Living in Memory of the Mountaintops

We may not always live on the mountaintop, but we can live in memory of it. This article explores how, even though moments of awe fade, we can intentionally remember them and let them guide how we see life and people.

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Living in Memory of the Mountaintops

From that blurry territory where my conscious and unconscious fasten together, every so often, I’ll get this welcome little, recurring, wakeful dream.  Out of nowhere, I’ll catch myself imagining that I’m living through the last few days of my life.  I know how dark that sounds.  Somehow…some way…it doesn’t feel dark at all to me.  Just the opposite.  When it happens, all the things that, just a minute ago, seemed ordinary, take on the shine of sunset colors.  It’s like suddenly, the geode gets busted open, and the crystalline quartz hidden on the inside of things shows up on the outside.  In those moments, I’ll catch myself thinking, “Hmm, that old pain in my leg, I wonder if I’ll miss that?”  I’ll find myself appreciating how I earned that pain through all that gorgeous running and biking through the years!  I’ll notice the way the morning sun splashes through the window, and I’ll think, “Somebody really ought to take a picture of that and frame it!”  I regard these moments as my own personal version of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, except stripped of the sadness, and set to a warm, swelling soundtrack that makes gratitude well up in my eyes (Think:  Ennio Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe played by Yo-Yo Ma).  For a sparkling moment, or two, I’m granted an intuition into the preciousness of this life of mine…maybe an intuition into the preciousness of all Life?    

Something like that happened two Sundays ago on the trip from my chosen hometown of St. Louis to my boyhood hometown of Springfield, Illinois.  I’ve always thought of that hundred-mile stretch of I-55 as flyover territory—a thing to be gotten through as quickly as possible—a kind of disposable scenery.  For forty years, I’ve made use of whatever distracting technology was on offer:  blues harmonica, AM sports radio, FM music radio, clunky 8-tracks, cassette tapes (pirated and mixed, of course), for an eye blink, CDs, and finally podcasts.  A funny thing happened on my way to visit Mom two Sundays ago.  I heeded the call to turn all that sound off.  

That’s when reality shifted.  It was just over the Macoupin County line at mile marker 39.  All of a sudden, that flatness seemed like a long-lost friend.  In the twinkling of an eye, my eyes now beheld the same landscape as “expansive,” not boring.  I noticed how a winter’s blue sky stretched 360 degrees around me, from horizon to horizon to horizon to horizon.  The unobstructed view of the land sprawled out, under all that indigo, revealed centuries of stories.  I imagined the long-gone prairie grass honeycombed by pathways worn underfoot by tribal traders and travelers, as well as the deer that sustained them.  Here to the west was a large two-story farmhouse set in the middle of mature red oaks and white pines.  I imagined generations of families toiling, not only for their own bread, but the bread of a whole nation.  Not far from there, dilapidated buildings and rusted machinery revealed a tale of possible foreclosures and the passing away of a family’s legacy.  To the east, metallic grain silos gleamed in the morning sun.  Those silos took me back to Mr. Ludwig’s feed silo, a ½ mile’s pedal down a sticky summer’s road from my childhood home.  A cascade of appreciation flowed for the way the outdoors always seemed to heal my boy soul, washing away the stain of the painful stuff that tended to happen indoors at night.

Jean-François Millet, The Angelus

A Miracle at Mom’s Memory Care Two Weeks Ago 

For a fifty-mile stretch of road, I was given vision to contemplate the landscapes of my life, the way a child contemplates summer on the evening before the new school year begins.  In the sunset shadows, summer has a way of shedding her daily disguise of ordinariness.  Like the final, noisy draw of a chocolate shake, on nights like these a child fully and finally realizes the deliciousness of what is passing away.   

I crossed the threshold of mom’s memory care facility in the heart-space I just described.  Here in the late winter of her life, she wasn’t busy imagining her last days; she was passing through them.  Miraculously, I was given a kind of sunset vision that allowed me to take in the sacredness of what would soon be passing away.    

What Happened at Mom’s Memory Care the Following Week

My own little personalized Our Town experience took place two Sundays ago.  You know what happened on this past Sunday?  I took the same stretch of highway from St. Louis to Springfield.  Just like the previous week, I turned off the sound system in my car.  I visited my mom just like the week before.  I followed essentially the same recipe.  So what do you suppose happened?  Remember how I said the week before, “the geode [of reality] was busted open, and the crystalline quartz hidden on the inside of things shone on the outside?”  Well, this week, the skin of that geode grew back.  The landscape that, just the week before, appeared expansive, and shot through with ancient old stories, and layers of meaning, somehow appeared decidedly more two-dimensional. 

