Can I find it?

The winds blow across the field. I shiver in my coat on morning rounds. The warm season is giving way to cold. Soon enough, it will be bitter bright.

Shall I then succumb to despondency? These easy times will leave and become hard ones.

The chores will then need doing even so.

❖

Let me not be tied to a bondage of resistance and denial, Lord. Let me accept the world as it is. Let me be free of the struggle against conditions.

Let acceptance be freedom.

– from the mountain

Consider:

How can I have true acceptance?

Reading:

“Freedom lies in being bold.” — Robert Frost, Collected Poems

❖

“The root of suffering is resistance to reality.” — Adyashanti, The End of Your World

❖

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” — 2 Corinthians 3:17 (KJV)

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I am a small creature.

A wounded, small mouse in the shed. There is the option of disposal.

What if we gave it seclusion, safety, food, time? What if we gave it love?

What if it healed and we released it into the woods?

❖

In the crush of the world, even with all your gifts, Lord, I am the small creature. Who will find me and encourage me to heal and flourish?

Love me back to life, Lord. I am yours.

– from the mountain

Consider:

How can I recall that I am loved?

Reading:

“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.” — Albert Schweitzer, Reverence for Life

❖

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” — Rumi, The Essential Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks)

❖

“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3 (KJV)

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I have enough.

I have collected, bit by bit, a great store. The harvest was large.

Along one fence line is wood stacked, ready for many seasons of winter.

I have more than enough.

❖

Why, Lord, do I keep collecting? Why do I hoard what I have? My neighbor needs food and heat.

Let me freely give what was so freely given to me through your grace, Lord.

– from the mountain

Consider:

Why do I keep collecting?

Reading:

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” — George Eliot, Middlemarch. 

❖

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (“On Giving”). 

❖

“Freely ye have received, freely give.” — Matthew 10:8 (KJV)

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Many paths up it. (Sunday Letter)

I have been thinking about the mountain.

So many ways up it.

I walk my way. Some days I feel the sun on my back and the earth gives easily beneath my feet. Other days I meet loose stones that shift, and I grasp for balance.

Others may be climbing too, though up other paths. One might wind through pines and mist. Another may open onto a meadow.

Some paths are long. Others short, a straight cut upwards.

Even trail may hold within itself both mercy and trial.

❖

The mountain changes. We change.

Clouds gather and break. A hawk hovers in an updraft. I hear water somewhere below but cannot see it.

My throat grows harsh as I pant in the dry air. Crunching gravel underfoot keeps time with my heart.

At a turn, I find a bunch of wildflowers emerging from a crack in the rock, their roots deep where no one thought to look.

We pass through shadow and brightness, hunger and rest. We learn the shape and heft of our own endurance.

All on one mountain.

❖

It is the same mountain for us all. Some have reached the crest. Some have stopped halfway, content to rest and, maybe, look up.

Some have turned back to the valley.

Others have never begun.

The mountain looms, patient and unshaken.

We climb together, even apart.

– from the mountain

Consider:

Where am I on the mountain?

Reading:

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

— Sir Edmund Hillary

❖

“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”

— Anatoli Boukreev

❖

“I lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”

— Psalm 121:1

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