Mountaintop Experience
I recently began a 5 week job as a residential counselor for the ETSU Governor’s School for the Scientific Exploration of Tennessee Heritage (that’s a mouth full). This is a program funded by the state in which some of the top incoming high school juniors and seniors from across the state spend 5 weeks on campus taking 2 courses for college credit. In addition to the courses, they will also participate in a number of fun activities. Today, we hiked Roan Mountain, located on the TN/NC border.
I’ve often heard the phrase “mountaintop experience” used to describe some sort of event where a person has an intense encounter that makes him/her high on life. Often this experience is related to spirituality in some form. Today, I think I finally really understood the analogy. I’ve had a spiritual dryness for the past month or so that oddly enough, has seemed unshakable. No matter what I read, where I go, to whom I talk, about what I think, what I hear, nothing can take away this disturbing dryness that manifests itself in a combined feeling of alienation, isolation, distance, and worst of all, apathy. And this all coming on the heels of a very unique semester where I have never felt more alive and spiritually vibrant in my life. So, it has been a frustrating setback to say the least.
However, today I discovered that it is not necessarily what I must do to feel alive again, but rather what must happen to me in order for me to feel alive again. I must be grasped by Something larger than myself, by Beauty and by Truth. And today on the mountain, I was indeed grasped.
As sappy and as silly as it may sound, mountains have always been a place of spiritual experiences. In many ancient religions, mountains were seen as being close to the heavens, and hence close to God/the gods. Certainly in biblical tradition, mountains were held to be a place where God was met and experienced by humans. Hearkening back to biblical tradition, think of Moses (the giving of the law on Mount Sinai), Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountain, just to name a few.
Today, I found that there is something about breathing fresh, cool air; about feeling the wind brush your skin; about seeing white, puffy clouds fill the vast blue backdrop of the sky as on a painter’s canvas; about being surrounded by the luscious green mountains covered in trees and grasses; about seeing a winding trail stretching on in the distance, weaving in and out, just like the trail of life—there’s something about all of these things that made me feel fully alive, fully human. There’s something about these things that created a feeling of wholeness out of the fragments of my being, that connected me to something larger than myself, that made me yearn for more, for the Divine. Indeed, I was grasped.
Mountaintop experiences (whether literal or figurative) are important because they keep us going. They are the light that drives us forward through the darkness of despair and apathy. They are what tell us there is indeed more and that we can’t give up yet.
I was thinking today how cool it would be for a group of Life, Beauty, and God seekers to go on a mountain or otherwise out in nature to connect to God, both communally and individually. Church groups sometimes do activities together where they maybe hike or hang out for a picnic at a park. Why not instead plan a trip to go to the mountains or even to the night sky to meditate, pray, and experience the Mystery in whom we move, live, and have our being. And this not to just meditate personally, but also to share the journey with one another. That’s my suggestion for spiritual formation. We all need to be stirred, revived, and made alive again. And again. And again…
Some pictures from Roan Mountain today:
As we walked along this trail, a girl was facing the edge of the mountain playing Amazing Grace on her flute. It was one of those beautiful moments that you want to bottle up and keep in a timeless place.
