Tuesday, July 29, 2014

A Dusting of Snow During a Bloody Summer - Brian Zahnd

It’s been a bloody summer. In Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Nigeria, and the Ukraine.
Kill the bad guys and there will be peace is the tired refrain.
All sides say it. Ad infinitum.
(I didn’t even mention the bloody streets of America, to which we have grown so numb.)
But I am where I always hope to be this time of year: In the mountains that I love.
When I hike above treeline onto the great expanse of the high tundra my soul finds room for expansion. I’m no longer hemmed in by the din from the reactive ideologues. I find time and space to pray and think.
And as I pray and think, I know this…
Creation is good. Very good. It bears witness to its Creator, who is good too.
In our primitive dread we imagine a god who is petulant and hard to please, vindictive and retributive, capricious and cruel. But these are only petty projections born of our own fear.
The mystics (and maybe the mountaineers) know better.
When I can clear my head, I know better. High on the tundra between Longs Peak and the Never Summer Mountains I know the greatest of all truth: God is Love.
Why did God say, Let there be?
God spoke because he is Love.
Infinite love seeking finite compression.
Eternal love seeking temporal expression.