We've all heard of Mt. Everest, the highest mountain in the world.  Some of us may be familiar with K-2, the second highest mountain in the world.  But most of us, I dare say, know little about the third highest mountain in the world, Kanchenjunga.

     One winter, many decades ago, two mountaineers, Cherie Bremer-Kamp and Chris Chandler, took on Kanchenjunga at its coldest and most threatening.  They didn't summit.  To his surprise, as he had had much experience climbing in these elevations, Chris developed altitude sickness.  It soon morphed into cerebral edema.  A trained physician, Chris knew exactly what this meant: death.
     And die he did, right before Cherie's eyes.  Unable to carry his body down the mountain, Cherie left Chris on its northern slope, ice axe in hand, gazing endlessly over the vast valley out of which they had come many days earlier.  Chris is probably still there, frozen for an earthly eternity.

     Why do I tell such a depressing story?  I tell it simply to invite us to ponder, once more, the astonishing mystery of existence.  Here we are, free to roam wherever we (and our means allow) choose, intensely excited about the possibilities, feeling as if the world is before ever before us.  It's truly grand.
     One day, however, it ends.  Eventually, all of us accept this; eventually, all of us realize it's true.  Nonetheless, if we dig deeper, if we really come to grips with the stark and glorious enormity of existence, we do well, always and every day, to wonder:  how did we get here to live it?
     Apart from a meaningful and personally knowable starting point, our lives are like a mountain:  ever there but, metaphorically speaking, ever not.