QOTM...*: Ken Gire, Scaling the Northface of God

(*Quote of the Month)

It has been a good week. I’ve enjoyed getting to know several new people, work has been as exhilarating as it can be, and the beauty of the southern New Mexico landscape around me has been a constant source of inspirational delight. Numerous of my conversations this week, however, have put me in company with people asking deep questions about life and death and faith, or friends musing on profound mysteries as they search for the presence of God in their challenging circumstances. It is a privilege to be part of these kinds of conversations, yet the logjam of unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries can leave a sense of incompleteness. In thinking on these things, I was pleased to come across this today:

Our unanswered questions are the grappling hooks we use to scale the Northface of God, who seems an Everest of indifference. Maybe why we brave the climb is because abandoning it might be even more treacherous.

                                                 ~~Ken Gire                           

Several of Ken Gire’s books are in my library; I cannot recall exactly which this quote was from, having jotted it down too quickly. It may be from one I especially like called The Weathering Grace of God, but I can’t put my hand on the book right now to make sure. If

(North face of Colorado's Longs Peak, not our photo)

this is indeed the source, I recall it well as a book that uses the backdrop of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains as a rich trove of metaphors for seeking to understand the mysteries of life’s upheavals. It essentially reminds me that the beauty of today’s Rockies owes itself to tremendous, cataclysmic pressures – devastating shaping and scouring forces – that can go unappreciated as I take in the grandeur of the current scene.

I’ve often struggled ‘to scale the Northface of God,’ and so, I imagine, have you. Hang on. Lean close. Brave the climb. And do this in community, tethered or belayed to a team who is also committed to summit at long last with you. Remember the words of our Guide and God: If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it (Matthew 10:39).

~~RGM, February 13, 2015