I don't know if it is an actual Buddhist legend or not, but someone once told me this: One of the Buddha's disciples asked him to explain the path to Enlightenment. The Buddha said, "First there is a mountain. Then, there is no mountain. And then, there is a mountain." I have always liked that because it shows the path to wisdom usually lands one back where one begins, only moreso, or perhaps less-so. I have felt that way recently in my own struggles over making sense of my own Christian faith.
In 1991, as part of a class, I was asked to write a creed and set out a defense of that creed. At the time, I was only just beginning to digest a plethora of sources, both philosophical and theological, and trying to "fit" them in to my own understanding of this whole mystery we call faith. The result embarrassed me for years, not for the least reason that the professor gave me an "A" on it, which I believe it did not deserve. I have been wanting to return to it off and on over the years, toss out this part, toss out that part. Now, however, I think I wouldn't change much of it at all, except perhaps tighten the prose a bit, and make certain points more clear that I left murky due to ignorance or my own inability to present the ideas clearly.
Having said that, this begs the question, "why". To that there is no good answer other than to say that I have always tried to make sense out of the nonsense of life. We human beings much prefer to order our experiences after the fact, pretending that such ordering makes them intelligible. There is much truth in that; there is no way any account of the events of each nanosecond of existence could possibly be coherent if we scribbled them down. what we do is we assign particular importance to certain events, downplay others, give meaning to some, insist that others offer no meaning whatsoever. Providing some kind of rational framework for understanding is a deeply human enterprise. Religious belief is no different.
I have come full circle in many ways, rediscovering the mountain for the first time, recognizing that it is, in fact, just a mountain, but benefiting from my time doubting that it was ever a mountain, or even that such a thing as "mountainness" existed at all. Perhaps I will share one day with others what, exactly, I am talking about, but for now, I must say that it is good to stand before a mountain and allow it to be . . . a mountain. Nothing more. Nothing less. What it is.
