In the midst of the winter throes of the Midwest, I often take time to think about what lies beyond . . . In particular, I think about the mountains of the West, mountains which are, without dispute, my favorite place to be.

     In his Clouds and Storm, the French mountain guide Gaston Rebuffat, one of the most famous of all the guides of the Alps, writes eloquently of his affection for the heights and his love for all things remote and wild.  He offers poignant thoughts and insights into living life with mountains, and not.
 

    As he closes his book, Rebuffat writes, "It is raining in Paris, and I am dreaming of high hills."  He cannot wait to get back to his beloved mountains.  He knows that in the mountains he--we--encounter a deeper awareness of life, an awareness we cannot experience in the land below. He realizes, as did the famous American naturalist John Muir, that a day in the mountains, treading in the light of their heights, is like a day that we would have nowhere else.

     It is this sense of transcendence, this feeling of lilting and otherworldly beauty that draws people, including me, to the mountains.  The mountains, those lofty landscapes of tundra and rock that roam about the planet, speak to us powerfully about the promise of our human condition, our enduring hope for better and higher things.

     Do we therefore need God to experience this longing, this desire for some type of transcendence?  Mountains are indeed remarkable and amazing, but if they are our only source of transcendence, we miss the point of what transcendence is all about.  It cannot be real unless God is, too.

     Is spirituality really emergent?