About Mike

Not too long after that I moved to New York City where I taught environmental education and loved that there was always something new to discover.  While in New York, I also attended Union Theological Seminary where I discovered a wonderful community grounded in a deep faith.  Eventually, after graduation, the great recession forced me to move on and set out for new shores.

My frist night at Union was the same day that Hurricane Katrina landed on the Gulf Coast.  That evening a group of us gathered in the chapel and prayed for the people there. God has an interesting way of working in the world, and i believe that those prayers were eventually answered.  When I left New York, I found myself in New Orleans Louisiana, just about three years after Katrina devastated the city and the region.  Once there I spent a year helping rebuild homes as an electrician, and spent another year managing a Tool Lending Library.  

When funding for the Tool Lending Library started to falter, a small church in Amite Louisiana reached out.  I was sure I was moving back to New York City to work in non-profits, but instead started preaching at Amite-Arcola Presbyterian Church.  After a few months of pulpit supply, they extended a call. I spent a year with that wonderful community, and felt the call to move on.

From Louisiana I moved to the Washington, DC region, where I was called to serve the congregation of Adelphi Presbyterian Church where I served for nearly seven years.  After a few years there, I had the opportunity to also serve the National Capital Presbytery as their Mission Specialist.  For a little over two years I worked for both. Most recently I have been serving Rockville Presbyterian Church in Rockville, MD.

When the funding for the Mission Specialist position dissipated, I was given the opportunity to start a new worshipping community in Downtown Silver Spring Maryland called the Center for the Holy Imagination which has hosted bible studies for agnostics, irreverent reverence reading groups and most recently More Than Mindfulness Mondays. The project is currently in a holding pattern because of COVID

Climbing, Contemplation, Community

 There is a stillness, a unique kind of silence, that exists high in the mountains. It exists in a place that exemplifies wilderness, wildness, it is nearly unreachable, it is dangerous, it is transitory. It is not the realm of people, rather it is the realm of raptors, rattlesnakes, vultures and stinks. I stand in this realm with one hand jammed in a vertical crack and my toes, enveloped in tight sticky rubber climbing shoes, adhering to a minimum of purchase along a vertical rib maybe an inch wide as my other hand riffles through the gear hanging from my waist seeking the protection that will keep me from disappearing into the abyss below. All I see is the rock, all I smell is dust, chalk and sweat, all I hear is the wind and the slight chimes the carabiners hanging from my harness make as they encounter one another in the wind. My focus is complete. I am hundreds of feet above the ground but my whole world is this section of cliff, a little world unto itself. In the silence and in the focus—for a moment—something else edges in, a sense of wholeness, a sense of clarity. For a moment the whole world is present in this experience, this instance. In the vastness I find myself in, the grand expanse of space, a world rest below so far away it feels removed, unmoving. An intimacy emerges, a sense of something that transcends all my preconceived perceptions of the world. In the stillness, a silence that is made by the roar of the wind, a brief moment of clarity emerges as if everything exists in that moment. And just as surprisingly as the moment came, it goes…and I let it go. I chalk up my free hand as the wind blows the chalk skyward like smoke rising from incense and I move up to the sound of my gear ringing like a bell in a meditation hall. 

At the top of the climb, I take a moment to look out at the world below. This isn’t my first climb, my experience is not the same awe I had first looking out from a high altitude perch. Instead, the immensity of it all offers a comfort that is hard to explain, a reminder of what undergirds things, the connectivity of it all. I establish my anchor, set up my belay, call down to my climbing partner letting her know she can now climb, she can now experience the fullness of reality, and I relax and belay her up this last pitch. When she reaches the top there is a wordless understanding, a bond, a connectivity in experience. I ask how the climb went and how my protection looked and we proceed to the business of getting down, always the most fretting part of a climb. My climbing partners are my best friends, even ones I almost never see, that bond, that shared experience, although totally unique to each of us, pulls us together as if gossamer thread always existed between us, the slightest reminder of the fullness, the clarity, the stillness.

