What Goes Down . . . Must Come Back Up

What Goes Down . . . Must Come Back Up March 27, 2019

Today’s Psalm invited us to go to the mountain of the Lord–which reminded me of a hill-climbing event that I wrote about when on retreat not that long ago . . .

PREPARATION

“Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord,” asked Psalm 24 at Vigils this morning. Psalm 24 is a “Psalm of Ascent,” one of a group of songs scattered throughout the Psalms that scholars tell us were sung by pilgrims as they ascended the hill to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. “Who shall stand in God’s holy place?” “Those with clean hands and pure heart,” continues the Psalmist, answering his own questions as usual. “Those who desire not worthless things.” Clean hands, pure heart, and not desiring worthless things are pretty demanding qualifications for ascending the mountain of the Lord, I thought, except that I’m already on the mountain of the Lord.

I ascended an eighteen-hundred foot steep incline from US 1 to the New Camoldoli Hermitage in my rented Toyota Yaris thirty-six hours ago, cautiously climbing the two-mile long, one lane switchback drive, hoping that no one was descending the mountain of the Lord at the same time. So I’m up here already, with relatively clean hands, probably not a completely pure heart and wishing occasionally for something worthless like wireless service so I could check my blog or cell phone coverage so I could call Jeanne.

A few hours later at ten o’clock, having just finished a new essay and feeling very centered, focused, productive, and smug, I was poking around the hermitage bookstore thinking that I should get some exercise if the fog lifts, since I am missing a week of regular torture at the gym. Good idea. At the front of the bookstore, chatting with the register-tending monk, was a woman named Aelish (a retreat-going name, if I ever heard one). “I think I’ll walk to the bottom and back later,” said Aelish. “That’s an excellent suggestion,” thought I. “I think I’ll do that this afternoon as well. Who shall descend the mountain of the Lord? Me!” Bad idea.

“Well duhhh!” I hear you saying. “Didn’t you just say that the road to the top of the mountain is two miles of switchback road climbing eighteen-hundred feet up a very steep incline? Don’t you know that what goes down must come up?” Yes, despite my college degrees I do know that, but I’m in reasonably good aerobic shape for my age, am just about at target weight, thanks to losing a few pounds due to an eating regimen my wife put me on, and if Aelish, who is undoubtedly older than I am, can do it so can I. (Note to self: stop assuming that people with white hair are older than you are. You have white hair and undoubtedly have more wrinkles on your face than Aelish).

By early afternoon the fog had lifted, but it was still cloudy and cool—perfect weather for descending the mountain. What to wear? It had been so cool in the morning that I had put my one sweater over the one other long-sleeved garment that made it into my suitcase. This was my long-sleeved t-shirt, a Christmas present from my son. On the front and back it says “Sons of Belicheck” and “Foxboro,” these texts framing a picture of the Grim Reaper on the back with his sickle dripping blood held in one skeletal hand and a football in the other. Down the left sleeve it says “Men of Mayhem.” Really. You have to be both a New England Patriots fan and a lover of “Sons of Anarchy” to get it. These items, along with black denim pants and my “Woof” baseball cap, and I was set. I stuffed my digital camera into my pocket and off I went.

DESCENT

The trip down was beautiful, the mountain rising steeply on one side with strange trees and flowering plants hanging on for dear life and the vast Pacific on the other, with spectacular rocky coast stretching in both directions. I stopped every fifty steps or so to take a picture; during one of these stops Aelish went rolling on by, throwing a nod in my direction. As I walked I wrote the last paragraph in my head of the deep and profound essay I had started last evening after Vespers, hummed the catchy tune of the “Te Deum” that concluded this morning’s Vigils, and was generally thankful for and pleased with my place in the universe. The muscles in the back of my calves tightened up a bit as I neared the bottom of the decline and Route 1; “I’ve heard that going downhill is harder on the legs than going up,” I thought, “so if that’s all the pain I feel, I’m in good shape.” About one hundred yards from the end of the road, I met Aelish beginning her walk back up, breathing slightly harder than when she passed me earlier. “I’ll bet I pass her on the way back up,” I thought as we nodded once again.

ASCENT

After a brief breather at the bottom of the hill, I turned to ascend the mountain of the Lord, first taking a picture of the hermitage greeting sign on US 1 and the cross behind it (I’ve seen larger crosses on the front lawns of some of the Baptists I grew up with), as well as the sign twenty feet up the drive pleasantly announcing “Chapel . . . Gifts . . . 2 Scenic Miles,” with an arrow pointing straight up between “Chapel” and “Gifts.” In retrospect, it would have been more accurate to copy the saying over the gates to Hell in Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

Have you ever noticed that the return half of a round trip to an unfamiliar destination and back always seems shorter than the first half? Not this time. Five minutes into the ascent, the bratty little kid who lives in my brain was asking “Are we there yet?” After the first switchback curve, I tried to convince myself that there were only two more of them, although I knew for sure there were four. My shins started wondering what the hell is going on, while several thousand black flies and gnats in the area got the word that copious human sweat was available and decided to check it out. The ocean vista on one side might as well have been a landfill, as my awareness of scenery narrowed to the apparently endless incline in front of me.

The sun, which had been taking the day off, decided that now was a good time to make its triumphant return. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered with anything but reverent intent, as I tied my sweater around my waist and rolled my “Men of Mayhem” sleeve up along with its mate on my right arm. Is that a blister forming on the end of my fourth toe on my right foot? Shit! “I can’t even call anyone if I have a heart attack,” I thought, “since I didn’t bring my phone along.” Oh wait—it wouldn’t matter, since there’s no freaking cell phone service around here. Four very large birds starting circling high overhead—probably vultures waiting for the inevitable.

“I don’t even have my wallet with me. I can see it now. They’ll find me dead in the middle of the road without identification. Someone will say ‘I think I saw him at noonday mass,’ and they’ll wonder if I left a contact number with the hermitage office for my father Belicheck, since he will probably want to know that his son croaked ascending the mountain of the Lord.”

As I rounded the last switchback and the hermitage was finally in sight, I heard a car poking up behind me, the first vehicle ascending the mountain since I began my return trip. “Want a lift?” the habit-less jeans-wearing monk driving the car asked. “No thanks—I can use the exercise,” I said pleasantly with a holy retreatant smile. “Go to hell,” I thought. “Where were you forty minutes ago?” Within one hundred yards of the finish line, I passed a roadside bench on which the guy who was in back of me at noon mass was sitting. “Turned out to be a beautiful day, didn’t it?” he asked. “Sure did!” I responded cheerily. “Go f–k yourself,” I thought. “You wouldn’t be so pleasant if you had just ascended the mountain of the Lord.”

As I passed the chapel on the way to my room, Aelish emerged and smiled at me. I’m sure she had received spiritual direction, said special intentions for someone, written five letters, an essay, and done fifty pushups in the time between her return and mine. I smiled back, and thought “Go . . .” Well, you know what I was thinking. I understand now why so many of the Psalms are crabby and negative—it’s tough work ascending the mountain of the Lord. But at least I got an essay out of it.


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