Getting Beyond the Struggle for Existence

When the world is primitive, daytime struggle to find food and shelter coupled with a nightly struggle with fear leaves little time for leisure, reflective thought or artistic expression. The account of the end of the Roman Empire in Europe tells us that some fourteen hundred years ago, barbarians arrived and their violence led to the Middle Ages when disorder ruled, literature was destroyed, and social systems failed. It took some time for people to recover and again create social order and intellectual endeavor.

When viewing the Jeffers Petroglyphs it is possible to envision a life in which there was enough safety and leisure time to create artistic symbols that would have a continuing presence. A civilization of some kind would seem to be a safe assumption. We can say that the glyphs are set before us as human creations linking civilizations over millenia.

We find a window into society some 5000 years ago in mid continent when we observe these petroglyphs. An observer recently said that in looking at the picture at the upper right corner of this site, she feels as if she is looking at kind of map of the earth. The lichens can be imagined as continents. The turtle glyph can be thought of as representing a land mass. In Native traditions the turtle is of thought of as a symbol of the earth. Perhaps our minds can connect with people across vast reaches of time.

Funeral at Highwater Church Tomorrow

She lived going on the century mark. On a cold and snowy Monday the spouse of a cousin will be remembered at Highwater Church just a few miles from the Jeffers Petroglyphs.

She joins the host of people who have lived all or part of their lives on the quartzite ridge that hosted glaciers not so long ago. A few thousand years is not much in geological time. Going on a hundred years is remarkable for a person with a biological time clock.

Tomorrow the family will gather to give thanks for a life well lived. At a moment in time every person present will be aware of the brief scale to time that we humans inhabit. The religious ritual will offer dignity and comfort to those who live on for now.

My guess is that the near by petroglyphs were partially religious in nature. Perhaps they were part of a ritual that marked the lives of individuals and announced a sense of meaning that escapes the bounds of historical time.

Highwater Church will for an hour or so be inhabited by family and friends who live in time. In that hour of worship they will glimpse the infinite landscape of the universe. The Lord Gives. The Lord Takes. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Diving Into Time

The memorable phrase "diving into time" is used by Teillhard de Chardin in his book: The Vision of Time - 1966. He suggests that we can likely learn more from paying attention to time than we can from journeying into space.

I do not know if he is correct about space journey but I do know that we discover amazing new territory through the agents of geology and other scientific methods that enable us to view and analyze the traces of what has been in what is.

There is a remarkable refreshment of the mind in exploring the past. There are new horizons, new climates, and new creatures in the wonderland that comes into view.

In setting out to view the past we unexpectedly discover the future. What can be called a stream of time connects seamlessly the past and the future. In the philosophy presented by Tielhard, the light in which we travel converges toward the future.

Human interest in the future is one explanation for petroglyphs and other artistic creations that we today discover. Orientation toward the future would appear to be a characteristic basic to the human organism. In the words of Teilhard, the ruins, fossils, glyphs whisper to us an essential word regarding construction of the future.