Caverns symbolize the secret access to the underworld.
They are the eldest places of cult that humanity knows. During the Ice Age, it is believed that men already regarded caverns as being from another world.
Cavern are omnipresent in virtually all traditional cultures. The Aztecs for instance believed that caverns were the creators of the world, whilst the Mayas linked caverns with the goddess of the moon – linking then the earth, the waters and fertility in the same symbolic ensemble.
The cavern has also a central place in Plato’s philosophy : men are considered to be inside the cavern, only being able to watch the shadows of Ideas. It is only progressively, through initiation, that they will be able to come out of the cavern and look upon the Truth thanks to the light of the Sun.
In Christianity, it is believed that the John the Evangelist had his vision of The Apocalypse in a cavern in Patmos. Bernadette has also the vision of the Immaculate Conception in a grotto in Lourdes.
So, now you take the floor : what do you associate with the cavern?
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Cavern…..
it remind me Don Huan De Matus…..how he respect every cavern…in the way he entrance into it….
even and Castaneda’s car was for him a cavern…..
Yes Crì, you don’t mind…from Palermo!
One day I will like to visit Malta, I think as you it’s a magic island, I will not forget to add in the list this Hypogeum!
Love
The cavern reminds me that ‘there is a world elsewhere’.
A few summers ago I visited a calabrian beach made entirely of black pebbles. It was the hottest day of the summer, hitting over 40 degrees celcius, so me and my husband and brother in law decided to go for a swim with our eldest children. My youngest, with his red hair and celtic white skin, had to be left on the beach in a shady corner, with my sister in law.
We swam around the coast towards a cave that was only accessible from the water – you could not walk round there from the beach. The swim was much longer than expected, the sea played its usual deceptive tricks and the children had to be carried on our backs as we swam around.
We finally arrived: a magnificent, tall cavern. There was a small hole at the very top of it, some twenty metres above us. The strange black pebbles coated the ground. We were surrounded by craggy rock and a small amount of the hot midday sun, which pierced through the top. I could see the branches of a knarled olive tree curled over the top of the opening, glinting silver – it reminded me of a Van Gogh painting. I was reminded of death and the passing across to another world.
A while afterwards I painted the scene several times and realised the spiritual significance of this experience was playing itself over and over in my mind. Is there a world elsewhere? Is there just one world elsewhere or are there many all around us, coexisting on many plains and dimensions? What is the significance of a world elsewhere, or does it matter. Maybe what matters is the will to reach out beyond ourselves, to embrace the unknown and to keep moving forward.
Caverns? They seem to bring these thoughts out, they have an instinctive force, like a living force, which seems to draw spirituality up to the fore…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1081107/Solomons-real-3-000-years-archaeologists-uncover-fabled-site-desert.html
I associate the cavern as the ‘shelter’. It is the physical shelter, the first houses for the people. The first written images were found in caves. They are in the … body of our Mother Earth, GAIA.
Hermits used to live in caves.
Lately we went to an area in Cyprus near Protaras, named Cavo Greco and just above the sea there are numerous beautiful caves. In one of them, it is said, that used to live the Saints Doctors, Kosmas and Damianos, Ayioi Anargyroi! {A few years ago Saint Damianos had appeared in my dream and I did not know anything about him and his existence. Very impressive.] The atmosphere, in there, is so
calming and soothing.
The association/ theory of Plato’s cave is my …favourite and the dome [ θόλος = tholos] is Ouranos. The first Christians’ churches were in the ‘catacombes’.
Jesus was ‘buried’ in a cave, the same symbolism of Incarnation into Matter.
LOVE,
Thelma
It brings to mind a mysterious place which I’d like to explore. Each step will take me further into the darkness. I won’t know what will come, what I’ll see or what will happen. If I will reach a dead end, be attacked by a creature or will find a bright light at the end. But my body will be filled with the rush of adrenalin!
