The Mountain

I had a dream about the mountain last night.

 

Everyone saw the cloud that had crashed into the summit like a white train wreck. It hovered there, mysterious and beautifully fearful. I didn't feel fear when I looked at it, at least not the kind of fear that paralyzes your breath and reminds you that you're nothing. It was the kind of fear that made you feel very small indeed, but as if that meant something, to be small.

 

They were saying all around me, "Don't go up there, you'll surely die from the storm," and, "It's unpredictable and you don't know what you'll encounter up there." "It's dangerous."

 

But I knew, compellingly and assuredly, that I had to go.

 

North and Middle Sisters (Faith and Hope) from the Summit

 

 

I thought, as I drove up the pass, that if I hadn't met the man Jesus and become so compelled by Him that I gave Him all my dreams, I would have probably ended up spending a majority of my life on a mountain. It was something with which I could become obsessed with little to no effort. It made me feel alive.

 

The last 1500 feet of the climb, from the false summit was as steep as you could get without having to technical climb. It was all tallis, and while the dog sprang up the incline with ease, I was stopping every ten sliding steps and trying to get some oxygen into my body. I looked up at the summit, her massive form red and I felt my own weakness speak against me. "You don't have enough strength." But I had waited too long to stop this close to conquering her. This wasn't just a climb to test my strength of body or will... this was hand-to-hand combat with my fear.

 

Broken Top from the Summit

 

 

I knew now that all my longing for the mountains, all my reaching for wildness and freedom that I found in the high places, they were just shadows of the longing that I had for Him. And really, I could spend all my life, all my passion and energy trying to conquer the mighty ones of the earth, to try and get a little bit closer to the heavens, to really feel something in my chest other than the numbness that the world is so familiar with. But I knew now, somehow, that if I pursued my love of the wild, if I gave myself to pursuing the beauty of the earth and of my God manifested in His creation, then in the end I would come up short. I would have lost it all, but for nothing.

 

Mt Bachelor from the False Summit

 

Descending the Mountain (and very tired)

 

 

Really, what I have always been searching for is Him. To seek Him, to give Him my dreams that I hold in my heart, to seek not beauty but the Source of it, that had become everything. Of course I still love the mountains. I love them deeply. But they are now the lower forms of beauty, the higher forms those which can only be touched with an experience of the heart.

 

When my eyes are opened and I am like a blind man seeing men like trees for the first time, I can see that the thing I was searching for in the dark was actually Light. I can see that He becomes everything, higher and wider of a love than I ever knew existed before.

 

Teardrop Lake (The highest lake in Oregon).

 

 

It's true I have longing, dreams, things I want to do while I'm on the earth. I want to make my mark. I want to live breathlessly and without regret. Our dreams aren't worthless. They all cost us something. We spend endless hours thinking about them, pouring over them, loving them, speaking kind words to them.

 

Sometimes, they are the most precious things we dreamers have.

 

But let it cost me something to lay my life at His feet. Let my jar of perfume break over His feet and let the extravagance of my dreams fill the room, not cheap trinkets that I didn't want anyway. Let my sacrifice be left on Him as a fragrance, a reminder of a life broken and poured out, a sacrifice that cost me something.

 

This month I finally climbed my mountain. It's funny, really, because I feel as if it's the start of a time of many more mountains being conquered... not all of them with snow and a 4,600 foot incline.

 

"This is the season," I thought as I stepped onto the crater of the summit, "for courage."

 

At the summit