The Mountain

The Lenten and Easter seasons have certainly been a bit different for me this year. As a result, one of the ways I experienced the season was to go walking. There is a little mountain up the road in front of our house that has some great trails to explore. As I explored them, these were my thoughts…

The Mountain

A Spiritual Reflection

Part One:

My life is a journey…

“The Christian faith is not a pastime. The Church is not one club among others. Rather, faith responds to the primordial question of man regarding his origin and goal. It bears on the essential problems man confronts. What can I know? What can I hope for? In other words, faith has to do with truth and only if man is capable of truth can it also be said that he is called to freedom.”
-Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Immersion!! Is my life reduced to what I can see and touch? Is my faith a onetime decision or feeling? No, I must look for truth. Yet, this search is an immersion into a process. A journey. A journey to be taken daily. So I must go.

A journey that is uphill…

“The spiritual life can be described as a road. But this can give rise to some misleading conclusions. This road is not a safe, tranquil journey. Jacob wrestled with an angel and limped away wounded. Moses never made it across the Jordan. Peter betrayed Christ. Paul cried out: ‘who is weak and I am not weak?’ St. Francis, near death, prayed he would not be lost. If you are quite sure of yourself and confident about how easy it all is, you have much to learn about the spiritual life.”
-Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR.

Why does this journey feel like I am going uphill? Why do I feel like my steps seem to get me nowhere? Where is the grace? Where is the peace? Where is Your presence?

A journey seeking a mountaintop.

“Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son on a mountain; Noah’s ark comes to rest on Mt. Ararat; the law is given to Moses on Mt. Sinai; Elijah challenges the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel; Jerusalem is built on the top of Mt. Zion. Mountains are places of encounter with God….In the New Testament, Jesus gives the law on a mountain, the Sermon on the Mount; he dies on Mt. Calvary; and, in a climactic moment in his public life, he brings three of his disciples to the top of a mountain – and there he is transfigured before them.”
-Father Robert Barron

What is it about the “mountain” that draws me to itself? What is it about its majesty, its grandness, its gentle presence that moves me not only to take a step towards it, but to start its ascent upward? My desires begin to ignite, my yearning gnaws at my soul, and my wounds begin to become visible.

There are days when this journey is drudgery,
When I ache to take another step…

Is not life on earth a drudgery, its days like those of a hireling?
-Job 7:1

“Much has been written about the place of suffering on the spiritual journey. We must carry the Cross, and we feel the weight of the Cross most of the time. However, beyond the expected trials of any life of virtue there are specific experiences of darkness and aridity that are integral parts of the spiritual journey. Their purpose is explicitly to draw us away from our own self love and self-indulgence and to help us become more pure in our love of God.” -Father Benedict J. Groeschel, CFR

The drudgery. Why do I resist “dying” to my own ambitions to serve others? Why do I continually seek utopia in a “foreign” land? My ego confines me. Why does this ache? My every-day life and encounters with others offers me “death” and “resurrection,” why do I resist it?

Yet my body and soul, inter-twined in mystery,
Are made for this journey.

“The fact that the theology also includes the body should not astonish or surprise anyone who is conscious of the mystery and reality of the Incarnation. Through the fact that the Word of God became flesh, the body entered theology-that is, the science that has divinity for its object I would say, through the main door.”
–St. John Paul II (TOB 23:4)

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
-St. Augustine

My body seems to be the temple of truth. It houses the great mystery of life. More so, my body is part of this truth. What drives my soul also drives my body. They seem to be intertwined in a great mystery. There desires move together in a dance towards fulfillment. They find rest and peace together…they find darkness and moan together.

And still I wrestle, with taking that next step,
When the hill looks to steep…

“Jacob was left there alone. Then a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When the man saw that he could not prevail over him, he struck Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that Jacob’s socket was dislocated as he wrestled with him.”
-Gen 32:25-26

(While on a journey, Jacob met God in the form of an angel, and began to wrestle with Him. As a result, Jacob became wounded. Having said that, although he walked away with a limp, he walked away in the light, with a new name, Israel.)