As we depart, we talk, we talk about climbing, we talk about life, we joke, we talk about the divine. There is a vulnerability, an honesty, a comfort that comes with climbing partners, a shared experience. I have told climbing partners things I have never told anybody else, discussed topics I couldn’t even broach with either of my ex-wives or with clergy friends or my therapist. The connection is deep. The shared experience, the exposure, the rawness of it all, it creates a bond that is hard to break. We walk out in burgeoning darkness, with headlamps lighting the way, dancing between conversation and comfortable silence. Then there is the moment, as cars come into view. There is a tension, between wanting to get that burger in town and maybe a shower, and a pull to stay, to stake out a tent, to remain there in the subtle glow of the mountains forever. This is not the first time I have been here either, that moment of stepping away, that moment of returning. I will be returning to a world that will be noisy, it will be crowded, it will be too fast, it will be startling to say the least. Its not the buildings or the concrete, because the cliffs dwarf those, make it all small. No, it is the constant cry of progress, this pull towards separation, that there is this life out in the mountains you know you are intended to live and the one back in the city you are supposed to live. The expectations, the pressure, the otherness of it all, the separation from that moment of clarity that is starting to feel like a distant memory, although it was infinite in that moment. Looking at my climbing partner while we wait for our burgers in town, I know she feels something similar, not exactly the same, that is the beauty of it all, but something beyond words that we share, that I have shared with all my climbing partners, that people around us might not ever really understand. 

As a member of the clergy, the experience of climbing, the experience of clarity in stillness, it echoes through my work, it echoes through my call and my presence to others. That moment of clarity, although so distant from being able to really define it with words (for it is ultimately poetic) it resonates with my experience of the divine. In particular it resonates with my experience of silent contemplation, of centering prayer, of chanting the psalms, of focusing on my breath. Climbing feels like spiritual practice. Climbing is spiritual practice. OK, I’ll digress, not every moment in climbing is spiritual practice, but a lot of it clearly is. And what is interesting is that in my experience, other climbers, even if they name it something other than the “divine” or “contemplative practice”, they get that it is spiritual practice, a returning to something, an essential part of living. As a result there is this community within climbers, at least the ones that climb hard stuff, up high and outside. When I meet another climber that has had this experience, there is almost always an instant connection, something that speaks through the both of us, unites us. As clergy I am unafraid to call this the recognition of the divine in another person—light meeting light. My courage to call it this, it is acknowledgment that speaking of the divine is always poetry, always a finger pointing at the moon. I see this same experience in certain people of deep faith that I have meet. There is a recognition. Or in the parish, members that have know each other their whole lives, who have prayed together, mourned together, praised together, cried both tears of joy and of sadness together, there is this bond I can see from the pulpit, a sense of community that transcends rational knowing and all words. It is in the stillness of grief or prayer or just setting up a table for the church garage sale that builds the bond. So I say it boldly, my climbing community, it is a church, it is a place of deep connection and recognition of something more than, yet knowable and internal as well. It is in the center of paradox that we meet, the paradox of fear and comfort, the paradox of space and intimacy, the paradox of howling winds and silence. 

Once while discussing a new worshipping community I was attempting to get off the ground with a clergy friend of mine he pushed me a little bit and asked: “What I really want to know is when you are going to start your climbing church?” Here he was, part of the reason I was receiving funding for the new worshipping community I was working on, and he was bold enough to recognize something in me and call it out, even if it stood in contrast with what I was doing at that exact moment. I responded that I did not know and promptly invited him to come climbing with me sometime, to which he politely declined. But it stuck with me, as questions from deeply rooted clergy tend to do, and it got me thinking more and more about what it might look like, what it would mean, to create community around climbing as a spiritual practice. This paper, it is really nothing more than an introduction to an idea, it is something that will hopefully get you thinking and playing with that experience in your life that resonates deeply and connects you to others. Maybe it is gardening or knitting or cycling or playing music or something, something that draws you into the divine while connecting you to others. This paper intends to spark the exploration, to inspire the questions one might ask. I will admit, I will not be answering my own question, because if I am honest, they have not been completely answered yet, but asking the questions is where it starts. I want you to share in my process of discernment, of exploration, of wondering, of simply resting into it. Can climbing be spiritual practice that builds communities of faith, communities rooted in the divine?

I guess the question becomes, how do I let the silence speak, and how can it help guide a community rooted in the divine? This is something I have been thinking about a lot over the last few years. I can not say I have figured out a whole lot, but spiritual practice is often like that, there is a trust in the divine that needs to occur, and I keep coming back, figuring out what questions to ask. In some ways it feels like interfaith work, that climbing has an entire spiritual component to it that requires dialogue with other traditions. How does climbing inform the Christian tradition, or the Christian tradition inform climbing? Can climbing really be a spiritual practice within a community of faith? What would be required for it to be a true faith tradition?

