Mountaintop Revelation

Fresh air is all around us
As we climbed towards the
Top of a mountain that
Stood before us all.

Sixteen young adults
And two teachers,
Accompanied by natives
Of a country which shares
Its name with a state.

You could hear the silent wonder.
You could feel the fertile earth
Of the lush farmland below
Visible through the old trees
As we ascended to the peak.

What stood before us there
Is older than the oldest song I know.
Light shone through walls
That were no longer even there.

The ruins of a church hundreds of years old;
Musty rooms filled with
Old paintings, rubble, and roots.
And as the footsteps halted...

I began to learn something that
No church could ever have taught me.
God is never found in a building,
Because buildings crumble
And one day will no longer exist.

But the spirit of life
Exists within these trees
That are growing here.
In the ones who built it,
In the ones who
Gathered here long ago,
In us; who never knew it.
And in those who will never know it
Except through these words.