I’ve recently been listening to a series by the Bible Project in which they highlight that “in ancient Israel’s imagination, the mountain is where the heavenly realm in the skies meets the human realm on land. In this place, people can access God’s wisdom and power and his very presence.” It’s in this place where Heaven and earth meet, and in this narrative, we see how the presence of God comes down to dwell with people in the tabernacle in the Old Testament, then in the availability of the Holy Spirit through Christ’s incarnation and resurrection. I highly recommend it, and it has been a suiting accompaniment in my hikes up literal mountains. It has been sparking a reflection for me.
“Mountain Top Experiences”
A term that lies in the back of my mind, is one that I learned as a part of the Americana Christian Culture, and it is the idea of “Mountain Top Experiences.” It would often be attached to youth conferences with hundreds (even thousands) of youth, and loud worship music, and a sensational message. But the idea of Mountain Top Experiences, is that these spiritual experiences are ones of perspective and even euphoria of a felt experience of the presence of God. Of course, as I shared, the idea of the ‘mountain’ is a symbolic theme in scripture, so there’s something to that. But in the same youth conferences (that I experienced in my youth) that would often yield the ‘spiritual experience,’ or at least the emotional feeling of one, I’d hear people say that “the Christian life is not chasing one mountain top experience to the next.” While I get what they were saying, I don’t think these experiences are a ‘mountain experience’ the way that we see it in scripture – I know in retrospect that’s not what I experienced, anyway. Yes, we can’t live on the mountain top of the dopamine high of spiritual euphoria, but biblically, the business that would happen on the mountain is something that God seemed to be pretty committed to having follow the person back down the mountain, because the one who came down from the mountain would be marked by it and the experience was not for their experience of dopamine, but for their onward trajectory – and often connected to a covenant with Yahweh.
Surrender: A Hiker’s Guide to the Cosmic Mountain
I’m a hiker, but when I say that I’m a hiker, I’m not saying that I’m a sport hiker per se. I’m more of what I’d consider a contemplative hiker. I hike to be in nature, to think, and to pray, and because of that I do a lot of solo hiking. Living in the desert, most of my hiking is toward (and up) mountains. Here in the desert valley where I live, you can look to the horizon in just about every direction and see a range of mountains. I’ve hiked the highest peak in Arizona, where huffing and puffing turns to gasping around 11,000 ft elevation, with the summit being 12,633 ft. I’ve hiked terrains from the desert to the high desert, to the mountains in Arizona, beautiful Colorado, lush Hawaii, Washington, and Oregon. I feel a sense of home once I put on my Obōz hiking shoes and strap on my backpack – not always knowing what awaits, but confident that along the way I’ll find parts of me that lay dormant in my existence of concrete and technology.
What I feel is sometimes overlooked, is that in Scripture the mountain is usually a place of surrender. Abraham, Moses, Elijah – not only is it a place of encounter with God, but there is also a choice to be made. A relinquishing of leveraging things in one’s own straw man strength and faux wisdom, to say “yes” to Creator’s guidance and wisdom. Maybe in the ancient world people thought God would abide there up on the mountain (with its clouds, lightning, and rain), but maybe God knew that the climb was needed for humans to gain the perspective needed to hear clearly and to have a will that was pliable. So, those ascents were the place of encounter where Divine and man met – Heaven and earth met. Just like fasting is ‘praying with your whole body,’ maybe hiking and pilgrimage are ‘surrender with your whole body.’
I’m thankful that Jesus made the ascent to bring the presence of God off the mountain top once and (available) for all. But, I will say, I still experience Creator on the mountain. In my journeys to the mountains, using the tool of silence, I untangle the web of a broken humanity off me like cobwebs, and once again feel the wind that seems to be saturated with His presence. And I, too, often leave changed.
