A Walk With God On Pikes Peak
I’m reminded of that verse in Isaiah that tells us, “Every valley will be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low,” for you can see that Pikes Peak is literally crumbling apart from the top down. But like a lot of things, this could take a while!
There’s nothing like being on top of a high mountain like Pikes Peak. At elevation 14,115 feet, the vistas are breathtaking, and I would venture to say it is only on mountaintops one experiences this kind of feeling. Yes, plane rides offer lines of sight that stretch for many more miles, but here, you can see into Kansas with your feet firmly planted on the earth. I think that is the biggest difference. You’re high, your sight is long and clear, but you haven’t left the ground.
Spirituality, our relationship with God, can be much the same way. Not that we don’t all have unique expressions of love with our Creator. But here on this earth plane we inhabit, we strive to be in that place where we walk in the heights, hand in hand with our Creator, yet living in bodies that need food, water, and air, and a place to set each foot down as we walk forward.
“The balancing act of the human being,” says God, standing with us as we face east, staring over Colorado Springs and, yep, on into Kansas. Storms are blowing in from the west, but they are high in the atmosphere, a bank of dark clouds spilling a fringe of rain at our back. “Of course, this type of existence affords some unique experiences. Good ones if you see your body for what it is, not so good if you let it be the deciding factor of your overall experience.”
It’s chilly up here. Thirty-seven degree wind chill on an early September afternoon, the fine gravel beneath our feet on the parking lot mixed with wintry sludge. The mixing of the seasons when one travels to a mountaintop in anything but winter, or the hottest of summer days, makes it feel all the more ethereal and exceptional.
A lot of things normally separate mix together upon the mountaintop.
On our way up, driving through what I call the Alpine Land (I’m sure that’s wrong), the road ever increasing in the steepness of the climb, we experienced the changing color of the white-trunked Aspens. Their leaves were still the green of summer in the Springs, but then around 8,000 feet they began lightening to a tender green, higher on up into a thinned out gold and finally at the highest elevation these beauties can take, there was full on golden beauty. In a couple of weeks they’ll all be glimmering like coins, flipping and fluttering in the strong, Rocky Mountain sunlight, shedding a sparkling luminescence that’s like no other foliage I’ve seen. The blazing colors of the East Coast where I grew up have a stunning beauty that strikes awe. How I loved Autumn there, driving around the nearby reservoir when I got my driver’s license, sitting by the water just me and You, God.
“I love times like that,” God says. “The sages all say that getting out in nature is where human beings can commune with me most purely.”
Is it?
“For most. But don’t imagine I can’t and won’t overcome that for people stuck in cities without the resources to get out, or those who are sick.”
If Mohammed can’t get to the mountain?
“Exactly. I will come to you wherever you are. In fact I’m already there. Nature simply removes the distractions of your everyday life. It gives you the proper scale so that suddenly your problems don’t feel so big, and you don’t either. And it shows how I sustain it all.”
I don’t get out in nature enough.
I’m excited about the drives my daughter and I will take as the Autumn progresses. I have a feeling we won’t live in Colorado forever. So we’ll take it all in. We especially enjoy how the shivering Aspens create a lively feeling in our chests, one of movement and LIFE.
It’s not an easy drive along Pikes Peak Highway. But no matter how often I take this drive—I’m at three times now and know there will be more—the sheer, guardrail-less drop-offs send that thrill of fear through me. As the climb steepens, the vegetation drops off as well, from full, tall trees, to scraggly ones with branches with short needles, to the slow-growing tundra grass, so slow-growing wagon tracks are still in view from decades ago. Finally, when you emerge at the top, walking over to catch the view at its fullest, it’s rock. Rocks and rocks and rocks.
I’m reminded of that verse in Isaiah that tells us, “Every valley will be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low,” for you can see that Pikes Peak is literally crumbling apart from the top down. But like a lot of things, this could take a while!
God laughs. “You could say that. It’s a little different when you live outside time.”
I’ll bet. There are times that I can imagine just a little what that is like. But no times more poignant than spending time with You, I tell God.
“If a human being could fully realize their relationship with me is out of time, is in the now/here, or nowhere, that it is what truly is and always shall be, it would be so much the easier for them. But, I know the cares of this life override the truth that eternity can be accessed now. So, I enter into time and space with you, in you, around you and through you. And we do this thing together. If you want to.”
