Thanks to a Mountain

Frazzled, ragged, and stressed. The bells and whistles and ringtones of modern life, the opportunities, demands, and wide-ranging responsibilities. These days it's hard not to feel stretched thin, pulled taut, frayed and jagged. Yet our little creature-selves still need silence, stillness, solitude. Silence stillness solitude. A mountain, maybe. Peter Mayer sings of pulling over on the road near Mount Shavano and "staring at the rock and the sky/ my heart began beating more slowly." Until I read David Wolpe's blog this morning, I didn't know that the ancient rabbis actually attributed Mount Sinai, the mountain itself, with Moses' receiving the Torah. Of course they believed that God gave the Torah; but Moses got it "from Sinai." Wolpe writes, "Abarbanel comments that we give the mountain credit because Moses needed the solitude -- the forty days alone -- to be spiritually prepared to receive the Torah." Lacking a mountain, you can take a wide view nonetheless, and silence stillness solitude. As a dear friend wisely told me recently, "Life is a long journey. Be aware of your body as it is right now, and follow your breath..."