The Mountain Of God II

In my last post I spoke of the Mountain of God, and of humanity's attempt to scale that peak to discover union with the Holy. I would like to expand upon that a bit.

In this admittedly limited metaphor, the base of this mountain is so vast that it spans a huge portion of the globe. That being the case part of its base is found in a jungle, and another part in a desert. Part of its base is found in an archipelago and part of it in a large city. Obviously, to begin to climb the mountain from those different places takes radically different skill sets. A person skilled in the jungle would perish in the desert and vice versa. Likewise the person from an archipelago in a bustling city. The path up the mountain looks different in each place. In fact, one way up might not even look like a path to someone from a different part of the globe.

This is an apt metaphor for religion. Because of historical circumstance and cultural differences the paths up the Mountain of the Lord look very different from each other at the base. And because they look so different people get to thinking that THEIR path is the only path and the others lead nowhere. People will fight, even kill, to prove themselves right.

It is only those who climb high enough up the mountain and thus who leave their ecosystems of origin behind who begin to catch a glimpse of other paths making it up the mountain. And it is only then that we realize that we have been climbing the same mountain all along.

Part of the solution to this religious internecine warfare is to help people climb: climb away from the security of the base of the mountain; climb to where the air is thinner and the view more expansive; climb to an understanding of religion that recognizes that we need paths up the mountain, and that there are other paths more suited to other people and their context.

So we climb, looking out for others coming from different directions and encouraging them on the way.