A stunning natural cathedral
If you follow Interstate 5 north from Seattle toward Vancouver, B.C., you’ll arrive an hour or two later in the liberal, pot-smoking, craft-beer-sipping, waterfront college town of Bellingham, Washington (another place I wouldn’t mind living), just south of the Canadian border. From there, you can exit heading east on the Mount Baker Highway, a two-lane state road that ultimately dead-ends near the dormant volcano after which it is named.
The highway quickly leaves Bellingham and makes its way into the deep coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest, gradually climbing and then becoming a series of steep, hairpin switchbacks, passing by this remarkable setting just before it terminates on the edge of the wilderness at a lofty, breathtaking spot called Artist Point:
A month or two ago I wrote about the idea of “thin spaces” — settings on earth where divine presence is most clearly made manifest in the physical order, and only a “thin” veil separates the two.
This is one of those spaces.
If you gaze out over the tranquil yet majestic view from this location, you can begin to envisage the rich, revelatory, eschatological symbolism it beautifully offers: the timeless, towering, massive, rock-solid, glacial-clad, inaccessible, intricate, humbling, and mysterious yet deeply inviting mountain that viscerally beckons all who lay eyes on it (even though a mere glance at the mountain cannot possibly capture its essence). The forest and lake are seamlessly situated at its feet in such a way that the whole picture would be woefully incomplete if any of those components were absent.
The lake and forest gaze up at the mountain in reverence and awe. The mountain looks down at the lake and forest in unconditional love — love so deep, so boundless, and so self-giving that its very image is immaculately reflected in the landscape to which it is intrinsically tied.
This might sound familiar. The scene is, in a word, a metaphorical representation of the eternal relationship between humanity, creation, and the divine.
The mountain looks down at the lake and forest in unconditional love — love so deep, so boundless, and so self-giving that its very image is immaculately reflected in the landscape to which it is intrinsically tied.
From the tiniest creatures that dwell within and give life to the forest or the waters of the lake, to the tiniest pebbles or snowflakes that lie atop the highest reaches of the peak, there is nothing, and no one, that doesn’t belong. Everything, and everyone, is tied to a greater picture whose wondrous composition defies the vocabulary of any human language.
The lake and lush forest wouldn’t exist without the nurturing qualities of the mountain. The mountain would lose much of its beauty and vitality if not flanked by the lake and forest. None of these components is elemental; each can be viewed as units, but, again, they can also be dissected to their smallest parts, which alone are seemingly insignificant and forgettable but are each actually integral to a much greater story. The parts that might seem out of place, or like they don’t fit in, might in fact be among the most important to the broader narrative. (Again, sound familiar?)
Think, for example, of the organisms that break down dead matter in the forest, paving the way for miraculous new life. Without those invisible organisms, where would the forest be? Where would this picture be?
Think about the snowflakes — a term that inexplicably has gained a negative connotation in recent times — atop the mountain. Without those microscopic entities, every single one of which is unique in the universe, where would the mountain be? Where would this picture be? Those snowflakes, after all, are a part of the mountain’s very identity. Without them, it might just be a gigantic, misshapen rock.
This is a glimpse of eternity — of shalom restored. In an often hellish world of pain, grief, discord, and death, spots like these refresh the soul.
You can go to church to seek the divine. Or you can go outside.
Both can be deeply meaningful and life-giving, but frankly, I tend to give preference to the latter.
In the great outdoors, there is no chance you’ll be rejected because you happen to be one of those “snowflakes.”
