GROWING EDGES

Recently our adult son, Nathan, and I climbed Mt. Elbert—the highest mountain in the Colorado Rockies. This, you understand, was a challenge for both father and son. For me the challenge was just to make it to the top; for Nathan it was a challenge in patience as he often waited for me to catch my breath! Below is a short record of that climb.

Alpine Journal
"Early on we meander through lush stands of aspen right on the verge of exploding into their fall display of color and mountain streams tumbling over an infinite array of rock formations. Once above timberline the climbing becomes harder, more steep. (Frankly, I thought it was steep at the beginning of the trail!) Granite dominates the landscape now, but the hiker who walks slowly (as I, of necessity, am doing) is rewarded by glimpses of Alpine Sunflower and Snow Buttercup and Moss Campion and Yellow Stonecrop and Fairy Primrose. The last five hundred feet of elevation are by far the most arduous. (I am glad to see Nathan stopping to catch his breath too!) Above 14,000 feet now the very air seems squeezed out of our lungs—and so it is.

"But the first step onto the peak makes it worth all the strain and struggle. What a sight! We can, it seems, see forever. Here we stand at what feels like the top of the world looking ‘down' on Mt. Massive and Mt. Harvard and all the other ‘fourteeners.' We stare in stunned wonder at Longs Peak to the north and Pikes Peak to the south. Snowmass to the west is decked out with a new dusting of snow. And the Maroon Bells simply take our breath away—in both senses of the word! Since on this particular day we are blessed with near perfect weather, we stay on the peak for an hour or more, gazing in perfect silence at the inexhaustible panorama. The psalmist was surely right in seeing that ‘The mountains skipped like rams' " (Ps. 114:4, NRSV).

The Many Landscapes of Worship
I want to use this day of mountain climbing as a bridge to the theme of this Perspective issue: Renewal Through Worship. You see, sometimes worship is a little akin to strolling through a verdant forest; it bursts with beauty and multicolored variety, like the silver and gold vessels and bright white linen of an altar at Epiphany. At other times worship resembles a steep climb above timberline; it is hard, stark, stripped down to the essential, like the austerity of plain chant or the simplicity of Quaker silence. And, if we are persistent and steady in our worship, once in a great while God allows us to break free onto the mountaintop of worship where everything is vast and panoramic and awe-ful, like the majesty of Handel's Messiah or the immensity of Bach's Mass in B Minor.

We all need this full range of worship experiences, and complete immersion in any one experience would be too much for us. We need the variety and beauty of the forest, but to be always in the kaleidoscopic diversity of the woodlands would unduly distract us. The climb above timberline challenges our sloth and selfishness, but to be always on the steep ascent would wear us out. We need the clarity, the vision, the wonder that is given us on the peak, but to be always on the mountaintop would do us in. Therefore we enter the many landscapes of worship—forest diversity and timberline ascent and mountaintop ecstasy—seeking, always seeking to "Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness" (1 Chron. 16:29, KJV).

Peace and joy,

Richard J. Foster