November - Living Mountain

La Vista's online book discussion group is currently reading John Philip Newell’s The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home in which he uses Matthew 7:7 as a guide: “Search and you will find.” This is such an inviting passage when so many are longing to find a more meaningful and nurturing way than our individualistic culture epitomizes, a way that honors our interrelatedness with all of life.

Newell helps us in the search by offering the teachings of nine prophetic voices from the past who found unique ways to live in relationship with Earth. In the chapter "Seeking Earth, we're reading the story of Scottish writer Nan Shepherd who fell in love with the Cairngorm Mountain range in the heart of the Scottish Highlands near her home. She explored her relationship with Earth in her book The Living Mountain. I find her words a compelling guide.

Shepherd hiked the mountain, slept on the mountain, and grew to be one with it. The book's title reflects her profound realization that the whole mountain range is “one and indivisible." “The disintegrating rock, the nurturing rain, the quickening sun, the root, the bird – all are one.” She wrote that together they form “the living mountain.” Newell reflects on her awareness when he writes about the living mountain, "This was to become Shepherd's metaphor for the oneness and interrelatedness of Earth...Together we form Earth."

She experienced her journey into the mountain as a pilgrimage, "It is a journey into Being, for as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain's life, I penetrate also into my own." For her, outer and inner landscapes are one.

Newell concludes his reflection on her life by bringing it to our present situation when he writes, "She invites us again and again to fall in love with Earth. And it is love that will sustain the actions that this moment is urgently calling for if humanity and Earth are to be well..."

May all of us awaken to the need for Earth's healing, and like Shepherd, may we be a loving presence uniting outer and inner landscapes.



Photo: thanks to Pietro di Grandi on Unsplash.

** Please see the Resources below for a lovely video showing how mountains come to be and decline.