Today\u2019s Psalm invited us to go to the mountain of the Lord\u2013which reminded me of a hill-climbing event that I wrote about when on retreat not that long ago . . .<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n PREPARATION<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWho shall ascend the mountain of the Lord,\u201d asked Psalm 24 at Vigils this morning. Psalm 24 is a \u201cPsalm of Ascent,\u201d 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\u2019s Temple in Jerusalem. \u201cWho shall stand in God\u2019s holy place?\u201d \u201cThose with clean hands and pure heart,\u201d continues the Psalmist, answering his own questions as usual. \u201cThose who desire not worthless things.\u201d 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\u2019m already\u00a0on<\/b>\u00a0the mountain of the Lord.<\/p>\n I ascended an eighteen-hundred foot steep incline from US 1 to the New Camoldoli\u00a0Hermitage in my rented Toyota Yaris\u00a0thirty-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\u2019m 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\u00a0or cell phone coverage so I could call Jeanne.<\/p>\n A few hours later at ten o\u2019clock, 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\u00a0(a retreat-going name, if I ever heard one). \u201cI think I\u2019ll walk to the bottom and back later,\u201d said Aelish. \u201cThat\u2019s an excellent suggestion,\u201d thought I. \u201cI think I\u2019ll do that this afternoon as well. Who shall descend the mountain of the Lord? Me!\u201d Bad idea.<\/p>\n \u201cWell duhhh!\u201d I hear you saying. \u201cDidn\u2019t 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\u2019t you know that what goes down must come up?\u201d\u00a0Yes, despite my college degrees I do know that, but I\u2019m 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.\u00a0 By early afternoon the fog had lifted, but it was still cloudy and cool\u2014perfect 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.\u00a0This was my long-sleeved t-shirt, a Christmas present from my son. On the front and back it says \u201cSons of Belicheck\u201d and \u201cFoxboro,\u201d 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 \u201cMen of Mayhem.\u201d DESCENT<\/strong><\/p>\n 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. ASCENT<\/strong><\/p>\n 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\u2019ve seen larger crosses on the front lawns of some of the Baptists I grew up with), 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 \u201cAre we there yet?\u201d 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,\u00a0as 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. \u201cJesus Christ,\u201d I muttered with anything but reverent intent, as I tied my sweater around my waist and rolled my \u201cMen of Mayhem\u201d 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! \u201cI can\u2019t even call anyone if I have a heart attack,\u201d I thought, \u201csince I didn\u2019t bring my phone along.\u201d Oh wait\u2014it wouldn\u2019t matter, since there\u2019s no freaking cell phone service around here. Four very large birds starting circling high overhead\u2014probably vultures waiting for the inevitable.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t even have my wallet with me. I can see it now. They\u2019ll find me dead in the middle of the road without identification. Someone will say \u2018I think I saw him at noonday mass,\u2019 and they\u2019ll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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. \u201cWant a lift?\u201d the habit-less jeans-wearing monk driving the car asked.\u00a0\u201cNo thanks\u2014I can use the exercise,\u201d I said pleasantly with a holy retreatant smile. \u201cGo to hell,\u201d I thought. \u201cWhere were you forty minutes ago?\u201d 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. \u201cTurned out to be a beautiful day, didn\u2019t it?\u201d he asked. \u201cSure did!\u201d I responded cheerily. \u201cGo f\u2013k yourself,\u201d I thought. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t be so pleasant if you had just ascended the mountain of the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n As I passed the chapel on the way to my room, Aelish\u00a0emerged and smiled at me. I\u2019m 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 \u201cGo . . .\u201d Well, you know what I was thinking. I understand now why so many of the Psalms are crabby and negative\u2014it\u2019s tough work ascending the mountain of the Lord. But at least I got an essay out of it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today\u2019s Psalm invited us to go to the mountain of the Lord\u2013which reminded me of a hill-climbing event that I wrote about when on retreat not that long ago . . . PREPARATION \u201cWho shall ascend the mountain of the Lord,\u201d asked Psalm 24 at Vigils this morning. Psalm 24 is a \u201cPsalm of Ascent,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":15895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11,15,21,35,36,40,48,54,56,62,80,94,104],"tags":[169,221,242,271,287,463,501],"class_list":["post-15880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","category-bible","category-camaldoli-hermitage","category-christianity","category-faith","category-family","category-god","category-human-nature","category-irreverence","category-jeanne","category-liturgy","category-religion-2","category-teaching","category-writing","tag-christianity","tag-faith","tag-god","tag-humor","tag-jeanne","tag-teaching","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2019\/03\/ascent1.jpg\")
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You<\/b>\u00a0have white hair and undoubtedly have more wrinkles on your face than Aelish).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2019\/03\/002-150x150.jpg\")
Really. You have to be\u00a0both<\/b>\u00a0a New England Patriots fan\u00a0and<\/b>\u00a0a lover of \u201cSons of Anarchy\u201d to get it. These items, along with black denim pants and my \u201cWoof\u201d baseball cap, and I was set. I stuffed my digital camera into my pocket and off I went.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2019\/03\/039-150x150.jpg\")
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\u00a0\u201cTe Deum\u201d that concluded this morning\u2019s 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; \u201cI\u2019ve heard that going downhill is harder on the legs than going up,\u201d I thought, \u201cso if that\u2019s all the pain I feel, I\u2019m in good shape.\u201d 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. \u201cI\u2019ll bet I pass her on the way back up,\u201d I thought as we nodded once again.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2019\/03\/050-150x150.jpg\")
as well as the sign twenty feet up the drive pleasantly\u00a0announcing \u201cChapel . . . Gifts . . . 2 Scenic Miles,\u201d with an arrow pointing straight up between \u201cChapel\u201d and \u201cGifts.\u201d In retrospect, it would have been more accurate to copy the saying over the gates to Hell in Dante\u2019s\u00a0Inferno<\/i>: \u201cAbandon hope, all ye who enter here.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2019\/03\/060-150x150.jpg\")
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