I have been thinking about this a lot over the last few years, I have been bringing questions with me when I climb and have presented them to the abyss, let them be in the midst of long rote climbs, just kind of bounced around doing work outs at the climbing gym. I haven’t been forcing an answer, just seeing what might come out. 

The first place I go when I think of climbing as spiritual practice are Paul’s words of encouragement: to pray without ceasing. In discussions with church folks about contemplation, these words often comes up and are met with confusion. Part of the confusion I believe comes from the fact that the majority of the time, when church folks think of prayer, they think of intercessory prayer, that it must be spoken. I imagine Paul’s assertion to pray without ceasing makes many church folks think of someone walking around mumbling to themselves. But when the idea of prayer is expanded it means something else. I am reminded of centering prayer, and how Thomas Keating speaks of it. He encourages practitioners to pick a sacred word, and to let that be a placeholder for the intent to remain present and open to God’s love and the movement of the Spirit. The sacred word becomes a way of returning. When a practitioner notices their mind drift to thoughts or worries or joys, even big ideas about the divine, they allow the sacred word to bring them back into the presence. As I have expanded my own repertoire of contemplative prayer, I have noticed that most activities, whether it is psalm chanting, praying with icons, walking a labyrinth, contemplatively reading, journalling, focusing on the breath, body prayers, that all of them are vehicles, ways of returning, ways to bring one’s intent back to an awareness of God’s love. On top of this, Martin Laird, in his wonderful book Ocean of Light, talks about how with enough practice (or the innocence of childhood), one can begin to feel their daily routines become contemplative prayer, a loss of the sense of a singular self. Laird suggests that all activities can become prayer, there is a presence in all things, an intent that can come with the action. Whether it is cleaning the kitchen or driving to work, or making the bed, it is possible for the activity to resonate in the same way sitting in silence does. Laird describes this as a kind of praying without ceasing. At a few points in my life I have experienced this, time when I did not feel the same pull to sit, but that my union with the divine and awareness of the great Love offered there was just present. Of course it moves and flows and I return to a need to sit, a need to do the labyrinth, a call to chant the psalms. 

I have experienced something similar with climbing. On long moderate routes, routes that take attention, but not the physical demands of a difficult route, there is a ordinariness that comes into play. To the non-climber, the sport may look like something that is intended to bring on an adrenaline rush, that it is all about taking the biggest risk, but climbers—particularly experienced ones—know better. Sure, when someone first begins to climb, it is intense, there is a combat with fear, everything feels so big and monumental, so extra ordinary. Add into all this the views, which can be overwhelming, which can take the breath away, which feel special. Some speak of a sense of the divine, in the transcendental nature of it all, the exhilaration. For the experienced climber it starts to become something else. In fact my guess is a lot of people that try climbing leave it behind when this transition starts to happen, the moment it starts to feel ordinary, the moment it starts to feel comfortable, when the excitement of it dissipates. This is not to say that I have ever really get “comfortable” with heights and the risk, but I have learned to mitigate, I have learned when to back off, to know when the risk is just not worth it. But at some point climbing starts to feel like something you need to do, not something that is an extraordinary activity. There is something about the focus it brings. There is something about the stillness of it all once you get to a point where you are not physically shaking the whole time. Something about the void when it starts to just become another part of the process, not something to be feared, but instead respected. It starts to feel normal, and sometimes the rest of the world is the place that starts to feel other, which can be disorienting. With enough time and practice a climber pushes past that stage of bewilderment and separation, for in those moments of clarity the boundaries between the crag and the city melt away and all feels unified. The blending can spill over in surprising ways, in my own experience I have started to approach much of life the way I climb, and in return, I approach climbing the way I approach the rest of my life, they are not separate, they are one, and they feed each other, they speak to each other, they live singularly.

Recently I was in a pretty nasty car accident. I came out of it fine, but in a bad accident the shock can be oppressive, paralyzing. In climbing falling is part of the experience, I never seek it out and I try to avoid it, but it happens and it is scary and it also tends to induce shock. But because of my experience in the mountains of encountering and handling shock, I was able to handle the accident and stay lucid and still function. Thats not to say I did not experience some PTSD over the next few weeks, but it was not unexpected, it was not foreign, it was just a part of life. Climbing flowing into everything else, everything else flowing into climbing. I bring all this up because I find climbing, if one’s intention is clear, not only becomes a form of praying without ceasing, but a bridge to praying without ceasing in other aspects of life. It is when climbing starts to become ordinary that one can really begin to allow the spirit to enter and flow. When the body starts to simply move through the climb, almost automatically, without thinking, that is when climbing can become a place holder for intent, it becomes a sacred word, a way of returning, a vehicle to presence in and awareness of the divine mystery of love. What activity resonates with you, what do you do in your life that pulls you to a deeper place, what can you do without thought that brings you into the fullness of God’s great Love?

