The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from…For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. CS Lewis
Most years, the first or second week of December, I’m in the little town of Schladming, in the Austrian Alps, to teach at a Bible school where countless lives have been transformed as students encounter the powerful cocktail of global fellowship, creation’s stunning beauty, and teaching rooted in the central truth that Christ is still alive, wanting to express life uniquely through each of us.
Because I get to be here at that time of year, I know Schladming in winter, know the Planai as a ski area, where you’re whisked upwards 1000 meters in a few minutes time to enter a winter playground, a skier’s paradise. When I go up the mountain, I always do the same thing after exiting the gondola: attach skis, turn left, and make the quick descent down to a different lift, one which will take me up the highest point. It’s up there that I make a little pilgrimage to the cross, where I’ll often snap a quick picture and offer thanks to God for health of body to be in the center of all this beauty. On that second lift, there’s a guest house off to the left, always shuttered up, and hard to access by skis apparently, because of the hills around it.
On Saturday we hiked the ski area, following trail #50 through meadows, people’s driveways, cow pastures, and forest trails. Up. Up. Up. We’ve only a tiny tourist map and no real way of knowing where we’re going, or even where we are, other than the altimeter on my watch, which clicks off the meters of ascent, each number an encouragement amidst the sweat and work of this hike on a humid day.
Minutes turn into hours. Breaks become a bit longer along the way, and though we’re living life and confident that up is the proper general direction, we’re equal parts “hoping” and “confident” that we’re going to reach our goal.
A few hours into our journey, we stop for a break, at an opening in the forest. I’m drinking water as I gaze off to the left at a guest house sitting on the crest of a little hill and slowly, I’ve this sense that I’m looking at something familiar. “How do I know this place?” I ask, looking intently, reading the inscription across the space between roof and windows. And then, in an instant, I know. My mind’s eye connects the scene of this place in snowy winter with the now summer scene in front of me, and I know precisely – precisely, where we are.
“We’re under the lift that will take us to the cross” I tell my wife, smiling, and the joy comes not just from knowing the place, but from knowing that I know. It comes from the resonance between this experience and something deep inside of me, a memory. In an instant everything changes. I know where I am. I know where I’m going. I know I’ll get there. This little place on this vast mountainside, itself a dot in the Alps, feels like home.
Soon we’re at the cross, but that last portion of the trip, with sure bearings and familiarity brought about by seeing something already in my heart made all the difference. Doubt and uncertainty were vanquished by the reference point, the knowing that I’ve been here before.
When CS Lewis writes of his heart’s longing to find the source of beauty, hope, intimacy, meaning, joy, he echoes “The Preacher” from Ecclesiastes, who says in chapter three that God has placed “eternity in the hearts of people…” which means that there’s something in us that rejoices in the seeing of beauty and recoils in horror over the killing of children in war, or in the womb, or the destruction of marriages, or soil, or cities, through greed and corruption.
But especially, it means that we should be on the look out for moments where our hearts will leap because something in us will cry out, in our sensing of justice, beauty, and joy, “Yes! This is real life, the way life ought to be.” It can happen when you see lavish generosity, or Rosa Parks refusing to be corralled into conformity, or a stunning sunset, or a moment of genuine intimacy. When it happens and something deep inside us is haunted by a joyous sense we’ve been here before, we’re made for this, then we know we’re on to something. Keep following and you’ll find home; you’ll find the life for which you are created.
I was in college, depressed, a little disillusioned with my studies in architecture, when I went to ski retreat at a Bible camp and the speaker spoke on Jeremiah 9:23-27 about knowing God, and why that pursuit matters more than anything in the world.
Sitting in the A-frame chapel with 150 other college students, my heart caught fire. It was as if I’d seen something I’d known before, as if I knew that this pursuit was for me, as if “seeking, and knowing God” would be a sort of “coming home to a place I’d never been before.” I prayed that night, alone in the snow, because I knew somehow, that this pursuit was where I was meant to be. That prayer changed my life, my priorities, ultimately my vocation. It’s changing me still.
Moments like this come more often than we realize; in the quiet hours at sunrise with coffee and the scriptures, sitting under a redwood tree; in listening to Mozart’s Requiem played by the Seattle Symphony after 9-11; sitting with old friends high in the Austrian Alps, sharing food and speaking of life and loss, children and love, and the faithfulness of God in the midst of all the change. It’s those moments when God is speaking, wooing, inviting.
Listen! Hear the voice inside you that cries out “Yes” when the reality of the moment corresponds to deep longings inside you, the life for which you were created, and invites you deeper into that life. Those are important moments, times to pay attention, for listening at such times is how we find our God, and our calling, and our joy.