What if we don’t?
“Well, I am your Creator and sustainer, and your very breath is mine, so I am with each of you in the manner of basic survival. We can’t help that. But you can choose to realize this more and more and more, until we live fully in the union of Love.”
That sounds impossible here on the ground. I mean, isn’t that something more like being in a plane?
How can we experience anything of the sort with the way things are here?
“Jesus said the Kingdom of God is within you. What does that mean to you two?”
I look at you. You look at me. This is one of the biggies, isn’t it?
Jesus said a lot of things that make sense as a concept, but putting it into practice seems like something else entirely. The Kingdom of God within used to be a place where I thought that truth was revealed, and from that truth love was formed and it made a difference in how we lived our lives. So if the Kingdom of God was found, we would feed the poor, clothe the naked, turn the other cheek, forgive each other over and over again, work to right the wrongs and seek to obliterate injustice. That was the Kingdom. Learned about within but experienced without. But now I’m not so sure. The only difference between myself now and myself then is that I’m not scared of not being sure.
“What if you started with the Kingdom of God being Love, and truth being formed from that?”
Can’t love be misguided?
“Unconditional love?”
Easy to say, God. You know the end from the beginning. You saw this place upon which we stand before the mountains were even formed. You see the place upon which we stand when the hills will be made low. I’m sure you see this place upon which we stand when it will exist as, well, who knows what, once our Mother Star goes super nova. I know that’s a long time from now, but nothing last forever.
“My Kingdom does. And it only does so because it is within you, in that eternal space inside you. Where life has no beginning, no ending, always has been and always will be. That is the Kingdom, that is where you, the you that will never cease to be, will always abide.”
Can we truly live from that place? Can I be that being now, here, though? It seems impossible.
“I’ll admit, the body makes this very hard.”
It sure does.
“Which is why you wanted to give this all a try.”
Is it true? Did we exist before we arrived? The Bible, the scriptures I grew up reading aren’t clear on this at all. Jeremiah said You knew him before he was formed.
“What do you think?”
Oh, that’s an easy one for me. This life felt really weird and disconcerting when I was trying to reach a place I didn’t know. But now? I’m coming home and not only am I coming home, but I’m escorted there by the best parent ever.
“Many would disagree with that.”
I know. But they don’t know you the way I do. But they will, someday. No matter how long it takes. Because You live outside of time.
“Believe me, it has its perks.”
Standing here on the mountain it’s easier to see how it works. The timelessness of it all, the way the seasons are changing before my eyes all at once from the wintry sludge beneath my feet down to the eighty degree day surrounding my apartment.
I know it takes trust, I know Love is the answer, I know You will always be with me. But still I step off this mountain and wander in the woods. I see the dark places of grievance and fear and wonder what the future will hold. I forget You’re holding my hand. And I ask over and over again, will I ever get this right? Will I ever go through an entire day without being scared to death of the things I am scared of?
I turn to you. How about you? Do you want that too? Full trust? Unconditional love?
“It can happen. But you have to let go.”
And there it is. Faith. It always boils down to this.
“And where does faith come from?
Confidence that You love me, truly love me.
We sit down upon a boulder large enough for the three of us.
“I have been maligned throughout the ages, now. Humankind has used Me to do their own bidding. They hold Me over the heads of those they wish to control. If they don’t outright say I will destroy people, they ply their children with guilt. ‘That makes God sad. God will be so disappointed in you,’ they say. As if I don’t know what is truly going on in the heart of each of you. As if I don’t know your lives and see, really see, your struggles. I don’t experience sadness and disappointment other than the sadness you are feeling, the disappointment you bring to your own lives. I live in the knowing that someday you will have cast off all of that, all the sadness, all the disappointment, all the rage and anger, the delusion, the striving and the pain. I do see the end from the beginning, I see each choice that will be placed in front of you, and when you choose suffering, when you choose sadness, despair, and fear, I feel what you feel because I am so deeply connected. But do not be mistaken that my heart is not filled with joy, love and peace. It is always thus. Because it will always be thus. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that state, that perfection, that union with Me is where you are heading, is where you will eternally abide.”
I want that.
“You have that. It is within you. Right now. For that is where I am. You as good as home, children.”
God puts his arms around us, one circling my shoulder, one circling yours. And for a moment in time that feels so eternal, we feel this truth that Love is what will last, and Love is what we have with us.
