Is The Big Guy Actually God?

Up at Jackson Ski Touring, you may be lucky enough to encounter Almghty God in the flesh.

Consider the evidence. Some people worship him. Some people despise him. Some people have never heard of him. He works in mysterious ways. He's prone to say things that sound crushingly insensitive, but the cold pronouncements of an omniscient God might be hard to take sometimes. Other devotees may be comforted and uplfted by what they hear from his lips.

Regarding his omniscience, I offer this example: He was telling someone about a rescue party he had led to retrieve a victim from the Hall Trail. Although the victim was able to walk by the time the rescuers arrived, and he thought he could ski out with an escort, he had hit a tree when he crashed and actually had fractured a vertebra in his neck.

"He called me from Boston to tell me what they'd found at the hospital," said The Big Guy. "He kept saying, 'I didn't know I'd broken my neck. I didn't know.' But I knew."

"I knew," The Big Guy said. He didn't say he knew it was a good possibility. He didn't say that a well-trained first responder would take the proper precautions following any accident of this type. He said he knew.

Was this self-aggrandizement overstepping the bounds of modesty or the all-seeing God letting the veil slip in an unguarded moment?

It all comes down to belief.

As an agnostic I have failed to gain the comforting certainty of either pure belief or pure disbelief. I'm still intrigued by the possibility that genuine divine wisdom may lurk in what might sound to someone else like mere bombast or shallow, cruel dismissal. The truth is always veiled in the clouds that swirl around the Olympian heights. They cloak the counsels of God and the Angels to assure the mortals have to choose of their own free will whether to take up the faith or turn away.

Those who speak most strongly against the Big Guy tend to be rebellious Lucifer types. You'll find no proof from them. Others who grouse are only normal. Who hasn't growled a prayer of complaint from time to time? Those whose devotion weakens temporarily always come back to the faith eventually, usually sooner than later.

So, the next time you're skiing at Jackson Ski Touring, keep a sharp eye and ear out for manifestations of the Divine. You might see the image of a saint in the pattern of yellow snow alongside the Ellis River Trail on a busy holiday weekend, or overhear someone in the priestly hierarchy disciplining a novice whose devotion has slackened.

You could also choose to blind yourself to the miracles and possibilties and simply enjoy the skiing. When the groomers haven't all been pulled off the other trails to work on a race course, the skiing is Divine.