Thoughts that I thought while developing sore butt-muscles by riding a horse in the Rocky Mountains
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: MyWords::RE::RandomStuff

Oh, Lord,
I stare at the mountains that surround me
—distant summits streaked with snow—
and my soul quakes in awe.
In this moment, I am touched by a truth
that I have never known before—
or perhaps I have always known it
and I am only now still enough
to voice the truth that
my soul has always known.
The truth is simply this:
You look upon these mountains
all the time.
There has never been a moment
when their grandeur was hidden
from you.
Long before any human gaze meandered along their stony parapets,
these peaks swirled through your presence
like fish swimming through a sea of gold.
And not only these rocky cliffs but a million millions of others,
mountains buried in the hearts of oceans unexplored,
scattered on the surfaces of planets unknown,
bursting from the burning cores of galaxies unnamed.
And not only mountains but seas and sunsets and stars,
cosmic rainbows painted in colors unseen by human eyes,
formed of substances unfathomed by human minds.
And I wonder …
How do you bear the beauty that forever brushes
along the hem of your robes
without being reduced to tears?
How do you touch these thousand hills
without gasping in sheer wonder
at what you have made?
How do you feel the hummingbird flittering
across this, your footstool,
without bursting forth
in thundering peals of mirth?
And then it occurs to me …
What if the droplets of dew that dissipate so quickly
beneath the weight of my shoe
are tears of joy divine?
What if the bursts of breeze that ripple the leaves
in this grove of white-barked aspens
are the gasps of a God who still bears the heart of a child?
What if the thunder that peals
between these mountain peaks
is the laughter of God?
What if you are weeping and gasping and laughing
at this, your creation, all the time?
And I see that the real question is not,
“How can you bear the beauty that spins
amid your splendor?”
The real question is this:
“How do I bear the glory that swirls
around me in every moment,
while I stand here numb,
unaware that—as I skip across this,
your footstool—
infinite splendor is erupting
all around me
all the time.