Steve Cline on climbing mountains and our faith journeys

Friends, this is our third post from Steve Cline. Steve lives in West Virginia. I think that this post carries a great message to end one year and begin a new year with. We all have tough climbs, and some of them are dangerous and not everything that we cling to along the way is going to be helpful but our journeys have meaning and value and can take us to new heights and better vistas with the proper solidarity and guidance. This post also helps reinforce a point that is a basic premise of this blog: wisdom, beauty, and creativity are all around us and amongst us.

Dr. Ralph Stanley's "Great High Mountain" carries a similar testimony and message.

 

On our journeys...

I know that these images become for many of us an idealized and sentimentalized aspect of the Christmas story and that they do some harm to the reality and meaning of that story. On the other hand, they communicate something that few Christians talk about---God's Presence in every thing. The theologian Richard Rohr makes the point in one of his books that in learning to love God we should start with loving what is small (a rock, for instance) and build on that to the point that we approach God. I don't think that Rohr is saying that the rock is God or Christ or Jesus, but that God, Christ and Jesus live both within and beyond matter and that things and animals and all of creation are in a relationship with us because God is with us and within us and we are matter as well. So---look to the sky or to wherever or at whatever you find on your journey and see if you can see God in it and love it.
 

On Hope And Starting Over And New Beginnings

 

On mountains, journeys, God, and changing the world.

We take mountains to be challenges and as places of power, but we also sometimes take them to be holy or wondrous and mythical places. Below are two thoughts on mountains, journeys, God, and changing the world.

Chairman Mao said: 

There is an ancient Chinese fable called "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains". It tells of an old man who lived in northern China long, long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the way. He called his sons, and hoe in hand they began to dig up these mountains with great determination. Another graybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, "How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up those two huge mountains." The Foolish Old Man replied, "When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?" Having refuted the Wise Old Man's wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction. God was moved by this, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs. Today, two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people. One is imperialism, the other is feudalism. The Chinese Communist Party has long made up its mind to dig them up. We must persevere and work unceasingly, and we, too, will touch God's heart. Our God is none other than the masses of the Chinese people. If they stand up and dig together with us, why can't these two mountains be cleared away?