The other evening, our friend Pat urged me to think about mountains. She was right. We all have our mountains, as we have our valleys. In my quiet time today, before dawn and as the day slowly emerged in the lightening of the sky, I reflected on these two metaphors.

Both mountains and valleys can be seen as good and bad. Where does this knowledge lead us and what can we do with it?

Up until three weeks ago, if someone had asked me what my mountain was, my first response would have been Quandary, of course! (Or, an alternative in the vicinity.) Mt. Quandary is a peak near Breckenridge, Colorado, not far from our dear friends Rich and Sharon, who live in Edwards, near Vail. It rises to about 14,300 feet and has been a focal point for me these past nine or ten months. Many of you know I’ve been training during that time … lost a great deal of weight and have become more fit and healthy than any time I can remember. I’ve pushed myself by setting goals and surpassing them faster than I could have imagined. In the course of this, I’ve had a great deal of fun, dropped my blood pressure and found an outlet for an athleticism that has been hampered by a number of physical issues over the years.

Well, Quandary has been both the challenge and the magnet for me. Sort of like turning me into the little engine that could. I saw it as a good. And, still do. There’s nothing wrong with a challenge, especially one that helps us pay attention to things like physical health and well being. On the other hand …

Pat observed that three weeks ago, another mountain has displaced Quandary. Not all that hard a thing to agree with her thinking. This mountain is also physical and has very much to do with well being. While of the physical, it is also of the spiritual.  And, like Mt. Quandary, the climbing of which is planned with friends, this one is climbed in the company of many others.

Climbing mountains, whether in fact or in metaphor, is generally not an easy thing to do. How do we do it, then, and what are the rewards?

I believe we are created for significance. We are hard wired to climb, develop, grow, learn, create, blossom and flourish. Climbing draws us into those places where we emerge somehow changed. The act of it takes us out of secure and safe places and helps us become greater than we were before.

Last January, we huffed and puffed up the wintry forested trail on our borrowed snowshoes. It was cold but we shed some layers as the exertion warmed us. We emerged at last to an alpine meadow, pristine and blanketed with the new snow. Quiet. Beautiful. Magnificent. And, as we crossed the meadow and turned to the left, the grand vista of the Rockies was on full display. Something happens when we leave the warmth of the known and venture out, taking some risks and seeking something that puts our lives in perspective.

There are other ways to look at mountains. If the burden is great, it’s like trying to carry a way too heavy pack on our backs as we climb. In the planning for Quandary, I will of course, be very conscious of the weight of my pack. But, often, as we know, the size and weight of the pack is delivered beyond our apparent control. Diane and I had a pack placed on us three weeks ago, with a detour sign that said: This is the new mountain. Start climbing. We are surrounded by people who are in the same predicament or have been recently. Susan. Kathleen. Val. Denise. Kelsey and Sharon. Pat and David. David and Janet. Rex and Connie. Anita. Bill. And their spouses and families. There are others. And, here’s the thing with pack sizes. Some are way heavy. As in, this is really hard and my legs and back hurt as I climb. But, some aren’t just way heavy. For all practical purposes, they seem impossibly heavy. Which leaves us with only two options. Quit, or climb in faith that the strength will come. So, many of us seek help with our packs and come to find that help in remarkable places. Climbing, then, becomes an act of surrender and vulnerability as much as an act of profound will.

In my prayer time this morning, my mind went to the story of Jesus’ transfiguration as told in Mathew 17 and in Luke 9. His followers, Peter, John and James, witnessed Jesus transformed into his divine self while they were atop the mountain. “His face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as light.” What a sight this must have been! Terrifying, yet eternally captivating.

I remember studying something called “peak experiences” while doing my masters in theology and studying faith development back in the ’80s. It’s both a psychological term coined by Abraham Maslow and a tenet of some of our world’s faiths, as in moments of euphoria, ecstasy, transcendence. It also has a lot to do with something called self-actualization. The goal for us, in that line of thinking, is to work towards a state of being that will provide peak experiences. I sincerely respect people who choose this path but I look at it differently.

Yes, that experience for Peter, John and James must have been something else! But, here’s the rub. They had to come back down and that’s not a bad thing.

In other words, I don’t believe I’m on this earth to live on mountain tops or in a state of ecstasy, however much those things can be attractive.

I’m also called to live fully in the valleys. As a matter of fact, just as fully. And, that’s a good thing.

In my prayer time, I went to two places that describe valleys.

One is terrible. In the life of Jesus, one picture of it is in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night he was given over to eventually be killed. We, who follow him, believe he was fully taking on the pain of all of mankind and of the evil that is so manifest … and he realized that in order to do that, he would be separated from the love that defined his existence. He cried out in desperation and even sweat blood. What a contrast to the radiance of the transfiguration! This may be an extreme depiction of what people think of when they’re in the valley.

(For those who don’t see Jesus as I do, hopefully, the two portraits still carry meaning.)

Our lives are in constant motion between these two places, although maybe not in as stark a sense.

Just as mountains can be both exhilarating and impossibly daunting, so can valleys be both terrifying and redemptive.

Most of us are quite familiar with the first words in Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.”

While Jesus’ Garden or our own deep dark places overwhelm us, we can choose to live in a place where the waters are calm and the pastures carry beauty.

One of my favorite songs is “Be Still My Soul.” I love David Acton’s rendition if you have access to Spotify or Pandora. It doesn’t take moments of pain, grief or difficult trials to rest into the deep peace the truths of these lyrics offer.

Here’s what I’d like to say to pull these things together.

As we’re all aware, most of life is not lived challenging incredibly high mountains or being astonished at those awesome vistas. And, most of life is not lived in the valleys of pain and suffering, or its opposite, the verdant pastures and alongside still and refreshing waters.

Instead, we live in the constant tension between the two, with the knowledge that things can change quickly and we’re confronting one or the other. I’ve honestly tried to live in this tension and acclimate to it. While not always easy, I am a different person because of it. Among many things, there are two benefits worth mentioning. The first is that when there is a sudden shift, the firmness of living in that middle place is stabilizing and helps us not to have to change our fundamental priorities. Or put slightly differently, when we live in these spaces in our regular walk, what a blessing that we’re not required to make a course change when things seem to crumble.The second is that we are far more attuned to the shifts in the lives of others and can respond in loving ways.

Mountains and valleys. Each understood as both wonderful and threatening. Diane and I are right now not living in the middle but in each. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all share with one another what that means?

I’d like to say thank you as we wind down today. Thank you to my dear friends, Gary and Fred, for coming by this morning to pray, fellowship and consider how we move forward with Emmaus. Thank you, also, to another dear friend, Shack (we’ve been lifelong friends!) who trekked over from Carlsbad for lunch. We rekindled that friendship and went to deep places we’d never before gone. What a blessing! 🙂 Thank you to the best prayer warriors on earth (or at least among the best); the ladies of our Little Band of Believers and our weekly home at Susan’s at 7:30am on Fridays. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it this morning but am so grateful for how you are holding Diane and me up. And, finally, but not least, thank you to all of you who are taking the time to pray and reach out via comments on this site (I think it’s harder to post them than it should be … I’ll try to work on that) and via emails or texts. You are part of the air we breathe.