INTIMACY

The thing to remember about Eden is that it was an intimate place. There was no division between God, the Creator and, man, the creature he created. There was no division between the man and the woman; they lived intimately. And the first man and first woman were at one with their environment. It was the perfect place for them to worship God and enjoy his blessings. But paradise was lost, and when that happened, mankind lost the intimacy which God created us for and which we have yearned to recover ever since.

As a child, my own little corner of paradise was a lake in New Hampshire that I lived on every July for three years. When I think of that place, the memory in my heart takes me instantly back and there I am on my cot in a small cabin on the lake’s shore. Outside, moths and other insects, drawn by the light of my reading lamp, buzz against the screened windows. I can smell the scent of pine that permeates the soft summer evening air. And behind the nocturnal sounds of crickets and frogs, I hear the rhythmic lapping of the waves as they softly touch the rocks near where I am resting my head.

And I remember how early in the morning, my father would invite us to join him on a walk up Bean road to a small local farm. As we walked along the road, we could feel a mountain chill in the air and we could see the mist suspended like a blanket above the green fields. The farm itself rested between the road and the lower reaches of Red Hill, and so we gather up some strawberries or raspberries and thick heavy cream to take back for the family breakfast.

Of course, in this idealized place, I suffered the normal worldly intrusions of fights, skinned knees, hurt feelings and the rest, but this is not what I prefer to remember because my life at the lake touched a part of my heart that longed for something important that was lost long ago.

One of E.B White’s greatest short pieces is called Once More to the Lake. In it, he recalls a lake in Maine that became part of his own spiritual biography: “It is strange how much you remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back. You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing. I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless; remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen. The partitions in the camp were thin and did not extend clear to the top of the rooms, and as I was always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines. I remember begin very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral.”

ILLUMINATION

Several years ago, I climbed Mt Whitney in the High Sierras. This was not the usual walk up, but a four day early spring adventure that required heavy backpacking up to Boy Scout Lake which is a snow filled bowl surrounded on three sides by jutting peaks. From this platform, we ascended Whitney itself by heading up a long, steep shoot that is to the right of the headwall. Beyond the shoot is a small flat area that stands hundreds of feet below the summit. Here we clamped onto fixed ropes with ascenders and maneuvered our way up until we reached the actual summit. We were lucky with the weather and so stayed on top for a few hours, enjoying the panoramic views on all sides, including what might be Death Valley far off to the east.

We spent that night once again at Boy Scout Lake. In the morning we awoke before sunrise to begin the job of packing up to head down to the Portal and the road out to Lone Pine. As any mountaineer can tell you, the cold and dark world seems to awaken with the rising sun. And when the light hits the dormant grey rocks, they catch fire and become magical golden shapes that seem to dance with the new dawn.

South of our tent site stand the Needles, four sculpted spires that rise up out of the mountain massif. They appear to the eye to be four steeples of a natural cathedral standing guard against the brutal forces that are constantly besieging this huge wall.

For the most part, I was busy packing up for our departure, but at some point I looked up to see that the light had transformed the stone spires of the Needles into a luminous, serrated gold bulwark set against the deep blue of a desert morning sky.

Luckily, my camera was resting on my sleeping bag; I picked it up and without hesitation, shot four or five frames with black and white film. I wanted to catch the gold rocks, but I had run out of color film, so I had no choice but to go with what was in the camera.

The developed pictures surprised me and taught me a few photography lessons. First, light is everything. The gold that caught my eye in the picture became vibrant rock formations. If you didn’t know better, it was a picture that seemed to be in the tradition of Ansel Adams. It wasn’t, of course, but still a very fine photograph was created by the light reflecting off of the rock formations in just the right way. The truth is that the right exposure was there in front of me and I only needed to recognize it. The second thing I learned was never hesitate. A brilliant moment can vanish like the wind, leaving you with nothing but, well, a not so great picture. How can an average photographer with an inexpensive pocket camera capture an outstanding picture? I think Ken Duncan, the world renowned landscape photographer (http://www.kenduncan.com/), captures it best: He has said many times, “I am just an average photographer with a great God.”

ROCKS

Hiking northward across the open ridge of the northern Presidentials in New Hampshire, I marvel at the odd arrangement of giant boulders lying all around this beautiful and forbidding place. Huge rocks, some the size of houses, lie scattered everywhere with some resting precariously at the edge of deep ravines. This vast, improbable stone-strewn landscape beckons me to ask myself the inevitable “how” questions: How did all of this come about? How did these rocks get here? It all seems so unlikely when it has taken me a huge amount of energy to just get myself up to and across this barren miles-long ridge.

Of course, I know the popular geological answers to these and other questions, but that is not the point. Up here, away from the cacophony of everyday knowledge and discourse, I am prompted to ask some of the more basic questions that go to the heart of why I am here observing all of this in the first place. For up here, surrounded by rocks and boulders, I am confronted with the improbability of it all. This disharmonious arrangement of granite reminds me that I am seemingly just as strangely situated on this revolving planet that whirls on its own journey through the universe. Here in the mountains, it is hard to avoid the deeper questions of my existence and the purpose behind it all. For to me, the rocks and ravines spell mystery and my mind naturally searches for solutions to the puzzle of life itself.

Philip Yancey describes G.K.Chesterton’s view of the world we live in “as a sort of cosmic shipwreck. A person’s search for meaning resembles a sailor who awakens from a deep sleep and discovers treasure strewn about, relics from a civilization he can barely remember. One by one he picks up the relics-gold coins, a compass, fine clothing-and tries to discern their meaning.” Yancey goes on to say that we, like the sailor, have only hints of a world that existed in the deep past: “Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time.”

For the next several weeks I want invite you to walk with me as I journey through this rocky landscape. Imagine, if you will, that we are companions and that we have abandoned the usual superficialities to engage in an exploration of the meaning of the “bits of Paradise” that have scattered themselves all around us. Can we find a way of fitting these fragments together? It promises to be a worthwhile journey, for we will ask the same questions posed thousands of years ago: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4) What is man, indeed? The next time we get together, we will begin to pick through some of the fragments.