Fierce Landscapes, Part III: Cloud

(Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Southern Colorado)

Often in life we simply cannot handle the challenge of new knowledge, of revelation, of illumination. Sometimes our fear of change is so great we would rather stay in our pain.

We begin to climb, but it seems so far. So very far. We look back to the valley below. It seems safer there. It would be so easy to return to the valley below, even though it is the valley of the shadow of death. (Psalm 23). We deceive ourselves into thinking we can go back. And often we do. But then, by God’s grace, there are those times when we gather courage.

We look up again. We begin climbing again. Step by step, trusting grace and joy await us. And then an amazing thing happens. A hand reaches down and begins to lift us up. We arrive at the summit. We feel a mystical union with God beyond description and comprehension. We lose ourselves in God. Our separate identity is gone. We feel pure grace. We know we are loved with an everlasting love. This is what the Celtics call a "thin place," where the boundary between God and us is nearly taken away.

It was in the pillar of cloud that Moses spoke with God “face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11)

Our hearts are also filled with indescribable love for all people. It is when we finally relinquish the need to control, when we have gone so deeply into solitude that it appears we are indifferent to the world, that the deepest love and compassion are born. [See Lane, pp. 167-173]

And finally, the cloud reminds us of that final act of relinquishment, when in death we are given entirely to God. (Lane, pp. 152-54)

Pauline, my first wife, came to this point. In one of her journal entries, some three months before she died, she wrote:

I do not think my positive attitude will desert me—off and on, perhaps,
but never completely. For I have my belief and faith in God. She/He
gives me courage, and, more importantly, love. I have Bear. Our
love is everlasting. I have the love of my family. The love of my
friends. I am truly blessed. I have been to the mountaintop. Life is
beautiful; it hurts, but I can leave it. (Italics mine.)

When have you felt a mystical union with God? When has your love for all people felt almost overwhelming in its power?

In the next post we will talk about what comes next, since we cannot remain in the cloud of the mountaintop in this life.