My Kingdom

A new essay at The Way Back To Ourselves

We found our Christmas tree yesterday in the Umpqua National Forest, an hour and a half drive from our home.

Every mountain is beautiful, some for their starkness or their sheer rock faces, others for their million spires pointing to the sky. These mountains of the North Umpqua are beautiful for their lakes and the pinnacle rocks jutting out of the middle of a dense treeline, and a million trees of all kinds of species.

The Way Back to Ourselves focused its literary journal on the mountains for their most recent issue, and I am thankful to have an essay accepted there. I wrote about a few different mountains that are special to us, and about the way I seek answers and God reminds me to seek Him.

I hope you’ll follow the link to read the whole essay, as well as the other essays and poetry (including this one by my friend Megan Willome) found in this issue. The folks at The Way Back to Ourselves are doing a good work in pointing to Jesus and the truth, goodness, and beauty that abounds.

I’ve been reading the same Scriptures for weeks now, steeping myself in the Sermon on the Mount. I want to know what Jesus means when he says blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful. I want to know what peacemaking looks like in a world like ours, and why, in the sermon, it comes between the pure and the persecuted.

I think form matters.

I think Jesus climbed up that mountain and delivered his message thoughtfully—to those who would climb with him and listen. I don’t think his teaching was a random smattering of good ideas, all lumped together. The order, the form, the delivery method, the climb to get there—it all matters. I read different translations of Matthew 5 through 7, and my questions linger, but from the middle of the sermon, this stares at me:

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you (Matthew 6:33, CSB).

One of these trees is The One

Hemlock Lake