I Saw God On A Mountain

I think I left a little bit of my heart there, up in those mountains. This past Saturday, on the whim of a new friend, we took off for the Blue Ridge mountains. I love North Carolina so much; I love that at almost any time you can pick up and head over to the mountains or the ocean. At any rate, she and I got delightfully lost along the way, and ended up winding our way through the mountains. We ended up at last on the top of Grandfather Mountain, sweaty and tired but triumphant.
As I stood on that peak I was exhausted and much more afraid of heights than I formerly realized. Yet, through the fear pounding in my chest there was a sense of absolute awe. Funny, isn't it, how often those two go together? It makes me think of God; fear and awe has been mankind's reaction to God for time immemorial. It made my heart hurt to look at those views, they were just that beautiful. It is good to have something like that strike you to the soul once and a while, and I was struck. It was so high, so beyond all that I had been struggling with, and the air was so clean. And what better a place to find God than on a mountain?

Now I am back down on the Piedmont, back on the flat land, back among the muddle and the mundane. I feel as if I am trying much harder to balance down here than I was up on that mountain peak. I am learning, bit by bit. Some hard choices were made, and clouds blew over. However, there still never seems to be enough hours in the day. I miss that mountain more that I thought I could, yet I know I cannot stay there. There is so much down here: good, bad, and in between. But this is where things happen, down here things move and breathe. This is where life happens. As painful as it can be to be in the middle of so much living and breathing and laughing and crying and learning... Well, I know God is down here too, somewhere.

I saw God on a mountain
Tearing at the sky,
I saw God on a mountain
With tears in his eyes.
He said Son, I used to know
Where I put things,
I used to know.
I could have shown all the beauty in the world,
But I need you to show me.
-Ben Sollee