#The ascent dallas full

John Climacus, who lived in the sixth and seventh centuries, was a monk from St. John of the Cross, the Carmelite mystic about whom John Paul II wrote his theology dissertation, titled his spiritual masterpiece The Ascent of Mt. John Paul II certainly saw his hikes this way. Mystics of all traditions have grasped the importance of mountains and mountain climbing as a metaphor for the spiritual life, and I think mountain climbing can be read as a spiritual exercise, the ascent to God. Perhaps this is the intuition behind the building of temples in unthinkable, impossible-seeming elevations. Mountains were often perceived as the place where heaven and earth touch, the place of divine dwelling, the cosmic mountain as sacred center, and the place of divine revelation and vision. Comparative religion scholars have collected numerous examples of the sacrality of mountains. In almost every culture close to mountains, they are associated with the divine, and mountain climbing is a metaphor of the spiritual quest. Something similar can be found in the history of religions. And the whole of the Christian spiritual life is ordered to that end, entering the temple on the mountain top. On the top of the mountain is the New Garden, the New Temple, or more precisely, the Church where the New Adam dwells anew with God. Here the shekinah (the glory cloud) clothing the New Jerusalem anticipates the whole cosmos as a temple, a place of divine dwelling, coinherence, or communio. Likely the вЂњglory of the LordвЂќ is the shekinah (divine presence) that descended in the Holy of Holies on the ark of the covenant. Near the end of the book of Revelation, John is taken up in a vision to a great mountain to behold the New Jerusalem, which descends clothed in the glory of God. The Gospels often speak of Jesus going вЂњup on the mountain by himself to pray,вЂќ and there are numerous important events occurring on mountain peaks: the Transfiguration, with two other mountain prophets, Moses and Elijah the Beatitudes and the events of the Paschal Mystery. The mountain as a spiritual motif permeates the New Testament from the Gospels to the final vision in the book of Revelation. Such landscapes - dangerous and surprising - signified the dangerous and surprising God.Д«ut this God is not uncivilized. Whether it was a vision, a covenant promise, a transfiguration - encounters with God happened in landscapes that were not domesticated.

All of these figures had a transformative encounter with the untamed, transcendent God on a mountaintop. Think of Abraham, Noah, Moses, Aaron, Elijah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah and the various mountains associated with them: Mt. According to Jewish scholar Jon Levenson, mountains function in the Bible like an archetype, a mold into which new experiences could be fit hundreds of years after the original event. Mountains are where important things happen, particularly theophanies, manifestations, or appearances of God. Mountains play a theophanic role in the Bible. This may be an effective way of encountering Scripture and poking holes in what McGill University professor Charles Taylor has called вЂњthe buffered self,вЂќ in order to open people up to their true end and ultimate goal: relationship with and in God.

#The ascent dallas full

Mountains, like Gothic cathedrals, have a way of forcing an elevated, thus heavenly perspective, allowing for the full embrace of mountains and mountain climbing as a metaphor for the spiritual life. Over the summer, I hiked the Polish Tatra Mountains, the same mountains John Paul II used to trod, and while doing so, it occurred to me that in a secular age that has stripped landscapes bare of all spiritual significance, we need to spend more time hiking, mountaineering, or just appreciating mountains as a means of recovering our sense of spiritual topography so necessary for cultivating a life of faith. вЂњCome, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,ДЇor out of Zion shall go forth instruction,ДЄnd the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Shall be established as the highest of the mountains,