Dead Stones and Fossils of Life

There is probably no object within Nature that has not been used as a symbol sometime in human history.  Sometimes it is hard to understand what association provoked a particular object to become overlaid with certain meanings.  But not in the case of stones.  The obvious hardness of stone invites symbols and metaphors drawing upon that quality.  ("He had a heart of stone.")  So also does the association of timelessness prompted by rocks' not changing visibly during a single human life.  ("It is carved in stone.")

Given these associations with solidity, there is irony in that in the late 1700's, stones became associated with change -- immense change!  So much so that people felt that the stability of human existence was crumbling. In the late 1700's, the Scottish geologist James Hutton developed the principle that geological features of landscapes, even as immense and striking as they sometimes can be, had come about through slow geological changes over an immense amount of time. The shocking message of the stones was that, viewed from a wide perspective, they had been forever changing. Moreover, the message in some of those stones -- fossils -- was that there had been forms of life long before human history.

Today, a couple centuries later, most people have accepted that our human history is but a tiny piece of an immense cosmic timeline.  A timeline so incomprehensible that we have to use abstract numbers or metaphors (such as a 24-hour cosmic clock) to try to grasp it. Our human urge to connect with life encourages us to bring this matter of immense time down to a level we can relate to.  Down to a level we can hold and touch and feel.  That is what a small fossil can do!

I remember when, as a child, I first had a fossil explained to me.  I do not recall what type of tiny animal the fossil was an imprint of.  But I do remember how, as I held the hard stone and examined the small shape, I felt as if I were holding not an imprint but the skeleton of the animal itself.

John Muir
  (1838-1914)

For people of James Hutton's era and of the 1800's, an additional shock was the message in the fossils that entire species of life had gone extinct.  How could Providence allow such a thing? Other minds, however, were able to look at the matter of fossils and extinctions from a different perspective.  A more favorable perspective seems to have been more accessible for people who could see God's Spirit as being present through all the course of time, and as caring for all forms of life, not just human life.  For example, the American naturalist John Muir, looking at stone fossils as if they had a written message in them, put it this way:          "In looking through God's great stone books made of records reaching back millions and millions of years, it is a great comfort to learn that vast multitudes of creatures, great and small and infinite in number, lived and had a good time in God's love before man was created."

~~~

Do you remember when you learned about fossils?  Is there some fossil you particularly recall?

(The photograph of the fossils is by cobalt123 and is used under a

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.)

Paths, Not All Straight or Narrow

The front lawns in the suburb where I live display varying degrees of maintenance.  Some are impeccably trimmed; others are half-wild.  Although my lawn fits within the mid-range on that spectrum, it does have one distinctive feature, especially when the grass becomes dormant in the winter.  There is a diagonal path across it where the grass is kept matted down by the regular passage of neighborhood cats.  (Even though my wife and I are not sure how many cats use the path, it is clearly defined.)  That mark on our front lawn reveals to me that cats have joined a long tradition of animals and humans who have found it wise to follow a path that has been trod before, a path either secular or sacred.

Almost anywhere you look in the history of animals or people, you can come across the idea of following a path.  Just to take some examples from the U.S.:  James Fenimore Cooper's 1840 book The Pathfinder was inspired in part by stories about native Americans being skilled in finding their way in the wilderness.  American legend also contains the story of how in 1775 the hero Daniel Boone found an opening through the Appalachian Mountains, thus making possible the "Wilderness Road" for Europeans to move further west.  In fact, the trail he found was already there, having been used by Indians for generations.  And how did the Indians know about it?  By watching animals, particularly the buffalo.  They were the original pathfinders.

Turning to the other side of the globe, one of the most important scriptures of Buddhism, by its very name, indicates that honing one's life in a spiritually honorable fashion is like following a path.  A collection of elegant sayings of the Buddha is named The Dhammapada, which could be translated "The Path of Truth" or "The Path of the Teaching."  Furthermore, the idea that the followers of Buddhism are, in a sense, walking behind the Buddha is given beautiful artistic expression by the Buddha sometimes being represented symbolically by two footprints carved side by side on the ground in stone.

The religious symbol of a "path" or "way" is just as explicit, although in a somewhat mystical manner, in philosophical Taoism.  Particularly in Taoism's premier scripture, the Tao te ching.  In most English translations of that small classic, the word "Tao" is even translated as "way" because of the double meaning that English word can hold.  In one meaning, "the way" is the nature of the world, in the sense that we might speak of "the way things are."  In a second sense, "the way" is the way we ought to live our lives to best coordinate ourselves with the way the world truly is.

True, the cats that follow a path of tramped-down grass on my front lawn might feel they are just taking the smoothest route to the bowl of food my neighbor puts out.  But I know the cats are following a widespread and noble tradition by being led by fellow creatures who have traveled a path before them.

~~~

Is there a particular way that your life has followed a path of some people who went before you?

(The photo of Buddha footprints is by "Nemo's great uncle"

and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License.)