On Sunday, Dec. 2, Advent begins. Perhaps even more than other times of year, we need to find some silence in the busyness of the Season. What do we celebrate at this time of year when we stand with all creation at the threshold between light and dark? It feeds my heart to imagine myself at the threshold of the “cave” within, peering out from the “mountaintop” of life in preparation for Christmas.
I am not actually on a mountaintop, but I have been. I have just returned from the mountains in Tagaytay in the Philippines where I attended a 10 day international meeting. Many years ago when I was in the terrritories of the Tsilhqot’in and Lil’wat Nations, I lived in the Coastal and Interior Mountain ranges of British Columbia, Canada. My travels have taken me to Alberta Canada’s Rocky Mountains, the French Alps, and to the foothills of the Himalayas in Darjeeling, India. Mount Kanchenjunga, pictured below, is located at the border of India and Nepal. It can be seen from the hill station of Darjeeling, and is the highest mountain in India. Mountains are magnificent places from which to gain perspective, especially of the insignificance of human beings.
Anyone who has been to a mountain, or even flown over one in an airplane, knows something about what it means to have a mountaintop experience. But, a mountaintop experience is not an experience of having our “heads in the clouds”. Rather, a mountaintop experience provokes silence and provides a new and awesome view of reality. Being at the very top of a mountain within a mountain range is one of the most truly awesome experiences we can have. Feeling wonder and awe filling our whole being with an awareness that we are part creation, a very small part. It can be a truly humbling and spiritual experience of belonging to Life.
The Divine has blessed us with so much beauty, such a wonderful Earth home. May we respect every part of land, air, and water. May we walk gently on this earth together. To do so begins by loving our true nature as human beings, loving ourselves as part of created life with a responsibility to the whole.
This Advent, watch the marvelous film, Love Thy Nature, and show it to friend, classes, family. The message: the way forward for us as human beings is to reconnect with who we are as part of nature and to allow that awareness to shape the technology and future that we create.
May reconnecting with nature help us to find silence this Advent, and to respect and celebrate the God of Life, Love, Light, Wisdom, and Peace, the God who created us as part of all creation. Did God not come as Emmanuel, God-With-Us, so that all would have life? In light of this may we allow ourselves to be humbled, to be awed, to be grateful, and in our context to ask that which Chief Seattle questioned so many years ago, “How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?”