A “jeremiad” is another word for a complaint.  It got its name from the Prophet Jeremiah, who was an expert at complaining.  One of his best was when he complained about the human heart.  He described it as “fickle and unknowable” (Jeremiah 17:9).  I wonder if he wrote that after he experienced two Sundays in a row like mine?  His little verse hit the nail on the head for me.  In one moment, we can stand in awe before a sacred landscape, the next moment, we can look right through it, distracted by a stray thought, feeling, or digestive enzyme.  Time and again, I learn that it’s as impossible to hold onto a mountaintop experience as it is to hold onto the infatuation phase of a relationship.  

A Takeaway from an Old Folks Home

So what’s a spiritual wayfarer to do with the common experience of the human heart’s inability to pitch a tent and hold onto the mountaintop experience?  In the last two weeks, I’ve been able to pull up a front-row seat to watch a repeating one-act play that hits the nail of this question on the head.  In my last two Sunday visits, mom and I ate lunch with her memory care colleague, Charlot, and her able-bodied husband, Kendall.  If I had to guess, I’d say these third-generation farmers are nonagenarians, probably married for seventy years.  Whether it’s amyloid proteins affecting her nervous system or the aftermath of a stroke, I can’t say.  What anyone can see is that Charlot can no longer move her arms or legs.  Both times I’ve been with them for lunch, Kendall feeds her with humor and grace.  His down-to-earth, Central Illinois twang keeps a steady conversation going with her, even though her vocabulary is pared down to the occasional one-word response.  She smiles at him.  He smiles at her.    

“She was a great helpmate,” he offered between spoonfuls.  “She’d drive the combine if I needed her to.”  When he heard about my psychotherapy practice, he offered this: “Charlot didn’t have any degrees, as you have, but she knew how to listen to people.  They’d come from all around, she’d listen a long time, and then just put her hand on their hand, like this (touches his wife’s hand), and say, ‘It’ll be all right.’  And they’d feel better.”   When I said, “It seems like Charlot has a pretty good helpmate too,” like a horse’s tail swats a fly, he said, “It’s what anybody would do.”    

Charlot brought Kendall a hot lunch and a cold drink in the wheat field on a summer day, 35–40 years ago.

Living in Memory of the Sacred Landscapes

The dimples of her smile, even yet, reveal something of what’s inside, but mostly, when people encounter Charlot, they see only the fragile outer frame of her.  What I’ve seen two Sundays in a row is Kendall's ability to live in memory of the crystalline quartz dimensions of his wife.  It is my conviction that he intentionally remembers, from a lifelong habit of intentionally savoring the crystalline quartz qualities that have always shone out from the core of his wife. By consciously remembering what’s in her—what’s always been in her—he makes that treasure present to the both of them, here and now.  This is what allowed Kendall to say with conviction, “It’s what anybody would do.”  I’d like to add, “It’s what anybody would do who has developed a life-long, daily habit of living in memory of those mountaintop experiences with his wife.” 

Dialogue and Discussion Questions:

Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.

• This article described a moment of clarity when previously boring, fly-over territory suddenly appeared “expansive” and called to mind a “cascade” of treasured boyhood memories. Allow your unconscious mind (or your soul if you prefer) to surface past moments that contained a certain amount of awe…experiences that moved you in a good way. With eyes closed, step back into the scenery of those moments. Pay close attention to the interior feel of those experiences. Be sure to share these with someone worthy of that gift. Otherwise, write them in a journal, and take a minute to write your own reflection of those moments. Be prepared for a new insight since you have developed more depth since the original experience.
  

• What do you make of “living in memory of mountaintop experiences?” Do you think you ever do that? If so, what does that look like for you? If not, take a few guesses as to how you think you might do a thing like that. Query someone about their methodology.
  

• People in my religious tradition of Catholicism are accustomed to thinking of mystical experiences (aka: mountaintop experiences, peak experiences, I-Thou experiences) as reserved for a very few. Barbara Bradley Haggerty’s research revealed that these experiences are way more common than generally thought. Depending upon your spiritual tradition, there is a common sense to this finding. If there is a transcendent core to the human spirit, then mountaintop experiences are likely to be far more common than previously imagined. When have you been swept up into awe?
  

• No one can decide to have a small, medium, or large peak experience. By definition, they are gifts or blessings. This article described turning off all distractions while driving through “fly-over territory.” The next thing you know, the author was granted a mini-mountaintop experience. Do you have a habit of setting aside the noise and the distractions to make space for potential moments of grace or transcendence?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3X_Ytsf4T8

Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.