Right now. Here on this mountain. There in the city. Now here.
Feel the song of Love singing in your veins, in each cell as it spins and sparkles like an Aspen leaf telling you that someday you will be home, and that someday can and will always be found right now. For time is but an illusion and you really are as good as home.
If we believed that, what a day this would be.
Spirituality, our relationship with God, can be much the same way. Not that we don’t all have unique expressions of love with our Creator. But here on this earth plane we inhabit, we strive to be in that place where we walk in the heights, hand in hand with our Creator, yet living in bodies that need food, water, and air, and a place to set each foot down as we walk forward.
“The balancing act of the human being,” says God, standing with us as we face east, staring over Colorado Springs and, yep, on into Kansas. Storms are blowing in from the west, but they are high in the atmosphere, a bank of dark clouds spilling a fringe of rain at our back. “Of course, this type of existence affords some unique experiences. Good ones if you see your body for what it is, not so good if you let it be the deciding factor of your overall experience.”
It’s chilly up here. Thirty-seven degree wind chill on an early September afternoon, the fine gravel beneath our feet on the parking lot mixed with wintry sludge. The mixing of the seasons when one travels to a mountaintop in anything but winter, or the hottest of summer days, makes it feel all the more ethereal and exceptional.
A lot of things normally separate mix together upon the mountaintop.
On our way up, driving through what I call the Alpine Land (I’m sure that’s wrong), the road ever increasing in the steepness of the climb, we experienced the changing color of the white-trunked Aspens. Their leaves were still the green of summer in the Springs, but then around 8,000 feet they began lightening to a tender green, higher on up into a thinned out gold and finally at the highest elevation these beauties can take, there was full on golden beauty. In a couple of weeks they’ll all be glimmering like coins, flipping and fluttering in the strong, Rocky Mountain sunlight, shedding a sparkling luminescence that’s like no other foliage I’ve seen. The blazing colors of the East Coast where I grew up have a stunning beauty that strikes awe. How I loved Autumn there, driving around the nearby reservoir when I got my driver’s license, sitting by the water just me and You, God.
“I love times like that,” God says. “The sages all say that getting out in nature is where human beings can commune with me most purely.”
Is it?
“For most. But don’t imagine I can’t and won’t overcome that for people stuck in cities without the resources to get out, or those who are sick.”
If Mohammed can’t get to the mountain?
“Exactly. I will come to you wherever you are. In fact I’m already there. Nature simply removes the distractions of your everyday life. It gives you the proper scale so that suddenly your problems don’t feel so big, and you don’t either. And it shows how I sustain it all.”
I don’t get out in nature enough.
I’m excited about the drives my daughter and I will take as the Autumn progresses. I have a feeling we won’t live in Colorado forever. So we’ll take it all in. We especially enjoy how the shivering Aspens create a lively feeling in our chests, one of movement and LIFE.
It’s not an easy drive along Pikes Peak Highway. But no matter how often I take this drive—I’m at three times now and know there will be more—the sheer, guardrail-less drop-offs send that thrill of fear through me. As the climb steepens, the vegetation drops off as well, from full, tall trees, to scraggly ones with branches with short needles, to the slow-growing tundra grass, so slow-growing wagon tracks are still in view from decades ago. Finally, when you emerge at the top, walking over to catch the view at its fullest, it’s rock. Rocks and rocks and rocks.
I’m reminded of that verse in Isaiah that tells us, “Every valley will be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low,” for you can see that Pikes Peak is literally crumbling apart from the top down. But like a lot of things, this could take a while!
God laughs. “You could say that. It’s a little different when you live outside time.”
I’ll bet. There are times that I can imagine just a little what that is like. But no times more poignant than spending time with You, I tell God.
“If a human being could fully realize their relationship with me is out of time, is in the now/here, or nowhere, that it is what truly is and always shall be, it would be so much the easier for them. But, I know the cares of this life override the truth that eternity can be accessed now. So, I enter into time and space with you, in you, around you and through you. And we do this thing together. If you want to.”
What if we don’t?
“Well, I am your Creator and sustainer, and your very breath is mine, so I am with each of you in the manner of basic survival. We can’t help that. But you can choose to realize this more and more and more, until we live fully in the union of Love.”
That sounds impossible here on the ground. I mean, isn’t that something more like being in a plane?
