The Great Intangible

Annie bought me a book I have had on my wish list for a while. “Man to Man” by Albert R Lyman. It is very rare, and I surely would have had no knowledge of its existence if I hadn’t been digging fairly deep. Albert R Lyman is by some standards a distant relative (GGrandpa’s cousin), yet he feels like an uncle for not entirely unfounded reasons (which I won’t delve into now).
His book is “Historic Fiction.” He makes clear that the main character (a teenage boy) is himself. It documents a sort of right of passage for this young man. From a very early age he was out wrangling cattle in the wild country of San Juan County, Utah. Here he learns how to be a man… a real man. He learns about the “Great Intangible.”
I was very moved and impressed by this concept. To religious people this “Intangible” comes across very clearly as the Holy Spirit. The Intangible whispers warnings to the boy, it comforts him when he is frightened and alone. However, Ablert infuses a very convincing, powerful and, for me, very moving added dimension to our concept of this “Spirit.” He says it best:
These are excerpts taken from the beginning (pre-teen), middle (teenager) and end of the book (young adulthood). Ben Roger is the boy and Fred Roger is his father.

…Beyond the trail and beyond the flickering light of their fire, hovered something intangible and still, something awe-inspiring because of its infinite vastness and silence. Fred Roger was at home and at peace with this majestic influence. To him it was a grand spirit of awareness in the vast solitude—the sacred hush of the wilderness, accented by the sounds of nature echoing from its remote and hidden depth. It had an especial affinity for his experienced and disciplined sense. But because this intangible was something new and strange to Ben, it filled him with a vague fear or apprehension…He half feared and half expected it all the time, this intangible essence of the wilderness…
…Half asleep he would bask in the pulsating presence of the deep silence he had once feared. He felt the pervading peace of the great Intangible which dwelt in all its majesty beyond the glimmer of the fire at night, and in the tangles of the forest beyond the trail by day…a strange harmony of forces and things… he found himself expecting it, listening for it, loving it. He wondered how it could really be a voice without a sound…
…What the difference if they couldn’t explain it? Neither would Ben try to explain about the Intangible, though he considered his knowledge of it to be the most precious of his mental treasures…they were surely included in the “true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” about which Fred Roger had spoken…

Albert’s beautiful and seemless weaving of an appreciation for and communication with nature and the natural world as part and parcel of the influence of the Holy Spirit is inspiring to me. Where can we best hear the still small “Intangible” voice? Is this an aspect of the Spirit we address less and less because with every generation we relate less and less to it. Here is to those who have heard and felt this dimension of the great Intangible, and to the opportunity (available and seized) for future generations to do so as well!