Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Part IV: We Return, Remembering

Here we see desert, mountain, and cloud, along with the Great Sand Dunes of  Colorado

How marvelous it is to be on the mountaintop, receiving revelation and illumination. How marvelous it is to be in the cloud, feeling so close to God. Yet there is an irony in the cloud. Yes, we do see the world more from God’s eyes, but not completely.

For the top of the mountain is enshrouded by a cloud, and we cannot see the very top. And the cloud extends beyond the top of the mountain. As Luther understood so well, God ever remains a hidden God.

As we step into the cloud, we also begin to lose ourselves. We sense mystical union with God, we sense God’s presence, we feel God’s grace and love, but there ever remains that mysterious distance. The mystics call it a “brilliant darkness.” Rudolf Otto called it the numinous, the “idea of the holy” that is always out of our touch.

We want to remain in that mystical union, in that mountaintop experience. Our human nature is to grasp, to grab, to try to control and keep. But just as one grabs a butterfly, crushing it in the process, so our attempts to cling to people or to control the ways of God end up destroying the very gifts we seek. We weary of the journey, and want to “arrive” once and for all; but that is not the nature of life. Life ever remains a journey, with its joys and hardships, its satisfactions and losses, it deserts, mountains, and clouds.

Like Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, we cannot stay there. Over and over again we will return to the desert. Our joy will turn to sorrow, our feeling of union to experiences of abandonment and rejection.

We will again experience the metaphysical pain of mortality, of finiteness. But, having been to the mountaintop, we will not lose faith. We will understand ever more deeply that our love and joy are tied to our losses and grief.

Here is one of those strange times in life when the mental trumps the emotional. We remember. Yes, we remember. Just as the Israelites remembered how God had been faithful to God’s promises in the past, so they trusted God would be faithful to them in the future. We, too, in our times of sorrow and loss, remember the mountaintop revelations we have had. We remember those rare but unforgettable experiences in the cloud when we felt so very, very close to God, even “at one” with God. As we remember, we receive the strength and fortitude we need to move on. 

We may even begin to love the desert, because, as painful as the desert always is, it is the beginning point of revelation, and, like Jesus, we return to it again and again to face our pain and temptations, and in the process find the courage and direction we need for our lives, again and again.