Lenten Walk Series 7 (Mountain)

“O tall mountainsof confidence in God,you never surrender when the Lord tests you!Although you stand far away from meas if in exile, all alone,you remind me that no armed power is strong enough to best you.Your trust in God is wonderful!”

— Hildegard of Bingen

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My spirit soars in swelling praise as I rise in altitude.  I come before these vistas as approaching the Lord's table; the nourishment of sky and terrain feed my soul.  The cry of hawk and eagle are hymns directed by the whistling wind.  It is within the sky-blue walls of this sunday school classroom where these sainted sierras show me the grandeur of God.  Here, surrounded by and in the mountains, I find my many-steepled sanctuary.

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“The mountain opens its secrets only to those who have the courage to challenge it. It demands sacrifice and training. It requires you to leave the security of the valleys but offers spectacular views from the summit to those who have the courage to climb it. Therefore, it is a reality which strongly suggests the journey of the spirit, called to lift itself up from the earth to heaven, to meet God.”

— Pope John Paul

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“The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints. The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God. This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength. The lakes hidden among the hills are saints, and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance. The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God’s saints. There is no other like him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way. That is his sanctity.”

— Thomas Merton

Lenten Walk Series 6 (Fire)

We walked our prayers along a Big Sky catwalk on this night.  The children had all fallen asleep and we left them in grandparents' care while we went to crunch our way through the chilled, still winterscape.  What was immediately evident was the sensory experience of our supplications.  Every prayer was unleashed on a ribbon of breath while the cold night air stung our every lung.  With every step there echoed the crunch of Montana-high-country snow, which has its own taste and scent, too.  Everything seemed so still.  So absolutely frozen and lifeless.  Yet, it only took the mere twinkle of a star to remind us of how much dynamic movement there really was going on all about us: our very own earth planet was in cycle, as was the celestial sky above.  Every tree contained a dormant energy of growth and renewal.  So this became our prayer: That when our lives appear stagnant and still, we know you are moving, O Lord. That when we feel cold and dark, we know that You are our internal life-force. That when we feel nothing moving in our dreams, You are there to light up our inspirations.

And then we came back to the warmth of our Big Sky home and were immediately struck by the presence, warmth and dynamic movement of the fire within the hearth.  Its dancing, hot flames were in contrast to Winter's silent setting just beyond the door.  This fire, this energy was a display of exuberance and reminded me of Annie Dillard's wonderful words:

If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness.... The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.