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Fire on the mountain
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
“Look!” My brother put his arm around my shoulder and pointed beyond the outdoor arena. Willie Nelson had just arrived on stage at the 2000 Mountain Music Fest in Red Lodge, Montana, but the unmistakable plume of a mountain wildfire burst up behind him. A motorcycle had skidded on gravel at high speed and crashed, exploding the gas tank and quickly spreading flames in the tinder-dry grasses and trees at the side of the road (the cyclist survived and mended).
It was late August in a summer plagued by wildfires. Our family’s summer cabin was in the exact spot where the smoke was visible. I raced to a quieter place outside the arena to phone a Christian Science practitioner, since I felt as out of control as the fire appeared to be. I remember saying to him how I couldn’t look at this horrible scene unfolding in front of everyone. Every time I looked at the stage, I was only aware of the fire, which I assumed might be consuming our cabin right then.
The practitioner met my distress with rock solid vehemence, “Don’t you turn away. Look right into that smoke until you can see the face of God.” To me, seeing the face of God meant being able to perceive that God, good was present, right where the evidence of destruction seemed to be. The practitioner reminded me of the time Mary Baker Eddy saw a cyclone coming right toward her home and with amazing firmness and conviction asked everyone in her household to look right at it and realize that there are no destructive elements in God’s creation (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Clara Knox McKee, p. 193). The cyclone changed course and headed toward the mountains, doing hardly any damage.
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