Of course, like anything there are risks. Richard Rohr and Cynthia Bourgeault have done a great job of highlighting the ways Jesus warned of the risks in organized religion. Jesus warned of organized religion becoming more moralistic than spiritual, the risk of becoming exclusionary instead of inclusionary, of becoming a hollow imitation of God instead of union with the Divine. But it is more than just organized religion that holds risks, any spiritual practice brings with it risk. Thomas Merton discusses the risks of seeking contemplation and points out that there is often subtle divisions between a contemplative practice that leads to the perfection of love and a quietism that can lead to an exclusion of all love.  There is an inherent risk of selfish-ism that seems particularly perilous in today’s highly individualist world, that the act of contemplation becomes more self-help than surrender into love. Even just the simple act of silent meditation, I have heard of friends who use meditation apps to compete with each other over who can sit for more minutes in a week. Any path of contemplation requires humility, self-awareness and guides to help navigate the perils that inevitably pop up. Finding and nurturing balance become key.

Climbing brings with it its own risks. Read any climbing magazine and you will encounter athletes that push the envelope, you will read about the latest astonishing feat, the American Alpine Association gives grants to those who are pushing the limits of what can be climbed. This trickles down through the climbing community. Particularly in climbing gyms, where everyone is witness to the gym’s best climbers, watching them climb routes they themselves can only dream about completing. There is a drive to climb harder and harder and train harder and harder. This is not spiritual practice. This is something else entirely. I catch it in myself, I measure my progress, I have route goals, I have dream climbs. It is an easy trap to fall into, the captivation of progress. 

Contemplation is clearly something different, it is about embracing the moment in radical ways, it is about acknowledging the ebb and flow of practice. In his classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Suzuki talks about how Zen masters seek a beginner’s mind to always be open, to let go of the thought of progress, and that learning can lead to minimizing what is possible. I think it is the same with any contemplative practice, more experience does not equate to more ability. Contemplative practice takes a person somewhere, a journey with twists and turns, moments approaching ecstasy and dark nights of the soul. A practice can be engaging one day and fall flat the next. This is maybe the hardest part of engaging with climbing as spiritual practice. Even the notion of a summit, it can so easily become the focus, but there can be so much more to climbing than just the top of the mountain. In eighth grade I had a t-shirt, on the front of it there was a looming sheer mountain face, and embossed over it was the phrase: “somewhere between the bottom and the top is the reason that we climb”.  Sometimes the beginning climber gets this better than the seasoned pro, that climbing is about the experience, not the extraordinary nature of it, but rather the complete ordinariness of it all. That is does not matter if one gets to the  top, it does not matter if one can climb the most challenging route, but that there is something in the practice, in the focus that pulls a person to something deeper, something larger than the self, yet fully united with the self. 

Maybe this is where a larger intentional community could be useful. Rooted in this notion of balancing the experience, of discussing and keeping track of one’s internal conflicting desire to climb harder and harder, yet enjoy and live into the fullness of the activity. Just like leading a contemplative group, members could offer one another guidance, share in the spiritual direction as it were, live into what can be. The community can nurture the experience of the Divine, the fullness of the universe in a single moment, the paradox of fear and comfort. If it is possible in climbing, can any community unite around a contemplative activity, offer support and reflection, allow the space for praying without ceasing? Again, I do not claim to concretely know any of these answers, but I think they are important questions to ask, whether in your knitting circle or your bowling league or in your house of worship or community of faith. What is the intent that you bring? Do you let the silence speak?

Works Referenced

Bougeault, Cynthia. Wisdom Jesus. Boston: Shambala Publications, 2008.

Keating, Thomas. Open Heart, Open Mind: 20th anniversary edition. New York: continuum 

international publishing, 2006.

Laird, Martin. Ocean of Light. New York: Oxford Press, 2019.

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Rohr, Richard. Universal Christ. New York: Convergent Books, 2019.

Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: 50th anniversary edition. Boulder, CO: Shambala 

Publications, 2020.