Mountaintops & Thin Places

by Donne Hayden

“Thin places,” the Celts call this space,
Both seen and unseen,
Where the door between the world
And the next is cracked open for a moment
And the light is not all on the other side.
God shaped space. Holy.^{^[1]}<= o:p>

Have you ever been to such a place, a place where the veil between this world and another seem to fall away briefly? Have you experienced something you would identify with “transfiguration”? H= ow about the more-commonly used word, “transformation”? There is only a slight difference in the two words—“transformation” means “a marked change, as in appearance or character, usuall= y for the better.” “Transfiguration” mea= ns “a marked chan= ge in appearance or form,” but it includes the idea of metamorphosis<= /i>, i.e., complete change of form (caterpillar to butterfly-type changes). And it has a further definition:= “a change that glorifies or exalts,” whic= h is probably w= hy the word is pretty much reserved these days for the Transfiguration of Jesu= s as recounted in the New Testament.

Speaking = of which, the Transfiguration is one of the lectionary readings for this week.= When I was looking for information about the Transfiguration and wondered how Quakers have traditionally dealt with it, I stumbled across the following tidbit on the website of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Russian Orthodox Church in Baltimore:

. . . the<= /span> Quakers set personal direct “illumination above the Holy Scriptures, and the Scriptures themselves they interpret in accordance with their personal “illumination.” With such an attitude towards the word of God, arbitrariness and distortion are inevitable.

I found this amusing, in part because in t= he clergy group discussion last Tuesday, when a couple of us Quakers offered possible interpretations of the Transfiguration á la George Fox, the Cathol= ic priest and the nondenominational fundamentalist theologian held a similar opinion, i.e., that the Quaker attitude toward “the word of God” was distor= ted and just simply wrong. Our discussion was friendly, of course; apparently heretics are still welcome at the table. So here is the passage that presented s= uch opportunities for interpretation, Matthew 17:1-9:

Six days late= r, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a = high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.

Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jes= us, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." =

While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the clo= ud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"

When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid.&quo= t;

And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

The Matthew verses are rich in imagery and allusion and clearly show the writer’s intent to locate Jesus in the tradit= ion of Jewish prophets like Moses and Elijah. For instance, another lectionary reading, Exodus 24:12-18, is a dire= ct antecedent to the Matthew passage.

The LORD said= to Moses, "Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give= you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction." So Mo= ses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. To the elders he had said, "Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them."

Then Moses we= nt up on the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the LO= RD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seven= th day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of= the LORD was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of t= he people of Israel.

Moses entered= the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

Later in Exod= us, when Moses comes down from Mt. Sinai after another encounter with God, “’the ski= n of his face was shining’ (Exodus 34:30) — just as Jesus’ face shone after= the Transfiguration.”[2]

There is much in the passage from Matthew = that we could talk about—the light itself and Jesus being anointed with light; the impulse of Peter to build what is essentially a “church” to house Moses, Elijah and Jesus; the fact that after the Transfiguration occurs, = Jesus must go to Jerusalem to meet his death; or the fact that in the orthodox Christian calendar, Transfiguration Sunday comes just before Ash Wednesday = and the beginning of Lent. But, being a Quaker and having a “distorted” view of= the Word of God, I want to focus on mountaintop encounters with the Holy Spirit= , “thin places” near the Light.

Last week I talked about the theology of scarcity, which is based on our fears, and the theology of abundance, which= is based on our faith. One way we get= from fear to faith is through being completely changed by an encounter w= ith the Holy, which may <= /span>or may not occur on a mountaintop, though it does seem that mountaintops are o= ften “thin places.”

As I recount my own mountaintop experience= , I invite you to remember experiences that have freed you from fear and released you = into faith.

First some background.

[In the winter of 1990], my life was at a = low point; I had no joy and I saw no reason to continue living. I wasn't suicidal; I was so numb I bare= ly felt despair. This feeling continued over a period of months, gradually worsening. Then, one day when I wa= s at work at Fort Collins High School, I answered the telephone in the English office. As I jotted down a message= for someone, I saw—in a tiny crevice between the ancient carpet and the wall—my gold earring, from my favorite pair, the only earrings I owned that were re= al gold. One earring lay in my jewelr= y box at home, but the other had been missing for over a year; I had searched and= searched for it, and had long ago given it up for lost. The English office had been vacuumed five nights a week for over a y= ear, and the rug shampooed at least a couple of times, but somehow, there was my long-lost gold earring, twinkling at me as I answered the telephone.

This re-discovery of something I thought w= as lost—something treasured, small, delicate, gold, hidden and missing for a while—was remarkably affirming.[3]=

A small incident, trivial to others, that = led to major changes in my life. I unp= lugged the television, stopped smoking, and began riding my bike to work. By the summer, I was ready when a friend invited me to hike and camp in Colorado’s Indian Peak Wilderness. We followed the Pawnee Pass Trail outsi= de Nederland, Colorado, up and over Pawnee Peak, and down the other side a sho= rt distance to camp at Pawnee Lake. T= he hike up Pawnee Peak was physically challenging because I was still short of breath from too many years of smoking, but I made it. (For the next year, I kept on my desk a photograph of me standing beside a marker that reads: “Pa= wnee Pass – Continental Divide – Elevation 12, 550 feet.”)

Needless to say, the landscape was stunning and moving. But the life-changing mountaintop moment came when we began the climb up the peak to go home. It was early in the morning and the mou= ntain was wrapped in fog and mist. We ha= d to climb over and past huge boulders, and we could see only a few feet in any direction. My friend was ahead of = me, but I couldn’t see him. It felt li= ke I was alone among the boulders and mist. Suddenly a gust of wind yanked me sideways and slammed me into a wide flat rockface. It was terrifying—just beyond my foot was a crevice between jagged boulders—a few inches more and I’d have been toppling into it. But I hadn’t fallen; the wind had turne= d, it seemed, and pushed me against the rock instead of away from it—in retrospec= t, I could almost envision it as being clasped to the bosom of the mountain. Once I collected my wits, I kept climbi= ng and made it the rest of the way without incident.

I heard no voice out of the clouds; I saw = no dazzling light. But the more I re-= lived the moment the wind slammed me against the rock, and reflected on how easil= y I could have died, the more my life changed. One thought that occurred to me = was that if I’d died, I’d at least have died doing something interesting, not j= ust sitting in front of a television. = (A few weeks earlier in the town where I lived, a woman was doing just that—i.e., sitting on the couch watching television—when a semi-truck crashed into her living room and killed her.) I beg= an to accept that there are no guarantees, life can end at any moment, and it should be fully and joyfully engaged while we can do so. In a way, the lesson was that I would die when it was time—no sooner= and no later. My giving up the illusion that I control whether I live or die resulted in what Jesus said, i.e., “to gain your life, you must lose it.” I realized that all my life, I had been fearful. I wanted to do things, but found ways to sabotage the possibilities. In a way I cannot explain, that mountaintop encounter with a gust of wind in the clouds erased my fear and I came to consider life and all that happens as “all part of the adventure.= ” My life took many turns after that, eac= h turn leading me closer and closer to stepping out in faith, to being able to let= go and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. It would, however, be anoth= er ten years before I would use that word, faith.

So where have your mountaintop encounters occurred? Where have you been transformed/transfigured<= /span>? Have you stood in a thin place, inches from eternity? Have you felt a movem= ent from fear to faith?