The Mountains and the Divine

Why do I need more?

There is a profound yearning within me when I see such beauty. My soul has a profound desire in the face of such majestic sights. I want more. I desire more. Why isn’t this enough?

The sight of such creation comes as an invitation rather than a sense of contentment. For the beauty in front of me, I see. I touch. I climb. I smell. And yet, my senses can’t fill the holes of my desire. My eyes can’t lessen the deep yearning with that in which I can see.

Creation is inviting my humanity into the mystery of divinity.

I attended Mass at an old church two weeks ago on the first Sunday of Advent. It was the day after I experienced my deep desire for more when looking at the beauty of creation. The Mass was in German. Therefore, the hymns were sung in German. And yet, despite the language, my desires were met with the mystery of the divine.

Staring at the cross over the Altar and listening to the beautiful voices of the choir, my desires became suspended in time. My deep yearnings that the beauty of creation couldn’t fulfill were met by a grace that transformed my present reality into a reality that fulfilled my deepest desires. It was experiencing heaven as I sat here on earth.

Advent is the concentrated time of waiting for a child to be born. Waiting for my Savior to be born. Waiting for God to become human.

And yet, this act alone isn’t what calms my soul. The breaking into the world by the divine isn’t what ultimately calms my yearnings, for it is both the breaking in of a human child and returning to the Father in His Divinity that gives me rest. It is the child born and the man named Jesus who defeated death on the cross that gives me peace.

The beauty that surrounds me daily is breathtaking and magnificent. Yet the beauty can’t fulfill me. It isn’t enough. I will never be fulfilled until I become fully human and then follow Jesus into the divine.

So I wait. I wait again for this child to be born as a 38 year old husband and father. I wait again to experience God becoming man, so that I might participate in the divine, and fulfill that in which I desire most.