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

QOTM...*: Parker Palmer

(*Quote of the Month)

The soul is like a wild animal -- tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient, and yet exceedingly shy. If you want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the wildness we seek.

~~Parker J. Palmer

Rocky Mt Bighorn near the trail

Parker Palmer is a Christian writer, educator and activist who has focused his career on issues of education, social change, community and faith. A Quaker, and founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal, his most recent book addresses the importance of civil public discourse, and is titled Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit. The above quote, however, was taken from page seven of a book my pastor and good friend Paul recommended to me a couple years ago, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.

Black bear ambling through our campsite 

What I appreciate about the quote is that it is a quality expression of something natural and something spiritual at the same time.  I have sat in those woods at the base of a tree and I have crashed through them, both literally and spiritually. Of course, sometimes it is even literally sitting at the base of a tree that my soul discovers the spiritual meaning it seeks. It’s why I write this blog.

So, are you soul-searching these days like me? If you find it a struggle, as I sometimes do, perhaps you are looking for God

Hidden newborn whitetail fawn

in all the wrong places. Perhaps nature will speak to you as it does me and you will find God there. Or perhaps you will find God by pursuing a new spiritual practice, asking a friend to pray with you, reading through the Psalms or the Gospels, connecting with a Bible study or Bible discussion group, engaging a spiritual director, or reading a spiritual classic. Whatever, remember that there is often a wildness to that search, and a wild One to meet at every search’s end. Though that One can speak in a still small voice, he can also roar like Susan and Lucy’s Aslan.

~~RGM, September 27, 2013

P.S. Next up? From My Nature Journal...