I wrestle in my apprehension towards You. I wrestle in my resistance toward Your ways. I am attached to my ways. I am comfortable. Transformation is daunting. Detachment makes me afraid.

When it looks too painful…
For this journey involves wounds.

“The cross is increasingly banished from theology and reinterpreted as just another purely political event. The cross as reconciliation, as a means of forgiving and saving, is incompatible with a certain mode of thought. Only when the relationship between truth and love is rightly comprehended can the cross be comprehensible in its true theological depth. Forgiveness has to do with truth. That is why it requires the Son’s cross and our conversion. Forgiveness is, in fact, a restoration of truth, the renewal of being, and the vanquishment of the lies that lurk in every sin.”
– Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

The ascent up the mountain illuminates my wounds. I have been wounded by cultural. I have been wounded by loved ones, peers, and friends. I continue to wound myself with my own transgressions and sins. I no longer can ignore them. I no longer can escape them. I must name them. I must be with them.

 And these wounds tempt me to take another path…

“From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
-Mt 16:21-23

Comfort. What is comfort? How often I choose to take an easier path, a comfortable path. I use my words or actions to give me relief from the wounds that I must address. They lie below the surface of my life and strip me from freedom, joy, and an abundant life. They tempt to believe comfort is healing. They tempt to believe comfort is faith.

(Here are a few of my own paths of avoidance to the cross…)

The path to avoid my fears…with a sense of security

I fear. I fear to see myself as something other than what I thought. I fear the death of my “identity.” An identity that has given me comfort, love, attention, and status in life. How easy it is to take the path of living my life from this identity (i.e. athlete, parent, businessman, “good person”, “church goer” etc…) so that I do not have to face the thought of extinction.

The path to avoid my insecurities…with places of honor

What lies underneath? If my “identities” inflate my ego, what is it that fuels my need to seek comfort in them? What prevents me from looking in the mirror and loving that person back? What prevents me to see myself as You see me? My insecurities drive my need to feel appreciated and honored. Why do I need so much acceptance? Why do I need so much attention?

The path to avoid my anger…by unleashing it on others…

Like a tiger who lies in the grass waiting to pounce on its prey, my anger lies dormant until provoked with rejection or resentment. There are people, there are moments, and there are everyday occurrences that trigger the ferocious anger that seeps through my blood. How easy it is for me to pounce and devour others when provoked. How hard it is to see that my anger has nothing to do with them. How hard it is to see how enslaved I am by a controlling wound that produces this rage.

The path to avoid my resentments…with sensual comfort.

Oh the temptations of the flesh. How can things that are good in it of themselves become such an addictive “medication?” Resentments fuel my need to be medicated…sensual comfort never quenches what I desire.

My desires ignite my need to step,
My fears tempt me not to go…
 
“Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.”
-1 Jn 4:8

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.”
1 Jn 4:18

Who are You? Who am I? You say that You are Love, and if I am made in the image and likeness of You, my deepest desire is to be who I was made to be. This is what ignites my steps toward the mountaintop.

And yet, it seems that the enemy of the next step, of Love, is not hatred, but fear. Fear of going up a path that I don’t know. Fear of going up into my wounds to see exactly why I do what I do, and say what I say. Fear of discovering who I am.

I just can’t escape my bodies yearning to move forward,
So with each step into the unknown fears…I go up.

“Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”
-Heb 11:1

I attempt to quench my deepest desires with many things and I never seem to be satisfied. It doesn’t make what I choose corrupt, it makes them incapable of giving me what my body and soul yearn for the most.

As a result, I blindly take the next step in faith. Gripping on to nothing more than my small faith, a need for hope, and my yearning for love. This seems to be an authentic faith. Can a “mustard seed” be sufficient enough to go where I must go?

Up into my inability to love myself,
To discover being content in Your sight…
Up into my anger,
To discover myself as a boy in need of Love…
Up into my resentments,
To discover that my fear of rejection, is a need to be known.

