the spiritual high

in the summer of 2004,
a group of friends and i went on
a two week excursion to central los angeles,
to perform missions and outreach work.
every morning, we awoke to daily devotions.
we spent the majority of the day reaching out
to the children in the gang-infested community.
and filled the evening with extended times of worship.

somehow,
whilst on the trip, faith seemed a little more real.
it was a little easier to share my beliefs.
it was a little more practical to do devotions.
it was a little more freeing to worship,
and to share the inner secrets of my soul.

we closed off the trip with a time of
group communion, in which we tore off hunks
of calabrese, gave it to one another, and dipped
the shared bread into paper cups of
fizzy mexican cream soda,
as a sacrament of eternal friendship
and ultimate common/union.

on the flight back, i journaled
about the intense spiritual invincibility
that surged through my veins.
i was determined to convert everyone
i knew, and to authentically help
others grow in their faith.

and, it didn't really happen.
in fact, about two weeks after arriving
back home in the real world,
i began to doubt everything that i had
seen and had experienced on that trip,
and chalked it up to simple,
emotional fantasy.

i'm not alone in this experience.
maybe yours happened at a summer camp,
or maybe on a weekend retreat,
but many youth that are involved in the church,
do, at some point, have a monumental experience,
in which they experience god in a new way-
which is typically characterized by a flood
of overwhelming emotions and good times.

they label this period as a "spiritual high".

looking back, i wouldn't characterize my
experiences as being false or untrue.
it was a milestone in becoming who i am.

the problem is, we, as humans,
cannot live on the mountaintop forever-
and the few that do, make extreme sacrifices
to stay up there.
eventually, we have to climb down from the
mountain, and there really are only two approaches
for coming down:
you either do so cautiously, step by step;
or you plummet, and are battered and bruised
on the way down.

and that, for far too many, is the experience.
people live wounded and feel mistreated,
because not only is the mountain-top-high
a tangible reality, but they only realized this
truth while they were crash landing down
a jagged mountainside.

how can we learn to seek out those highs in our lives,
and then move from transitioning down from
that high, and learn to internalize those
spiritual high moments and experiences,
and allow it to shape our lives,
in practical ways?