Loving it! :)
1988 – Shoom Club – Southwark Bridge Road, London
Dancing, Love, Music, Smiling
Strangers becoming friends
Agression turned to Love
Love, Peace, Hugging Strangers
Telling everyone how beautiful they are
Seeing beauty in everyone and feeling beautiful
Floating in the Sky
Dancing with Love in our Hearts
Joining Hands
Reaching for the Sky
Believing in Love
and the Promised Land
Believing one day We Will All Be Free
Once a week, Shoom, Shoom, Shoom
“… Angels from above, fell down and spread their wings like doves…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgl70qZDXBk&feature=related
Oh that was GOOD!
His Master’s Cavern
Enclosed I roam from star to star,
I travel endlessly, I whisper and
my breath unfolds behind me as
a vale, a shooting star, a comet
on its way and growing, growing
with each lightyear passing by,
O yes, there is much pleasure in this
roaming , it is creation of a Master
Plan and still this roaming is
continuing, and when from time
to time I reach the boundaries of
my confinement, I feel a sudden
shiver, as if some unseen hand is
there to push me back, or could it
be the vale behind that keeps on
coming back, I wonder. So here I
am, inside and out, no matter
how the journey goes, there always
will be worlds to enter and others
then to leave behind, the roaming
will continue , on and on, no
ending, no beginning, so is the
roaming in the Womb of Being,
the cavern of His Master’s Plan.
Dear Natalie,
I can certainly understand why you might feel a bit freaked out – those are some pretty intense “coincidences” you are experiencing. But don’t get too freaked out…. I did once. A number of years ago I joined an ashram (a sort of Hindu monastery) and that somehow seemed to spark a plethora of “coincidences” in my life. They were so intense (and by that, I mean, so unlikely statistically) and so many that I began to think I must be losing my mind. Everything was suddenly connected in the most bizarre sort of way: It seemed like people were reading my mind. I would experience something (like your trip to the caverns), or read something, or speak of a subject in a conversation, or just think something in my mind, and suddenly, within a few minutes or a few hours, that experience, or that topic or concept would be reflected back to me in a phone call, a conversation, a magazine article, a lecture given by a professor…in any number of highly unlikely ways.
I remember, just as an example, when I was in college, a friend of mine stopped by my apartment very late one night for an unexpected visit. It after midnight – he was on his way home from an evening out – but I was always up, usually most of the night, studying. So, we sat down at my dining room table and began talking, when suddenly he said, “Do you have any cake, by chance? I don’t know why, but I have such a craving for a bite of something sweet.” Before I even had a chance to apologize for the lack of anything whatsoever sweet to eat in my house, the doorbell rang again: It was my neighbor, who was just returning from dinner out at a restaurant. “Sorry to bother you so late,” she said, “but I saw that your light was on, and brought you a piece of cake from the restaurant.”
Now that incident alone could certainly be called a “coincidence,” a highly unusual coincidence perhaps, but a coincidence nonetheless. And yet these sort of things were happening all around me, almost constantly, to the point were I really began to question my own sanity. Then I heard somewhere of the term “synchronicity” and began to read about it. Sting once wrote a song about it:
With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance, a dream dance
A shaped romance
Synchronicity
A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectable
Yet nothing is invincible
If we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi….
Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical psychology, wrote a book about it, titled “Synchronicity.” He defined the phenomenon as “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” In other words: events that occur in unison or are closely connected in time and yet which have no apparent cause which links them to one another. The standard dictionary definition: “Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which are causally unrelated occurring together in a supposedly meaningful manner. In order to count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.”
Though I’ve read about it, and though I’ve experienced it on numerous occasions, and continue to experience it on a regular basis, nothing suffices to explain it completely, and I really can’t say that I “understand” it at all in amy empirical sense. I just know that it is. When I think of it, I think of “The Wizzard of Oz” and how, at a certain point in the film, the curtain is drawn back, revealing the Oz, who is controlling all. I think synchronicity is like that – it is when the curtain is drawn back, revealing the hand of the Divine at work in our lives.
hidden, darkness, transcendental…the Freudian subconscious
If you dream you are in a cavern it can symbolise the womb, mother, feminine aspects of life.
