Climbing Up

Along the border between the country of Nepal and China lie the Himalayan Mountains, and the world’s highest mountain, which we in the western part of the world refer to as Mount Everest.  Its summit is over 29,000 feet high and was first reached, with the aid of scuba tanks, in 1953.  Since that time, attempts numbering in the several thousands have been made to reach the summit.   Most succumb to the high altitude and have to turn back before the final ascent. Over 2000 individuals have succeeded, some several times, and most within the last 10 years.  Government regulations, high fees (estimate for the budget contentious start at $40,000), small portable oxygen, and expert expedition organizers have made it much less dangerous to try and make the climb.  Still there has never been a year without at least a 4% mortality rate.  Most of those who do die, die above 26,000 feet, where the oxygen is so thin expert mountaineers often need oxygen tanks, so many who have died on the mountain remain there.  One thing is certain, those who sign up to climb Mount Everest do not expect it will be cheap or easy. In fact they expect it to be, physically and mentally, one of the hardest and most time consuming things they will ever prepare for and do.

So how did I get from the words of Isaiah to climbing Mount Everest?  Well it all started three weeks ago when I found myself on the floor, unable to move without excruciating pain beginning in my lower back, waiting for the rest of the house to wake up and help me.  Having experienced it before, though not quite so extreme, my first thought when I felt the pain and my legs giving out, was “Please, no, I have too much to do!”  And then I sincerely prayed for help and listened, and almost immediately, much to my dismay, there came into my mind’s eye the picture of Nephi, hands bound, praying for increased strength to handle his circumstances.  It was an illustration used in the April issue of the Ensign, for the reprint of Elder Bednar’s address on “The Atonement and the Journey of Mortality.”  I also remembered, as clearly as if I was rereading it, the words I had underlined,

It is especially interesting to me that Nephi did not pray to have his circumstances changed.  Rather, he prayed for the strength to change his circumstances.  And I believe he prayed in this manner precisely because he knew, understood, and had experienced the enabling power of the Atonement….

(The Savior) felt and bore our burdens before we ever did…He can reach out, touch, succor—literally run to us – and strengthen us to be more than we could ever be and help us to do that which we could never do through relying only upon our own power.

I also thought of President Monson’s expressing the same principle in a quote I have memorized and often pondered, "Do not pray to tasks equal to your abilities, but pray for abilities equal to your tasks.  Then the performance of your tasks will be no miracle, but you will be the miracle. (“Three Goals to Guide You”, Ensign, November 2007)

I admit, for many of my waking hours I have been hard pressed to see the eternal benefits of the last few weeks.  As I’ve said, I’ve had something like this happen before, and I have worked hard to not let it happen again.  So, I admit to battling intense feelings of fear, frustration and anger as the days passed by and the pain and my lack of ability to do for myself or others was more extreme and lasted longer than ever before.  But those first few moments of this particular “celestial training session” have combined with my past experience, which has taught me that those feelings are best thrown out as quickly as possible. One of the best tools to accomplish that, and open my mind and heart to the Lord’s teaching and purpose, is to spend time in His words. It did not change the pain, nor how slowly this healing process seems to be going.  But it did change the way it feels- at least part of the time.

It was a few days after my back gave out, and I could, with a lot of huffing and puffing make it the short distance by myself.  I had been optimistically preparing a lesson for the next Sunday- which I didn’t get to teach.  But as I slowly made my way, I was thinking, tongue in cheek, that to hear my breathing you would think I was climbing an “exceedingly high mountain” and it hit me. (1 Nephi 11:1)  There is one very obvious, readily understood meaning behind the symbol of the temple being called “the mountain of the Lord’s house” that we are often culturally inattentively blind to.  My labored breathing indicated that I was working- working hard, like I have on some steep hikes I’ve taken in better days.  Bottom line--nobody “ascends” a mountain without effort.  And the more “exalted” the mountain the more time, resources and labor that is required.  And this is very much an aspect of the ancient symbol of mountains being temples – I’ve read it several times, but never once talked of it or passed it on.   Why?  As I mentioned, I think it was a bit of spiritual inattentional blindness.

For anyone who doesn’t know,  inattentional blindness is the failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event, or object.  Experiments have been done which show a majority of people if given an assignment, like counting how many times a jogger in front of them touches his hat, will focus so much on that task they will miss a knock down drag out fight happening in plain sight.   Likewise, we live in a culture that defines “prosperity” as “thriving, successful, especially in economic success.”   It focuses on outward circumstances being pleasant.  And in our scriptures the Lord repeatedly promises that prosperity is what those who obey him will have.   So, when we are really trying to obey the Lord and live righteously, but our success, or health, or financial well-being is damaged, we are naturally tempted to cry foul.  Our focus is so solely on the idea of promised blessings and prosperity meaning the fulfillment of the “American dream” that we just block out all the evidence to the contrary.

