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Angel Mountain

By Christine Sunderland

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Prologue

Dawn edged over Angel Mountain in this Year of Our Lord 2018.
It slipped slowly, lighting the darkness.
It landed lightly on grass and leaf and limb, on stone and path and mountaintop, on waters pouring through gullies and over cliffs to pools below.
It gave life, light shining in the darkness.
Birds chattered hesitantly in offering to the light, their whispers gathering and echoing in the crisp air. Starlings soared, two by two, catching currents and chasing away hawks.
Coyotes rustled in the bushes, hunting hares scuttling to hide, hungry for deer grazing on the opposite slope.
A breeze blew over the land, crowning gentle hillsides bowing from the sky, rippling the trees, stirring the waters.
The hermit Abram knew the breeze was the breath of God. And Abram knew that it was good.

SUNDAY
November 11, Veterans Day

Chapter 1

On Sunday, November 11, 2018, Abram Levin, eighty years old, awoke as the Earth shook. The sandstone walls and crevices of his cave on Angel Mountain sent a shower of dust. The old man rose from his rocky bed in the trembling space. He steadied himself and waited for an aftershock; the night had been windy and the smoke from the wildfires in the north had abated, somewhat clearing the air. The night had also been cold, near freezing he guessed, and now the Earth quaked. The natural world was angry. Was it coming to an end?

Earthquakes, he knew, were not uncommon in Northern California, not uncommon in the San Francisco Bay Area or in the hills to the east, not uncommon on Angel Mountain, a.k.a. Mount Diablo. Nor were wildfires. But he had more work to do before the end of the world, and he planned to do it.

As he waited for the next tremor, he recalled his dream, pulling from his memory the images and colors. He had been looking through a wall of windows to canoes paddling to shore. The white boats sailed smoothly over a brilliant blue sea, under a rainbow arcing the heavens. The colors and images reminded Abram of an Impressionist painting, and, like his other dreams, he knew instantly what the vision meant. Man was given free will, the power of choice, and in the choosing would arrive at his final destination, Heaven or Hell. “Yes,” he whispered to his Lord God of Heaven and Earth, “I understand.”

Abram slapped water from a basin onto his cheeks, smoothed his beard, and donned his white robe. He breathed the early morning air as dawn drifted into the dim cavern. This was the moment, regardless of the haze, that he loved most of all the moments in his day and night. This was the moment that the forty icons on the rock walls began to glow, their gold leaf catching and reflecting the first light. This was the moment when he said his first prayers and sang his first psalms. This was the moment when the angels of the mountain could be seen.
Dawn. The light entered the cave and the icons on the walls began their morning song, securely attached to the wooden trellis his sister and her husband had built. Elizabeth was the practical one, the worrier, he thought, grateful for all her worrying. The icons needed a frame against the uneven sandstone. Elizabeth and Samuel had built one.

The icons told the glorious story of redemption and salvation. There were images of not only the saints but also the sacred events of Christ’s life and death and life eternal: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Holy Family, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost. There was Christ the Creator, Christ the King, and Christ the Good Shepherd. There was the Holy Trinity and the Transfiguration of Christ. It was all glorious, Abram often thought with thanksgiving.

With prayers for his sister, and her husband who passed away two years ago, he began to sing with the saints, and as he chanted he moved through the cloud of witnesses, the host of angels, martyrs, and messengers. They glittered and glimmered, singing with him through centuries of devotion and prayer. They were his friends, a communion of saints. He sang the Our Father, lingering before the Trinity icon.

As Abram began the Te Deum, he stepped through the bright doorway and onto the promontory outside his cave.

We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the Earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.
To thee all Angels cry aloud; the Heavens, and all the Powers therein;
To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry,
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and Earth are full of the Majesty of thy glory.

The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee.
The noble army of Martyrs praise thee.
The holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee;
The Father, of an infinite Majesty;
Thine adorable, true, and only Son;
Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.

The sun was rising behind his mountain, Angel Mountain, and Abram turned to the vast horizon to glimpse the angels hovering between Earth and Heaven. That rim of the planet, yesterday obscured by smoke from the fires in the north, today could be seen, glowing with promise. He looked up to the mountain’s peak behind him and down to the valleys below where hamlets of humanity lived their days and nights in homes of stone and stucco. Humanity slept, but soon lights blinked on, as men and women and children prepared for their waking hours of work and play.

Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ.
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst humble thyself to be born of a Virgin.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.

Thou sittest on the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge.
We therefore pray thee, help thy servants, whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy Saints, in glory everlasting.

And Abram sang with the saints in the cave and the angels on the horizon who lit up the dark with the light of dawn.

But this time as he sang, he saw movement on the trail below. Three hikers were climbing toward him. The three young men halted, pointing. They were the first, Abram thought. They were the first to come and see.

O Lord, save thy people, and bless thine heritage.
Govern them, and lift them up for ever.
Day by day we magnify thee;
And we worship thy Name ever, world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, let thy mercy be upon us, as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.

Abram knew the time of his hiding was over, and the time of his revealing had come. He knew that God uses what he hides in, to reveal himself from. As he raised his arms to embrace Heaven and Earth, he felt the sun upon his back. His white robe fluttered. He cried to the angels dancing on the horizon, “What is happiness?”

And the Earth quaked once more.

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