday some weeks ago. And I felt there were some things in my life I wanted to do on earth before I go to my mansion in the sky. We had booked for a family holiday in August to Lombok, Indonesia. My eldest princess, the avid researcher, was extolling the beauty of its volcanic Mt Rinjani. My mind had long been mulling over whether to attempt it. So when my no.2  suggested we 'train'/test ourselves out on Gunung Nuang, I was game. At least it would give me an indication whether or not to try Rinjani.                        

 Gunung Nuang is reputedly classified as a tough climb, even by experts. One that should take about 5 hours for a 'relatively fit' person. Well, old aunty isn't that relatively fit, obviously. My 2 daughters and myself took about 7 hours just to get to the peak. And contrary to expectations, downhill was even worse. Starting at 630 am, we reached bottom only about 9.30 pm . Needless to say, we all had no legs left by that time.

In fact if God hadn't answered my silent prayer for an angel, I think we would have had major problems completing the last return leg of 2 km. The forest was already pitch-dark by that time. Our legs were really giving out. I was pulling an overstretched muscle in the hip. All of us were gritting our teeth in pain and exhaustion. But spending the nite in the forest was simply not an option. We had nothing on us except our back-packs. Then  in the midst of the darkness, there came a light.... and the sound of a motorcycle. Our angel had appeared. Truly this local guide must have been God-sent, because it was only on a call from some sick girl who was encamped near the waterfalls that he had chanced to ride in to transport her out. In the end he transported not one, but 3 other very very weary souls out back into civilization.

Looking back, I can only say I climbed that mountain held by God's hand, literally. Both on the way up and down, I was spelling out J-E-S-U-S with every excruciating step I took. And never before have I repeated so often and appreciated so much, (and that in a very physical, non-spiritual context) the bible verse from Philippians 4:13 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me".  So, how about the next mountain? Rinjani which stands at 3700 m ie more than double Nuang, apparently takes 7 hours to climb. At the rate I did Nuang, I figure I would have to multiply that by 2. So for the moment, let's forget it. Like I said, I have climbed my first and last mountain.

Well,  I guess I can pat myself on my back. Yes, it's good to know I can climb a mountain at 55. But honestly, it was Jesus who got me up and down. I know because that was my prayer on that last leg - God, please bear us up all the way home. And He did.


For pix, check out here

Even Super-Heroes Fear

 I spent 2 1/2 hours ogling at a whole troop of handsome super-active hunks do their impossible tricks in yet another quest to save the world of men from a smart joker-villain, whose wise-cracks were quite endearing at times. At the end of the ride, I couldn't decide which was the most handsome, awesome or wearisome. Avengers 7th series featured a very 'hip' villain, birthed out of the techie age of today, by a human no less. Ironman's 'baby' turned out to be a full-fledged monster AI (Artificial Intelligence) at its best and its worst. Perhaps there is a subtle warning somewhere in there that what our scientific genius so proudly create and boast of can very easily become our own executioner. I hear echoes of the devil's whisper to man in Eden: You will be like God... and in the process of playing god, man doomed himself physically and spiritually to an eternal death.

Still, true to form, like any villain worth his salt, Ultron is simply madly evil. Out of a twisted logic, he proclaims to the Avengers whose sworn mission is to protect earth  "I know you're good people. I know you mean well. But you just didn't think it through. There is only one path to peace... your extinction." Sounds familiar; as I recall, there are actually real people in the real world out there who think  it's ok to kill in the name of peace. So "everyone creates the things they dread. Men of peace create engines of war (ostensibly to stop war, of course), invaders create avengers" (to stop invasions).

And people create....?? That's a tantalizing question if we think about it. What have we created for all our good intentions? Ironman wanted his invincible creation to be the ultimate savior of the world. It turned out hell-bent on destroying it instead. We humans think we know it all; that was the downfall of man in Eden. And it still is and will be our downfall - our own pride in our own prowess. After all, who would have thought that a wonderful creation like the smart-phone could kill off social intercourse around the dinner-table, since no one has the time or inclination to talk with each other face-to-face anymore? Oh right, don't blame the phone; it's just a thing. Blame people who (mis)use the thing. But there we go again, willing to queue hours to get our hands on the latest 'thing' just hot out of man's oven.

I liked how the Avengers were portrayed as fallible creatures in this movie. They all had unpleasant pasts to deal with. Despite being super-heroes, they had weaknesses and fears. Jokes aside, they had giant fears hidden behind their impenetrable suits, shields, hammers, and arrows. The truth is everyone fears. Even the most powerful AI robot . What an intriguing observation when Vision, the good android perceives of Ultron, "You're afraid.... of death...".  Must be a legacy of humanity that somehow got transferred into his metallic brain. Death - the mother of all fears. Everyone of the super-heroes' fears had the element of death in it....death of  relationship, death of something inside them, death of meaning, death of hope, love and all that was beautiful, death of life.

Of course, super-heroes (being super-heroes) simply skip over their unresolved fear issues and conveniently move on with a 'feel-good-let's-fight-this-together' mission. Of course, they win; that's why they are super-heroes. Except that there will always be another villain to fight another day. Just like there will always be death to face another day. We can carry on living what we think is a fine and good life. We can be busy doing seemingly right, wonderful things. End of the day, we are just kidding ourselves that that's enough. We can't dismiss death at our whim, no matter how smart, rich, independent or powerful we are. Heck, we can't even postpone meeting it. It's the unseen chain that binds every human down to the reality that we are not in charge, although we can shout about being free to live a full life all we want. That's only half the story. The missing half is that like all super-hero movies that (seem to) go on forever with sequels and prequels, where good always triumphs over bad, so too real ordinary human lives are meant to be extraordinary; in fact they are meant to be eternal, not cut-off by the evil that is death.

The only catch is no super-hero can rescue man from death in reality. Only God can. But He doesn't intrude, He just stands by, ready to love us. I found it poignant that the huge green Hulk is so vulnerable to and driven by his fear that he refuses the love offered by Black Widow, the super-heroine. Isn't that exactly what we do with God, who alone knows who we really are deep down with all our insecurities and hang-up's, and still reaches out to us in love? Like the Hulk rejecting what could have been a redemptive healing love, we reject God because we would rather handle our life our way; could it be we are actually afraid of what would happen if we let God in? So we cleverly excuse, explain, rationalize, deny or hide our fears (and God in the process) such that we are not even conscious of them anymore.

We would rather walk away from the love that could have been, in case it turns out another disappointment, as life is oftentimes apt to be. So like Hulk, we will just make do with a vacation to some island in the sun; we might even send god a post-card if he has an address. If only we knew how much we miss when we refuse to acknowledge the One who alone can break the chain of death and set us truly free to be much more than we can ever try to be, by and of ourselves...


"For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive"- 1 Corinthians 15:22