I continue praying with my word of the year: mountain, and after an amazing Women’s Retreat led by Jennie Guinn, I walked away with an image that I created based on Fr. Dan Reehil’s talk. While I don’t think he mentioned the roots part, the roots became a focus for me, but I wasn’t quite sure why.
When I was at Church on Sunday with my Every Sacred Sunday journal, the cover has an outline of mountains, and I thought the lines almost look like roots.
After the Gospel, a thought popped into my head: are mountains the roots of heaven? So, I wrote it down. A big part of our retreat was to listen to promptings of the Holy Spirit, and I continued to ponder it throughout my Sunday.
My conclusion is yes, mountains could be the roots of heaven. In fact, it’s a really good way to think about mountains: things helping us gather from the earth what we need to grow in order to blossom into heavenly glory, as the things that serve as a conduit for water, the Living Water, the life of Jesus.
Mountains are hard and messy and confusing sometimes. We don’t exactly understand how they are preparing and nurturing us for heaven, but if we allow it, they can and will.
When I think about roots, they can be shallow and wide reaching or they can be very deep and narrow, they can be clustered and tangled together or they can be thick and sturdy, difficult to yank from the ground, but will come out with an intentional, well executed pull. A crappy job can feel like a mountain, maybe we’ve been there a long time and the environment has begun to wear on us and our spirit—this is a mountain where when the timing is right, we can make a swift pull to yank this mountain out of our life and land a new job in a healthier work environment.
Roots grow in the dirt, the earth. Roots gather nutrients for a plant to push through the earth and bloom. Mountains of our life can feel like punishment, but they can also be growing us in virtue, in relationship with the Lord, in confidence or perseverance, all preparing us for who God intended us to be.
Roots or lack of can significantly impact how sturdy a plant is. Even Jesus was sent out into the desert to be tested. Mountains give us roots, helping us know who we are and that we can do hard things. While they feel like the thing shaking us up, mountains are often solidifying our inner selves if we allow them to.
And these mountains of our lives, they can be as varied as the mountain ranges we see. Sometimes a mountain might span a long portion of our life such as a physical impairment. Other times, the mountain might be a sudden, deep wound, jarring and jagged: an unfaithful spouse, a sudden death, a crime. And still other times, we might have several mountains, jumbled and making a tangled mess of our lives: a job loss, illness, a struggling child.
Can all these things be preparing us for heaven? God is saying yes. However, the strange thing is I don’t feel like I have a major mountain, so I prayed about that a bit. And the Lord told me that I have some personality habits that are my mountains, that are so deeply engrained in me from my youth that I am going to have a heck of a time with them, but already He is showing me how in working on this, I am going to go so deep with Him.
It brings tears to my eyes, seriously. The Lord is like: it’s time to breakthrough. It’s time to take these mountains as roots and use them in a way that’s going to bring you back to me, that’s going to get you to heaven..
All I can say is the readings Sunday, combined with all of this, hit hard: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10 NABRE) “Here am I, Lord. I come to do your will…Ears open to obedience you gave me.” (Psalm 40:7,9 NABRE) “But whoever joins with the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.” (1 Cor 6:17 NABRE)
Is the Lord using a mountain to nourish virtue in your life, to draw you closer to him?
Think of all you can see from a high point like a mountain top after conquering a mountain climb…I know I have felt satisfaction and beauty…I can’t even see the parts of the trail where I struggled, I only see how far I came and how beautiful it is. Think about a mountain in your life that you have conquered and enjoy the view of how far you have come.
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