Mountaintop Experiences

A talk I gave at a local Unitarian Universalist Church

“Thin places and shining faces”

I have wonderful memories of a camping vacation at Waterton Lakes National Park in Southern Alberta. I was with my friend Jerry, who is a geologist, with a deep fascination for earth sciences. He loved to tell me how the staggeringly beautiful mountains all around us were formed. Early one summer morning we began a trek up one of them.

At first the path was leisurely, and the grade barely perceptible. As the day heated up from early morning to sunny mid-day, we shifted from casual walking to making more effortful steps, working against the now obvious incline.

I don’t think we’d climbed high enough to experience thinner air, with less oxygen, but my breathing became more laboured as we ascended, and I was warmed by my efforts. At the point I was ready to shed my outer shell jacket, I realized we’d climbed high enough that we were becoming immersed in cloud. It was like walking through thick fog. My jacket was dotted with water droplets.

We kept hiking upward, and before long we were above the clouds, and in the full light of the early afternoon sun. I looked over at Jerry, and his face was damp, and shone with the sun's glow, and an inner joy. We smiled at each other, and found a place to rest, eat a bite of lunch and sit, and appreciate not just the awesome, beautiful view, but that we had the opportunity to climb. I was grateful to be alive, to be on the mountain, to be with my friend. I was filled with good will.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “There are many paths up the mountain.”? It comes up when people discuss the wide variety of religions and spiritual paths.

It’s a gentle, poetic way to say it’s good to be on a path, to have a spiritual practice. I feel it lines up with several UU principles, all of which I affirm and share. We respect the worth and dignity of every person. We strive for justice, equity and compassion in our relationships with others. We accept one another and encourage spiritual growth, and we support a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. There are many paths.

The image of the mountain reminds us that effort is required- climbing is not always easy, and can actually be quite challenging. It also hints at a reward. Follow your path, climb as you are able, and you may find yourself nearer the top, where there may be a glorious view.

The journey up the mountain suggests we may go to places where we access something greater than ourselves. Perhaps the climbing will take us to what the ancient Celts and others called thin places. Places where the membrane or veil between the world we mostly inhabit, and a larger encompassing reality is stretched thin and we can peer beyond what we can normally see.

I don’t think we need to climb a mountain to find ourselves in a thin place. We can access the sacred anywhere.

My wife and I both love living as close as we do to Point Pelee National Park. We especially appreciate Dark Skies nights.

We like to walk the marsh boardwalk and look out over dark water, or up at the stars. Often there’ll be a family or two, kids in tow, rocking along the boardwalk, with flashlights or cellphones shining to guide and keep track of the kids.

Once in a while a child will point a flashlight back at themselves, and a tiny face is lit up in the night. What would they see, when their vision cleared?

In that moment of wonder, I feel a joyful connection to that bright faced child and their family, and I am filled with good wishes for them. We are all part of something more than ourselves. We are connected, all of us, and I feel moved to hope and pray for the well-being of us all.

Some people refer to the mountaintop moment as a unitive experience- that offers us deep awareness that we are not just in the presence of something beyond the limits of our ego- we are actually joined with, part of that greater something, that includes all living beings, all of creation, the whole of the universe.

I hope my stories inspire you to think about your thin place memories, and to share them with others.

I’ve been a pastor for 35 years. For half of that time I’ve also been a spiritual director. I’ve been privileged to sit with people as they tell their mountaintop stories. These are good stories to hear. They remind me that these moments are real and true and good, and possible for each of us. It is good to be reminded.

The thing about the mountaintop is that it’s not where we live. We come down from these places, to get on with living, but hopefully with a renewed, revived sense of joy and purpose. This past week, at the tail end of Black History Month, I listened again to Martin Luther King’s Mountaintop speech, the final one he gave in Memphis.

I noticed that for Dr. King, and I think this is true for many other great spiritual leaders, the mystical mountain top offered not only a view of a glorious reality beyond our daily experience, but a glimpse of the magnificent possibilities for this life. The mountaintop experience is a call to action.

What King saw from his mountaintop was a vision of all people living in peace, in non-violence, with no place of privilege for one race or class of people over others. A vision of equality, dignity and opportunity, and mutual respect for all people.

What if we could learn to coexist with each other, with greater love and respect? What if we made our political and economic choices based on what was best for all people, not just those most like ourselves?

We go up to our spiritual mountaintops and see things in a bigger way. Then, hopefully we come back down, inspired and energized to help make what we have seen a reality, in our here and now.

I’ve been calling them mountaintop experiences, or thin places, or unitive experiences. Another phrase that I think is helpful is “liminal space”.

When we’re in a liminal space, we’re neither here nor there, neither this nor that. At the same time, we’re both here and there. Both this and that. We exist in the boundary zone between one state of being and another.

Liminal comes from a Latin root word that means a threshold, a starting line in a race, or a beginning place. These spiritual moments, in which we still live in reality as we’ve known it, but catch a glimpse of how things could be, or are perhaps meant to be, may come at what seems like the end of journey, like climbing a mountain. They may actually be the beginning of something new. Just when we may think we've arrived, it’s time to get moving again.

The spiritual path often leads us to a new starting line, a new beginning place. This is my hope, for all of us.

The above text is a slightly edited version of the meditation I offered on March 2, 2025 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Olinda. It was lovely to be invited. This was my first time back in a pulpit since I retired at the end of December 2024.