Mountains

Everyone is afraid of something.  Some people are terrified when they attempt to balance their checkbook (and therefore never do).  Others recoil at the thought of death and some shy from financial obligations.  We have all met people who are terrified of flying.  Some call these various fears, phobias.  Maybe they are.  All I know is that we all have dark corners in our self.  We are very different and have varying shadows that cause us fear and pain.

I remember officiating at a funeral in Massachusetts where I was told by the family in mourning that their mother missed out on much of life because she refused to travel anywhere.  As a result, they told me, she had led a lonely life.

Most of us do not let our disabilities get in the way of living. Nonetheless, they may still haunt us and deprive us of becoming whole.

Viktor Frankl, a survivor and analyst, wrote, “The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling, that after all he has suffered, there was nothing he need fear anymore-except his God.” What a powerful affirmation of life! For Frankl, after his bid or years spent in Auschwitz there is clarity of vision. Life is for living. Without fear.

This from Dag Hammarskjold: “When all has become silent around you, and you recoil in terror - see that your work has become a flight from suffering and responsibility, your unselfishness a thinly disguised masochism: hear, throbbing within you, the spiteful, cruel heart of the steppe wolf - do not anesthetize yourself by once again calling up the shouts and horns of the hunt, but gaze steadfastly at the vision until you have plumbed its depths.”

Mountains are only obstacles when we can see no way around or over them. To a slightly different eye, they represent a journey, a new possibility of exploration and wonder.