We stepped off the mountain onto the tundra and began a hike that descended almost a mile over a length of some four miles to the Continental Divide. The view was spectacular! This was last week when a group of us walked a portion of the old Ute trail in Rocky Mountain National Park. This experience was one of the highlights of a week of Church Camp in the Rockies.

At the beginning of our hike, a park ranger described how animal and plant life coped with the harsh conditions on the tundra. They survived by adaptation, hibernation, and migration. Some species of vegetation adapt by putting down deep roots and growing low to the ground. They often sacrifice limbs on the windward side for the survival of their leeward foliage. Some animals hibernate to conserve energy by sleeping up to nine months a year. And many animals migrate to lower elevations during the harshest months of winter before returning to the tundra for the short growing season of summer.

There is something about the mountains that helps put life in perspective, but sometimes I wonder just what that perspective is. Am I getting the right message from my experiences on the mountain as well as my experiences in the rest of my life? It's clear that life can be harsh in the mountains. Life can be challenging everywhere.

We tend to respond to life's challenges and the suffering we experience in the same way plants and animals respond to conditions on the tundra. We migrate by moving to more comfortable and hospitable surroundings. We hibernate by, in effect, sleeping through the worst of our troubles in hopes of surviving till spring arrives. And we adapt by staying low to the ground and out of the fierce wind. In so doing, we often sacrifice our larger dreams for the sake of survival. Rather than risk confronting the harshness of life directly, we often let our windward side die so that our leeward side can survive.

So, what does faith tell us about living in this world? The secret to thriving is in seeing a different vision of what living well means. There are times we have to hunker down just to survive a crisis, but that's not the consistent lifestyle for us to adopt. Faith offers a view that we are always held in the life of God. Each breath we take in is God's breath. And God breathes in each breath we expel. We are intimately connected with the divine source of all of life. This means that we can risk embracing and living our dreams-discovering and doing what we feel God's Spirit leading us to do. Faith challenges us to trust that God values justice, compassion, and peace-that the only risk in life is trying to play it safe.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
  
Jack Price

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