“The deep, meaningful, and true things don’t shout, they whisper.  Though they run through the heart of all things, they are only perceived by those who have learned to embrace the silence.”  Erik Stensland

“Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning than we can comprehend.”  Dennis Covington

“ . . . After the fire came a small whisper . . . and a voice came to Elijah.” 1 Kings 19:13

This week I was graced with a book.  It was given me by Kathi, a dear friend who is dying of cancer.  Kathi knows how much I enjoy hiking and wanted to gift me with a book that is meaningful to her.  (Funny, isn’t it, how facing one’s own mortality can cause us to value what matters most?)  The book is entitled “Whispers in the Wilderness” by Erik Stensland.  Erik is a photojournalist who lives in Estes Park and has devoted much of his life to experiencing, and sharing, the gifts which God gives us in nature, especially as experienced in the Rocky Mountains. 

The photos in the book are breathtaking.  Truly Erik has a gift.  But what has struck me is that Erik captures, both in his writing and his photos, the sense of the Divine Mystery which is being communicated in the stillness, the silence, the serenity of the majestic mountain surroundings.  This book reads like a devotional, and in fact that is how I’ve been using it, as both Lectio and Visio Divina.  I’d like to share with you an example.  Perhaps it might behoove you, as you read the following, to find a photo like the one of Longs Peak above, to look at carefully.

“Much of the time I walk in the fog, uncertain of where I am, unsure if I’m headed in the right direction or even moving at all.  The dark clouds swirl in front of my face, leaving me nearly blind.  But every once in a while, when I stop striving and simply sit in the stillness, a small window in the clouds opens for a moment, giving me a glimpse of where I am, and where I need to head.  It all becomes so clear.  My heart fills with a deep sense of peace, and a weight I didn’t even know was there falls away.

            Oh, how I long to hold on to the moment, to always see things with clarity; however, the clouds soon move back in, and I am tempted to doubt whether I actually saw anything at all.  Yet somewhere deep down I know that I glimpsed my destination.  In the darkness I begin to wonder why we are forced to live in such mystery.  Could there be more to it than just some unavoidable frustration?  Is it possible that mystery is somehow an essential component of our formation in our journey through life?  If there is a chance this is true, then let us whole-heartedly embrace the often-uncomfortable mystery of life and let it work its good into us.

The book is an invitation to experience the mystery of our own deeper selves by moving in and through nature which reveals and is conducive to experiencing the mystery of God. I invite you today to intentionally move deeper into that Divine Mystery, unfamiliar and uncomfortable though it may be. 

I invite you today to embrace the silence in which the voice of God is much more easily heard, and listen for that small voice that whispers to you.

I invite you today to step into a place of solitude, preferably surrounded by trees, lakes, rivers, or mountains, and there experience the joy of being wrapped in The One who is so much grander, and greater, and gracious than one can imagine.