By Kati Tremayne
“How many tons of sky
can I see from the window? It is morning: morning! and the water clobbered with
light. Yes, in fact, we do. We do need reminding [that] we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did
not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it
alone ...We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the
silence of God… [It’s] time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; it’s
time to break our necks for home.” –Annie Dillard
Annie Dillard wrote Holy the Firm while living on the north
end of the Puget Sound, an area not unlike the Princess Louisa Inlet. Her
backdrop was the Cascade Mountains of Washington and mine is the Coastal
Mountains of British Columbia, two stretches of the same, rugged band that
stands guard over the western rim of North America. We have both found
ourselves hemmed in by these peaks for a season, overwhelmed by their
unforgiving faces and raw summits. Theirs is a beauty threaded with wisdom and
violence, and it is as terrifying as it is humbling.
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| Kati is a first-year mountain guide |
As Dillard writes, these hard
places are reminders not only of our smallness but also of the absolute sovereignty of the one we call “Lord”. Our trite and petty pursuits sputter to their manufactured end where the rock rises from the sea. The spheres that I once fancied to control have spun violently out of my grasp to reveal microcosmic glimpses of a monumental work being forged by monumental hands. This here – this brutal exposure and deep repentance –is reality. I feel it profoundly in this place, but it is my prayer that each of us could feel this reality no matter our location. May the presence and power of our Maker always weigh heavy on our hearts, and may we always break our necks for home.
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