Today I walked a trail along the Mogillon Rim, that I would walk (and trail run) in my early twenties, and it took me to a rock on which I used to sit, write music on, pray on, get lost in my thoughts…really, I used to meet with God there.
It was a return to a thin place of quiet and consistency. There is a theology of place where we see Creator getting man’s attention. Sinai, Jerusalem, Bethel – the conditions being right for the human, weak eyes, of flesh to be opened to the Divine.
There, sitting on the rock, the same breeze through the Ponderosa and Manzanita was there, the same wind kicking up at times causing me to re-balance myself. But also the same presence, not seen but felt. The sense of not being alone.
This spot may not be accessible forever, and is hardly hidden now, but it’s here where I learned what presence feels like. True presence, not the manufactured kind – of lights and sound, but of silence.
Lyrics that I wrote in that very spot, came rushing back to me. It was a hard, emotional day when I wrote:
And if these rocks that I’m sitting on did burst into song
They’d sing about Your goodness, Your majesty and Your love
Oh God You are my strength, my refuge and my song
So if not this world, invade this heart that longs…
It’s interesting that in these spots of Encounter, your relationship with God can feel like the relationships that you share with old friends. Where you can sit down with friends whom you haven’t seen in a decade, yet you can hold space together and feel like you can pick up where you left off – maybe with more gray in your hair (or less hair altogether), but with the same candor and affection that you had last time you were together. And maybe that’s why Pilgrimage of this sort matters – to be in the same place and proximity of that intimacy. Of course, God is alway near, but sacred place feels different than neutral space because perhaps it’s us (humans) who learn how to be present there. There’s history there. My tears soaked the granite there just like monsoons have saturated it for years long before I walked this place. It’s always been sacred by nature, but for me it’s holy because of my interaction with the Creator there.
