Cadillac Mountain Summit

Standing on the stone of Cadillac summit,

with the sea stretching away east so far only the sky above is bigger,

spotted with islands, fingered by peninsulas,

with, here and there, the shadow of a cloud racing across it,

 

and, to the west, the content, rumpled, marsh and forest and field,

solid, softened by distance, the settled swallowed by the wild,

spreading away toward Mt. Kataden on the horizon,

 

you can feel the curve of the earth,

standing, where you are, exposed, on the edge

balanced between the four elements

land and sea, earth and sky.

 

Your soul expands to fill the space

while your spirit opens,

a single point, tiny, concentrated, at the center of your being

where power touches the world,

and you are so big and so small all at once,

balanced between the four elements

joy and awe, time and eternity,

and you want to run shouting at the greatness of it all,

and you want to stand silent forever and drink in the presence,

and you know yourself to blessed to be there

and you vibrate with thanksgiving...

 

 

 

Don't tell me you don't feel it.

Oh you may not have the words for it,

you may not even recoginze all of the feelings,

but I see it in your eyes.

I see the light in your faces.

I see the way no one hurries,

the way people are either drawn together,

hand in hand and arms about each other,

or go off to find their own rock to sit out under the sky.

I feel it in the peace, that,

despite the full parking lot,

despite the rest of us, 300 sometimes at a time,

scattered over the dome of the summit,

despite the Park Service Concession filled with snacks and trinkets,

and the Rangers in their uniforms,

despite Bar Harbor full of tourists below

and the buses and trollies belching desel

that carry them up the mountain,

despite the troubles we all bring, being human...

I feel it in the peace that claims us here.

I hear it in the hush, the way our voices fall away down wind,

the way even the manic cries of children 4 hours in the car to get here

are caught up and swept out to sea.

 

This is sacred ground.

We feel it.

We have to.

The feeling is just too strong here to be ignored.

 

The question then becomes,

"What do you do with it?

What do you do with that opening of the spirit,

that instant of balance when you are suspended

between heaven and earth?"

 

 

I know in that instant I need someone to thank,

 

someone bigger and more intentional than the nature the park service worships,

someone wiser even than the generations of people of good will who built this park,

someone as big and as present as I am there on the stone of the summet,

someone who loves this as much as I do,

someone who made it all this way...

 

and God is there.

 

Oh, I know, it may be different for you.

 

Still I can't believe you will go down from this mountain unchanged,

untouched, unopened,

so I drop this word in your ear.

 

You have been up the mountain to the summet of creation,

stood close to the creator of all,

you have felt the power and kinship of creation open within,

you have been brushed by the spirit of all that is,

 

and I can only hope you will come to know it is done in love.

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