Beautiful Mountains

Some days, the cares of this world press hard upon us and our children. Frailties become undeniable as our minds crave rest, our bodies need healing, or loved ones need our immediate care. Isolation, loneliness, financial or work pressures, and world unrest can tumble us into suffocating torrents that threaten to take our breath away. We begin to lose heart.

If we or our children were without fault, we might stand unmoved in any circumstance, but our own temptations and transgressions often compound our sorrows. In the beginning of the fairy tale The Little Lame Prince, a young boy of royal birth with crippled legs depicts our common plight:

He settled himself down in the center of the cloak, feeling quite sad and lonely. “I think I’ll go home,” said he … with a rather heavy heart …. It is not always one can have everything one wants—at least, at the exact minute one craves for it; not even though one is a prince and has a powerful and beneficent godmother.

He did not like to vex her by calling for her and telling her how unhappy he was, in spite of all her goodness; so he just kept his trouble to himself, went back to his lonely tower, and spent three days in silent melancholy, without even attempting another journey on his travelling cloak.

Prince Dolor, aptly named, has been ousted from his rightful place as prince and trapped in Hopeless Tower (also aptly named), his magical travelling cloak providing his only access to the outside world. Forlorn and lonely, he recalls a proverb his nurse taught him:

For every evil under the sun
There is a remedy, or there’s none.
If there is one, try to find it.
If there isn’t, never mind it.

“I wonder, is there a remedy now, and could I find it?”

We might hear in this an echo of our own desperate desire for hope.

Later in the tale, the prince is placed on the throne by his people, who are unhappy under the regent and have learned that the prince still lives. Dolor moves to the castle and as he matures he begins to love the little upper room that had been his mother’s room, “from the window of which, as people remembered now, she had used to sit for hours watching the Beautiful Mountains.” He gazes upon the mountains through the very window his mother once looked out of and, laying his head on his godmother’s shoulder, finds calm and rest. Thereafter throughout his long, enduring reign, the king would sooner have lost his crown than ever again have lost sight of the Beautiful Mountains.

Dante calls nature the child of God and art the grandchild of God in the sublime transcendence, delight, and hope that beauty brings to us. Yet created beauty only takes us so far. Beauty alone cannot save us. Saving beauty comes in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! (Isaiah 52:7)

We frail creatures need first to be met by One who was tempted in all ways as we are, yet who is without fault—fully man and fully God, equally able to save and willing to bring us the Good News in the midst of our need. The little lame prince finds hope by gazing through his window onto the beauty of creation greater than himself. How much more, then, do we find hope by gazing beyond ourselves to the One who created all, the One who has already loved and saved us? “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (I Chronicles 16:29).

In a recent visit to one of our Simply Classical schools, I beheld the saving beauty of Christ in the peace that passes all understanding. Seven children beset by varied and numerous afflictions had gathered for the morning opening, arranged with sufficient space from each other. A few vocalizations by some and reluctant foot shuffling by others created initial noise, but when the young teacher began singing and simultaneously signing the familiar hymn the children sing every day, the room became transported heavenward.

All of the children quieted. Calm and restful singing filled this unlikely space with the gentlest, loveliest rendition of the hymn I have ever heard. With a transcendent beauty that brought tears to my eyes, the words calmed my soul as I beheld these seven children bathed in words of praise:

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Barely five months into the school year, the children with autism, Down syndrome, and other challenges had learned all four stanzas of this hymn. They recited a poem. They prayed a prayer. I stood in humbled awe and gratitude.

One of the children, a little boy with autism, had started the year with only echolalic (repetitive) speech, but was now singing, speaking in sentences, and learning to read side by side with his classmates and friends. When anyone in the room errs against another, the offender is stopped to say that he is sorry. Then he is forgiven. No longer relegated only to a merely remedial, sterile, or secular education, the little boy and his classmates are surrounded every day by the warmth of Christian love, mercy, and forgiveness.

The preparation of the teachers begins before the children arrive. Honored to be part of teacher devotionals prior to the opening of the school day, I heard one of the teachers pray aloud, “Let us exude the peace of Christ to our students.” With admiration I witnessed her countenance reflecting this prayer in one difficult moment after another, as she shone the love of Christ into the faces of even her most troubled young students. The children love her for it. So do their parents.

Sharing God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with our children in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness remains our highest calling in Christian classical education. As we face every trial with a view to the Beautiful Mountains that lie before us, and with salvation from the One who leads us home, we can remember this hope with certainty and promise:

Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.

And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord. (Psalm 27:3-6)