I have seen rivers run down mountains. I have seen mountains that have withstood thousands of years carved like butter from the river’s trails. The sight leaves me breathless. To see a chiseled mountain face carved with the heart’s rivers of tears spawns a totally different kind of breathlessness.

It is easy in Colorado, and other places I’m sure, to see so many mountains that they blend into the scenery. You may not notice.  It is easy in our world to see so many chiseled mountain faces holding their ground that we may not notice the carvings or even ponder what type of sculptor left its mark. And then to think, how blind we are and how we approach, like a mime, our own mountain faces and lives.

Henry Nouwen, struggling with his own inner chiseling wrote, “You have to trust the place that is solid, the place where you can say yes to [the Divine’s] love even when you do not feel it. Right now you feel nothing except emptiness and the lack of strength to choose. But keep saying, [‘The Divine] loves me, and [that] love is enough’. You have to choose the solid place over and over again and return to it after every failure.”

Maybe that is why my eyes are always drawn to the mountains. Maybe that is why I saw a mountain in his face. Maybe that is why when I got home I made myself look in the mirror.