O Mountain

The Story Behind The Poem

The inspiration for “O Mountain” came from the weeks following my Mom’s death from cancer last year. Among all the feelings that Mom’s death brought up for me, one of the strongest during those early days was disorientation. It was as if my inner landscape had shifted and it was hard to find my bearings. To be honest, that surprised me. Maybe that’s why the feeling made such an impression. I hadn’t been consciously depending on my Mom for a while—I had my own family I built my life around, and during Mom’s final months of cancer I had been more focused on offering support than asking for it. But still, when she was gone, it was like something massive had disappeared from my life, a presence that was taken for granted and connected to the core of who I was. When that was suddenly gone, I felt very disoriented. The feeling reminded me of one of my favourite psalms, Psalm 46, which was a cornerstone for me during Mom’s first diagnosis with cancer. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear… Those words gave me courage and hope during that chaotic, fearful time. After Mom’s second diagnosis with cancer, Psalm 46 wasn’t as significant for me. I had other scripture passages that I turned to. But when Mom died and I was left with that feeling of disorientation, the words of Psalm 46 came back to my mind: …though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea… and I realized that was what I had experienced. One of the mountains of my life, that my life was oriented around, was gone. No wonder I felt disoriented, and no wonder the words of Psalm 46 were such a comfort to me, as they have been for so many. 

That realization was over a year ago, but sometimes a thought needs to sit and wait for a long time before it is ready to be given words that can be shared. A year later I was ready to give it a try, and I wrote “O Mountain”. 

As I wrote it, I thought about all the different kinds of mountains that can dominate our inner life. It isn’t just parents, but also ideas, beliefs, memories, locations, treasured possessions, and other important relationships. We all have an inner mountain range that we orient our lives around, and when we lose one of those mountains, we can feel very disoriented and lost for a while. So as I wrote the poem, I wrote it about Mom, yes, but I also wrote it in a way that the mountain can be whatever it is that someone has lost. It is about that grief that we all go through, because we all experience the loss of something we hold dear, at different times and in so many different ways. But God is always there. He is the Great Mountain that can never move and will never leave us. We can truly orient our lives around Him.

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The Story Behind the Poem

The seed for “While it was Still Dark” was planted several years ago when I heard an Easter sermon on the resurrection passage in John 20:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

The speaker, Chris Yue, drew my attention to the phrase, “while it was still dark”. Two thoughts stayed with me from that sermon—first, that the resurrection happened while it was still dark. The greatest miracle of all history had happened, and no one knew about it yet. As far as anyone knew, nothing had changed … but everything had changed. I found that to be such an encouraging thought, that even though it may look like things are hopeless, that nothing has changed, it may be possible that God has already done amazing things and we just don’t know about them yet.

The second thought that stayed with me was the faithfulness of Mary Magdalene. Even though it was still dark, even though she had no reason to hope or even dream of what was coming, she still went to the tomb. She didn’t know that a miracle had happened, she was just doing her part to be faithful to the Teacher that she loved. And for us today, that is all that is asked of us—that we continue to be faithful, even when we don’t see the miracles or know what God is doing. We can be faithful, even when it is still dark.

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