Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Trails through our lives ...


Some of my fondest memories are those associated with hikes up and down mountains ... Hikes that haven't happened enough, but hikes that have lingered in my mind's eye for months and years ...

Memorable moments come back when I see photos like this one, I took last week as we walked up the side of a mountain to visit and stand on the toe of the Assiniboine Glacier in the Columbia Icefields ...

I remember a similar trail leading up the side of a mountain, well, a big rock really ... called Masada over looking the Dead Sea, and being a place of great meaning ...

Days later we hiked through the pre-dawn darkness to stand on the top of a mountain in the Sinai desert where tradition says Moses spoke with God ... we went just to watch the sun rise ... and God whispered in that moment anyway ...

A desert hike along the road that leads from Jerusalem to Jericho, the place some wise man named Y'eshua from a village called Nazareth posited his story about an outcast who becomes an unlikely hero and in the process transforms our understanding of who is a neighbour, and how a good neighbour acts ...

A spring hike up the Camel's Hump in the Green Mountains of Vermont ... we stood above the tree line looked at the horizon far below and for a brief moment life was good ...

Hikes along a narrow trail blazed through the wilderness, be it a desert, a lush coastal rain forest, or a towering mountain, is good for the soul ... Maybe that's why the Holy People of the past went out into the wilderness and up on to mountain tops to commune with the holiness they call God ...

Couldn't hurt ... the world looks different from the mountain top ...

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