We’d been planning on doing something in the sun today, but it didn’t seem that either of us were up for anything in particular. We half-heartedly strapped the bikes to the back of the car and set off to the Horton’s for a starter coffee, thinking we were going to Caledon, and the bike trails there.

While waiting in the drive-through, we realized that neither of us felt up for the long trip out to a place quite close to Kleinburg. Alex found a brochure in the pocket of his door for conservation areas along the Bruce Trail, in the Dundas Valley and Spencer Gorge areas of Hamilton. We returned home to drop off the bikes, then picked the largest waterfall we could find — Tews Falls — and headed out.

It was quite an impressive sight. I had no idea a waterfall this large was anywhere near where we lived. I tried out my new point-and-shoot camera, and got a few good pictures of the falls from a viewing platform.

Alex was quiet, had been all day. Sometimes it’s difficult to read him. But like me, I think that for him, things just seem somehow out of sync once in a while, or perhaps nothing is particularly appealing. We’d had some trouble deciding what to do when the day began, and, having decided the night before that we were certainly going to do something — but what? — it was a disappointing struggle to come up with a day trip we’d both like.

But, here we were at Tews Falls, and something called “Dundas Peak” awaited at the end of an adjacent trail, so we left the viewing platform and made our way to a point high on the escarpment that overlooked the city of Hamilton.

It was a nice view (but it was Hamilton). We took a few more pictures and enjoyed the scenery a bit, then headed back down the path. We talked about going to Denninger’s for schnitzel and other good stuff. I don’t know what I was saying when I suddenly realized Alex was no longer walking beside me. I looked back, and he was standing and staring at something.

We’d just started to cross a small foot bridge, and he was crouching down and shaking his head. His mood wasn’t improving at the site of a bible verse, God this-ing and God that-ing, scratched onto the wooden rail of the bridge with a pen (beside a big black flourishing graffiti tag).

And God said to Moses, “I AM.” And you shall say to the children of Israel, “‘I AM’ sent me to you. I will bring you out of bondage to a land flowing in abundance!”

The author of this bit of divinely inspired graffito completely misrepresented the quote, as no translation fails to omit God first saying to Moses, “I am who I am”. In any event, Alex was quite animated. It seemed his level of tolerance for anything appearing to be prosyletization had been reached. What with the absurd display of this year’s Olympian track and field athletes, most of them African, blessing themselves until they must have been fairly bruised about the forehead and navel, the dangling rosaries on rear-view mirrors in cars next to us on the highway, the proliferation of cheerful floating Jesus-fish on the rear end of gas-guzzling minivans and SUVs, and the spectacle of some Conservative nobody reasoning that God must support their party because it had stopped raining just before Mr. Harper’s Big Speech, I think Alex was at some kind of breaking point. He wasn’t incandescent, he wasn’t livid, but he was certainly animated. He had certainly had enough.

It’s true, this bit of vandalizing was misplaced and stupid. I couldn’t work out why this quote seemed apropos to this particular god-believer. The scenery around it was certainly pretty, and the wooden railing would surely have been the only workable surface his black ball-point pen could tolerate for many kilometres around, but why that quote? Oh well, believers are not necessarily known for connecting their sentiments to their faith in a way that makes sense to the rest of us.

Dumb though it was, I wasn’t as put off, and downright offended, as Alex was. I did mention that I was thinking of running to the car for a pen so I could add a few words to make the thing profane, but I wasn’t serious. And of course, smuttifying bible verses isn’t just the ultimate expression of one’s emotional immaturity, it’s also deeply offensive to many, many people. One’s cause in life isn’t to offend.

As we started to pass over the bridge, a group of Mennonites were coming toward us, perhaps five men with their wives. “Oops,” I whispered to Alex, snickering, “maybe these are our vandals.” We passed them, the men looking at us and smiling, one or two saying “Hi,” the women looking only at the path.

“It wasn’t them,” Alex said. And of course it wasn’t. These are people so committed to non-violence and cohabitation with humanity that they take great pains to make their very churches blend into the surroundings, should they have to locate the buildings within the greater community. Causing offense to those of a differing faith, or making a show of their own faith, would be a shocking transgression for them. If I am made to have respect for the beliefs of others merely because they have beliefs, and not because of the substance of those beliefs, Mennonites are the only group of Christians I could tolerate it for.

Eventually, we made our way to Denningers and got schnitzels and a whole lot of other good things, and had a dinner of pork and poppyseed cake and salami.

I suppose I’m amused that just the other day, I was saddened by the notion of some believer not seeing the forest for the trees, heaping empty praise on nothingness while the real beauty of his surroundings escapes him.

If you want true wonderment, you should wonder at the improbability of the universe, of our planet, and, most improbable of all, of our individual consciousnesses experiencing it all. The enslavement to the worship of nothing is deeply sad. In the end, it excludes all possible human happiness, great or small. It’s bondage that humanity truly, truly needs liberation from.

Alex, Believers Believers, Bible