Bariloche
The stormy weather from Buenos Aires followed us south into Bariloche upon our arrival, now colder, allowing for snow. We greeted this Patagonian gateway and new people in our tour group with our ski jackets, leggings and 2 for 1 Hall Hansen wool socks. Besides its amazing chocolate and dulce de leche, this small, snowy town is known for the magestic mountains, comparable to the Swiss Alps at certain view points. One stormy day, a few of us braved the wind and rain to visit he Llao Llao Hotel and Cerro Campareño—recommended viewpoints. Our view of the mountains was often inhibited by looming clouds. However, with time, the wind picked up and pushed the clouds aside for a moment, giving us a clear glimpse of the mountains. When we could see through the clear patches, I was in awe of how close and how big the mountains actually were! My camera could only capture lackluster images of what could be seen, and images could not replicate the mere presence felt by standing next to these mountains!
Thoughts on mountains, fog and clouds: In A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, he writes about “the close-woven veil of the self-life,” made up of “the hyphenated (self-sins) of the human spirit.” Tozer clarifies that “they are not something we do, they are something we are, and therein lies their subtlety and their power,” explaining that they are innate, often unspoken of and lethally obstructing the view of our completely self-less, perfect God. “Self,” Tozer writes, “is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us.”
My experience at Llao Llao, and the clouds that covered the face of the mountain, confronted me with such thoughts and the underlying, daily struggle of my selfishness. Though, Tozer reminds us, the imagery of a veil may be poetic and “almost pleasant,” there is “in actuality nothing peasant about it,” because the veil
“is made of living spiritual tissue…of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed…because [ripping] through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus, and it is what the cross would do to everyman to set him free.”
“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not put s to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for the righteous person—though perhaps for a geed person one would even dare to die—but God shos his love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” —Romans 5:3-8
