Mountains.  Mountains of imagination, mountains of dreams.  As much frightening as they are alluring, mountains, of all kinds, penetrate our lives.  We climb them, we fall off them.  And then we climb them again.  And again.

     

     For British mountaineer Doug Scott, one of the first two Brits to make the summit of Mt. Everest, there are no more mountains to climb.  After a brief battle with cerebral lymphoma, he passed away earlier this week.  He was 79.  Scotsman Dougal Scott, the person with whom he made the summit, has been gone since the late Seventies, lost in an avalanche while he was skiing near his home in Switzerland.

     The light of life is incredibly compelling:  most of us would like to bask in it forever.  But we can't.  For Doug and Dougal, it was the light of mountains; for others, it is something else, something that ripples through mind and heart for as long as they live this life.  One day, however, it ends.

     As I ponder the enormity of time and the inexorable passage of its many moments, I think about Doug and Dougal.  I think about their adventurous spirit, I think about their profound joy.  I ponder the meaning of their days.

     How thankful I am that we live in a personal universe.

     How thankful I am that there is a God.