In hindsight, I see that it was just that kind of reasoning that led to that very dark time in my life.  When I came to understand that the real problem was that I “lacked wisdom” and began to really study what the Lord teaches, I couldn’t help but notice that those who have loved the Lord have not had easy lives – fantastic, meaningful lives, yes, but not easy.  Some, like Mormon and Moroni, died alone in poverty.  Others like Abinadi, Isaiah, John the Baptist, and even the Savior himself, died gruesome deaths.  I could go on and on in naming scriptural characters whose righteous lives do not coincide with our cultural definition of prosperity.  It occurred to me that our current definition of prosperity didn’t quite match the Lord’s definition.  The word used in the Old Testament, like so many others I’ve brought up, is rooted in the idea of following the Lord’s straight and narrow path.  It literally means “to move ahead” or “to move forward on the path.”  The Lord’s promise is that if we obey him, he will send his enabling power to ensure that no obstacle, problem, choice of another, injury, illness or anything else will do other than move us forward on the path towards eternal life.    

Now, I’ve known the meaning of that word for some time, and if you’ve ever heard me speak or read what I’ve written, it’s pretty obvious I think of life as a journey.  I even once used the analogy of my mortal journey being a hike.(From Where I Stand) But for all that, I’d never put it together with the imagery of the “mountain of the Lord’s house,” or “the Lord’s mountain” or “my holy mountain,” and somehow this insight opened up the Lord’s promises like never before. 

King Benjamin’s admonition that our part is to “become as a little child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father,” melded with image the Lord uses of Him being “as an eagle (which) stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings; So the Lord alone did lead “Isreal.”  (Mosiah 3:19, Deuteronomy 32:11-12, Also see “On His Wings”, April 16,2010) 

And, because that image was part of the song every Israelite was to have memorized, the learned Isaiah knew it, and he brings it together with the imagery that those who follow the Lord are those who “scale the mountain heights” and “wait upon the Lord,”  and they will eventually become beings  who “mount up with wings as eagles.”  (Isaiah 40:9,30-31)  See the progression on the path?  When Israel was led out of Egypt, he compared them to tiny eaglets – unable on their own strength and ability to ascend to the heights that their parents call home, but not without the potential to become creatures just as at home in the heavens.  The “flight” they tasted was to encourage them, when the path felt steep and difficult to “be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the lord they God is with thee withersoever thou goest.” (Joshua 1:9) 

“It is as if men and women are given, as part of their next step in development along the path to godhood, raw physical and spiritual ingredients—“natural” resources, if you will.  Those resources are not to run rampant but are to be harnessed and focused so that their power and potential…can be channeled…(Jeffery R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant, p.207)

Our choosing to “channel” those resources is our earnest attempt to do what is so difficult now and strive to keep his commands—to stand firmly in defense of the Lord’s plan and affirm that we do want to be His children and receive His instruction.  That choice is our use of agency affirming we want the Lord’s grace to strengthen and enable us to become what he, in his infinite love for us, always hoped we would choose- to be transformed through his power from beings for whom such heights are unreachable, alien and dangerous, to beings for whom such heights are a natural habitat. Like John taught:

Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.  And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.”  (1 John 3:2-3)

The scriptures are filled with mere mortals who followed this path and came to know what I think I have barely tasted. Take Paul for example. Considering the beatings he took, I think it safe to say he knew physical pain well.  But, despite the fact that after his conversion his life reads like a constant cliff climbing expedition he wrote things like:  “For all things are for your sakes…for which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day.  For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”  (2 Corithians 4:15-17)

I have particularly thought about that phrase “light affliction” over he past few weeks.  Particularly as I’ve continued to read Isaiah, and the “afflictions” he prophesied were coming, which would affect the righteous as well as the wicked, are heavy indeed.  But despite the heavy wading of the material, the only day I really lost it- all over my hardworking and supportive husband- was a day, when in an ill-advised rush to get my life back in order, I kept putting off my time with the Lord.  At the end of the day I was in agony (again) and so frustrated with how little I had accomplished.  I saw my open scriptures lying near and suddenly knew that this pain and the limitations it brings are obstacles, but not deciding factors in whether I can experience real joy in life.  In those moments when I forced my thoughts away from how much I don’t like this, and instead directed them to the things I was learning, my perspective widened to consider a fuller picture and purpose.  Peace replaced frustration, and, for a moment the pain actually seemed swallowed up in the joy.  I might still have been flat on my back, but my soul took flight.

It leads me to consider what life would be like if I were more diligent in my part to “always remember him,” so that I would “always have his spirit to be with” me.  (D&C 20:77,79) What an exciting—no that is far too mundane of a word—magnificent, awe inspiring, hope filled, joyous thought!