How can we experience anything of the sort with the way things are here?
“Jesus said the Kingdom of God is within you. What does that mean to you two?”
I look at you. You look at me. This is one of the biggies, isn’t it?
Jesus said a lot of things that make sense as a concept, but putting it into practice seems like something else entirely. The Kingdom of God within used to be a place where I thought that truth was revealed, and from that truth love was formed and it made a difference in how we lived our lives. So if the Kingdom of God was found, we would feed the poor, clothe the naked, turn the other cheek, forgive each other over and over again, work to right the wrongs and seek to obliterate injustice. That was the Kingdom. Learned about within but experienced without. But now I’m not so sure. The only difference between myself now and myself then is that I’m not scared of not being sure.
“What if you started with the Kingdom of God being Love, and truth being formed from that?”
Can’t love be misguided?
“Unconditional love?”
Easy to say, God. You know the end from the beginning. You saw this place upon which we stand before the mountains were even formed. You see the place upon which we stand when the hills will be made low. I’m sure you see this place upon which we stand when it will exist as, well, who knows what, once our Mother Star goes super nova. I know that’s a long time from now, but nothing last forever.
“My Kingdom does. And it only does so because it is within you, in that eternal space inside you. Where life has no beginning, no ending, always has been and always will be. That is the Kingdom, that is where you, the you that will never cease to be, will always abide.”
Can we truly live from that place? Can I be that being now, here, though? It seems impossible.
“I’ll admit, the body makes this very hard.”
It sure does.
“Which is why you wanted to give this all a try.”
Is it true? Did we exist before we arrived? The Bible, the scriptures I grew up reading aren’t clear on this at all. Jeremiah said You knew him before he was formed.
“What do you think?”
Oh, that’s an easy one for me. This life felt really weird and disconcerting when I was trying to reach a place I didn’t know. But now? I’m coming home and not only am I coming home, but I’m escorted there by the best parent ever.
“Many would disagree with that.”
I know. But they don’t know you the way I do. But they will, someday. No matter how long it takes. Because You live outside of time.
“Believe me, it has its perks.”
Standing here on the mountain it’s easier to see how it works. The timelessness of it all, the way the seasons are changing before my eyes all at once from the wintry sludge beneath my feet down to the eighty degree day surrounding my apartment.
I know it takes trust, I know Love is the answer, I know You will always be with me. But still I step off this mountain and wander in the woods. I see the dark places of grievance and fear and wonder what the future will hold. I forget You’re holding my hand. And I ask over and over again, will I ever get this right? Will I ever go through an entire day without being scared to death of the things I am scared of?
I turn to you. How about you? Do you want that too? Full trust? Unconditional love?
“It can happen. But you have to let go.”
And there it is. Faith. It always boils down to this.
“And where does faith come from?
Confidence that You love me, truly love me.
We sit down upon a boulder large enough for the three of us.
“I have been maligned throughout the ages, now. Humankind has used Me to do their own bidding. They hold Me over the heads of those they wish to control. If they don’t outright say I will destroy people, they ply their children with guilt. ‘That makes God sad. God will be so disappointed in you,’ they say. As if I don’t know what is truly going on in the heart of each of you. As if I don’t know your lives and see, really see, your struggles. I don’t experience sadness and disappointment other than the sadness you are feeling, the disappointment you bring to your own lives. I live in the knowing that someday you will have cast off all of that, all the sadness, all the disappointment, all the rage and anger, the delusion, the striving and the pain. I do see the end from the beginning, I see each choice that will be placed in front of you, and when you choose suffering, when you choose sadness, despair, and fear, I feel what you feel because I am so deeply connected. But do not be mistaken that my heart is not filled with joy, love and peace. It is always thus. Because it will always be thus. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that state, that perfection, that union with Me is where you are heading, is where you will eternally abide.”
I want that.
“You have that. It is within you. Right now. For that is where I am. You as good as home, children.”
God puts his arms around us, one circling my shoulder, one circling yours. And for a moment in time that feels so eternal, we feel this truth that Love is what will last, and Love is what we have with us.
Right now. Here on this mountain. There in the city. Now here.
Feel the song of Love singing in your veins, in each cell as it spins and sparkles like an Aspen leaf telling you that someday you will be home, and that someday can and will always be found right now. For time is but an illusion and you really are as good as home.
If we believed that, what a day this would be.
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