The Joy that Has Born in Me These Songs

My friends.

It is not a failure on my part to think of this vehicle that has caused it to stand dormant for so long. It is that I have spent the last few weeks at elevations of 12,000 feet and above in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado mountaineering, camping, snowshoeing, and contemplating God.

I went on this expedition with nine others from my school, though one dropped out, so the final push and longest consecutive stretch in the mountains was with eight others. Temperatures the first night out were close to -20°F, with a windchill that took somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees off of that. When I rose from my sleeping bag, it had frozen into a hard shell of frosted down. We weren’t able to cook because our liquid gas had frozen. We were only able to drink by stuffing Nalgenes full of snow into our down coats and running around enough to melt them. Not to mention the fact that this was the night between our two of our hardest days of trekking: more than 7 miles through unbroken snow that was often knee deep…even with snowshoes.

After that it warmed up a little, nights typically about 0-10°F and days just below freezing. When we were lucky the sun shone bright and the wind didn’t gust. Eventually, we made it to yurts, which are a permanent sort of hut along the Continental Divide Trail made to make the journeys of mountaineers a little easier.

I slept in frozen tents, snow caves, yurts; I went to the highest elevations that I’ve ever reached; I saw enormous mountains, lakes of ice, giant earthflows; I talked God to scientists and shop to climbers; I walked as I have never walked before; I hurt in ways that I didn’t know I could; I had my breath stolen by 3,000 foot overlooks…

And finally, with me there is a distinct sense from which I cannot escape: I have become profoundly more aware of God. As I walked across the rims of gigantic orifices of earth, or struggled for miles uphill, I was forced to an understanding of the presence of God that had previously remained undiscovered for me. I think that I was the only person who would call myself a Christian on the trip, and I may write something of the profound joy that I experienced at being able to compare and discuss alternate ideas of religion, God, and the universe at some later time, but my solitude drove me to see Schaeffer’s God Who Is There.

To all those people who say that contemplative prayer is new aged sin, I’m going to sit here and tell you flat out: you’re wrong. You’ve spent too much time in church buildings and on the ground: your concept of God and prayer and worship are far too linear. The Christian cannot help but see the things that I have seen and contemplate God in new and fascinating ways. If you ask me, the mountains exist as a testament and an altar to God, and to attempt to do anything other than gaze upon them and contemplate the greatness and glory of Him would be to waste whatever time you were spending among them. I now understand what Paul means when he talks about being unable to look upon nature and not see God.

Being in those mountains in those conditions challenged my view of self, and re-aligned my paradigm of perception. I now am able to see the reflection of God in nature, and I don’t have to bother attempting to foul up that expression of Him with my clumsy verbiage or some system of worship. All I have to do is look, and see, and realize just a little bit of WHO it really is who defines and motivates all that I do. Call me new-aged. I say you’re ignorant, and you need to remove the comforts of your life and put yourself in a physically extreme environment where there’s nothing for you to do but think on things of God…and survive, of course.

Revisiting what I said about having now an expanded concept of God: I feel that now I have a slightly more complete (though, to say that is really a fallacy since it implies that there is some degree of completion to an understanding of God, or self in reference to God…work with me though) understanding of who God is. I think I have gotten to see God the Creator in a way that I have never gotten to see him. I have felt the touch of God the Sustainer. There is no way that I should have been able to lead the group the way that I led it…I was eating almost nothing, and drinking about a quart and a half of water per day, yet I was at the front of our pack through some of the hardest sections of “trail.” Was this me? Certainly not…It was my body filled with thanks at the Glory that I was being allowed to taste.

I remember at one point standing at the summit of a 13,000 ft. peak and feeling both minutely insignificant, yet decidedly purposeful at the same time. It is this contradiction of terms that I feel has opened my idea of self in God further and wider than before. You see, in God’s vast plan, I as an individual am and can do nothing to affect His purposes; however, through God, empowered as I believe that I am by Him to His ends, I am the very fabric of that purpose. In reference to the mountains and wind and avalanches I am and can do nothing, but as a part of them, I am another feature of the terrain.

Again, call me a hippie, or new aged, or whatever negative terms can be thrown my direction, but to the rest of you, my friends, I must beg that you put aside the things of Your World for a while and allow yourself to be immersed in His.

Forward, and blessed be.

-Spencer-