Burtigny: a view of Mont Blanc

Here's one I did earlier!  a quick sketch in Oil Pastels of a view of Mont Blanc from Burtigny.
I'm back again, but the cloud is covering the view, so this is to inspire me again.....

We (Rachel and I) were staying at YWAM Burtigny  JEM  or  Youth with a Mission.  They run various schools here as part of the University of the Nations:  'Children at Risk' ,  'School of Strategic Communications' and the like

I'm here for meetings, but also to think.  I have been before with friends talking about their future and thinking and praying through options. And now it's my turn!   It's inspirational just to walk and look at the mountains. There is a stunning beauty and freshness about Switzerland which is hard to replicate.

I am including some Instagrams pics which also give an impression of how beautiful it is here. Not a hardship post by any stretch of the imagination.

Yet on Easter Sunday when we were here there was no sense of occasion. We walked and found the signs of Divinity all around us in the beauty of creation. But there was no service to attend locally.  No sense of celebration. No sense of the historic faith.  It seems to be all in the present, the here and now.  Which I suppose is YWAM -  young and vibrant, here and now, go and do.

But the little Church was open and provided a reflective space to be still and to know.......
And somehow the mountains themselves are a reminder of timelessness and majesty, of solidity and permanence - though nothing is of course ultimately permanent.  
  

Shelly wrote a poem called 'Mont Blanc' in 1816   about the power of nature raw in tooth and claw, both benevolent and malevolent, 'dark & glittering'.

The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,

Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs

The source of human thought its tribute brings

Of waters... (Lines 1–5)

There is something about looking up at mountains that makes you think, and reflect, to look beyond self to Something(One)  Higher and Greater. They help us develop our reflexivity and maybe even our prophetic imagination ..... 

In the midst of rush and noise, they move us to silence.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there,

The still and solemn power of many sights,

And many sounds, and much of life and death....

...The secret strength of things

Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome

Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,

If to the human mind's imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?  (Lines 127–129, 139–144)