“I plead with you–never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid.”
-St. John Paul II

Are You here? I can’t be alone. For the next step is a step into the wounds and fears that have controlled me. And I see them so clearly now. So I must go.

I must go:

• Up into my insecurities to see that my need to be loved by others is quenched when I see You gazing at me.
• Up into my anger to realize that I have been living my life as a boy, scared and afraid, who desires to be loved, when all along You see me as a man who is loved unconditionally.
• Up into my resentments to discover that rejection sparks within me a deep desire to be known, inviting me to the realization that You completely know me.

Oh the beautiful pain. Oh the magnificent agony. You are already here. You have already freed me.

This is the mountain of my deepest yearnings,
My deepest desires…
 
“To find that which is most sacred in this world, look to that which is most violently profaned.”
-Christopher West

Desires. Desires are fuel for my body. Desires lead me to walk. Why have I thought that desires are bad? For it is precisely these desires that cause me to take steps towards the mountaintop. Desires are gifts. Thank you.

(These are the desires that burn within my body and soul)
 
This is the mountain of being Loved and to Love,

“Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.”
-Saint Catherine of Siena

Being Seen and to See,

“The deepest desire of the human heart is to see another and be seen by that other’s loving look.”
-St. Augustine

Being Known and to Know.

“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”
-Blessed Mother Teresa

So with every step upward, my desires become intensified,
Every step upward stripes away my distractions…

“When you happen to be entirely unoccupied with created things so that you seem to be thinking of nothing and desiring nothing, you should know that then your soul in unconsciously occupied with God and in God.”
-Father de Caussade

The intense burning of my desires which are now directed squarely towards the top of the mountain consumes me. All other distractions have lost their appeal. I have lost my appetite for them.

Every step upward leaves me more vulnerable and exposed…
Every step upward is one more step to becoming naked.

“The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.”
-Gen 2:25

I was naked at birth. I was dependent on others. There was no shame. I was defenseless without any barriers. I was loved and secure, simply because of my name.

The desires of my body, the desires of my heart, and the desires of my soul have lead me to the top of the mountain. It is here that I find myself totally exposed and defenseless. I am Brett.

I am ready for union.

Part Two:

Reaching the top,
The pain of vulnerability is the hunger of my desires…
And it is here I see that in my wounds I find Your Glory…
The Calvary Mountain of desires,
Is the glorious Mountain of Transfiguration!!

“Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!””
-Jn 20:27-28

Oh, to see with such clarity. The very things that I have been so afraid of are precisely what I desire most. My deepest vulnerabilities which have caused me so much pain and agony are the wellsprings of my life. It is within my wounds that I find “the way, the truth, and the life.” (Jn 14:6)

My journey was, is, and will be part of The Everlasting Instant…

“You the everlasting instant
You, who are our death and life.”
– Sylvia Dunstan

It is here that I see that my life has, still, and will always have a larger context than my own understanding. My life is in You, therefore, my life exists within the mystery of paradox. My life is the participation in the “Everlasting Instant,” the instant of death and life.

For it is here that I sing Glory, Glory, Glory,

“your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.”
-Mt 6:10

I sing Glory, Glory, Glory for heaven is not a place far away…heaven is here, now, in my midst. How glorious it is to see You in me and me in You. How glorious it is to see You in others, and others in You. How glorious it is to be fully alive.

It is here that I see that holiness is in the drudgery…

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” – Rabindranath Tagore

Liberation!!! To see the drudgery of my life as the participation in your divine Love is freedom. For it means that it is within the smallest of acts that holiness is offered. It means that it is within the most casual words spoken that life can be given. It means that is within the simplest of breaths, I am offered the divine breath between “the Father and Son.”

For the two mountains are One.

“Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance”
-Phil 2:6-7

I can’t experience divinity without humanity. I can’t be fully human without the divine. My life’s struggles are grace-filled and my joy filled times are rooted in free-will. To be on this journey is to become fully human, and to become fully human, I must go back to the drudgery…for that is where I become like God.

“For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”
-St. Athanasius