Dear Martha,
here is the link of this post:
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2008/12/01/association-of-the-week-the-mouth/
Love
Paulo
Paulo always has uncanny timing …
;o)
the news page on yahoo this morning…
“Family may stay in cave home after all”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090310/ap_on_re_us/cave_home
Thank you çigarra, I agree with You.
By the way you and me are italians if I don’t mind.
Anyway caverns were used from ancient times both as sherlters and to get in contact with energies of the earth.
In Malta there is a beautiful Hypogeum, used to celebrate magical ceremonies.
another interesting place build inside a mountain, in part over in in part inside a cavern of the mountain is the “Sacra of Saint Michael” near Turin, Italy.
It’s worth to see!
Thank Asif
inshAllah ! ! My eyes will see again….
Paulo, I have a question to you: where are the Free Association of the week page, with ‘The Mouth’? I’m asking that because I remember that I posted my comment there but now I came back here 3 or 4 times looking for that, trying to read that again, and I really can’t find it.
Please, any help? Thank you!
Marta
Thanks Sido. It is nice to read your story and see your interest in my Islamic explanation of Cave.
The two angels you mentioned have been assigned the duty to record our good and bad deeds and are called ‘Kiraman Katabin’ (means the Honorable recorders ). The noted deeds will be then revealed and weighted on the day of judgement.
Rest in Islam there is no significance of 7 or anyother figures.
I tried to reply to ur query to the best of what i know.
Cheers;
I like the ideas of Plato.I remember while I was in Italy,visiting a monasterie near Florence ,in mountains,that there were some places where so called saint people,was a place like a hole in mountain,in the rock,only walls,little place,a “bed” of stone,that was all,and at the “window” were bars.They lived with the mercy of people .Some said if u go there,u have pardons for some of your sins.
Else,I remember visit in a Bears Cave,in my country,very nice,where I saw ancient bones of poor bears.
Asif , Asif , help me
i read on Ministry of Hadj: faith in the angels of God.
Besides the physical world which we know, God created a world which is invisible us, in which exist angelsMinistère du Hadj : carrying out the will and God’s missions. The most important of these angels is Jibril ( Gabriel), the angel who, in the name of God, revealed to the prophet Muhammad (on him the peace) his mission and the perfect verses of the holy Koran. Two angels are assigned to every human being; they stay up him and take note of its actions, good and bad.
In my personal story, you see, 2 angels came to me, and I was led(driven) in the mountain to receive God’s message..etc..etc..:
1) You can give me information onto 2 angels (in your religion).
2) That the figure 7 represents for you (that I find in all the religions, even former(ancient): astèques etc.)
3) that represents 4 alive for you, and rainbow, and The spirit / the water and the blood .
Thank you, thank you very much Asif
Ministère du Hadj : Croyance dans les anges de Dieu
Outre le monde physique que nous connaissons, Dieu a créé un monde qui nous est invisible, dans lequel existent des anges accomplissant la volonté et les missions de Dieu. Le plus important de ces anges est Jibril (Gabriel), l’ange qui, au nom de Dieu, a révélé au prophète Muhammad (sur lui la paix) sa mission et les versets parfaits du saint Coran. Deux anges sont assignés à chaque être humain ; ils veillent sur lui et prennent note de ses actions, bonnes et mauvaises.
Thelma,
Emena stin Athena para tesera xronia… pote then piga stin cyprus.
xekhasa poli, eitan eikosipende xronia piso… :(
love,
C.
Mâyâ (Sanskrit), has several directions in the Indian religions. Mâyâ is the main deity who creates, immortalizes and governs the illusion of the duality in the phenomenal universe. For mystic Indian, this demonstration(appearance) is real, but it is an imperceptible reality. It would be an error, but a natural error, to consider it as the truth or the fundamental reality. Every person, every physical object, From the point of view of eternity, is only a droplet of an unlimited ocean. The purpose of the spiritual awakening is to understand it, more exactly to experience the false dichotomy between one and the universe.
The spiritual awakening, such as it is defined in certain mystic currents of the Hinduism ( Samadhi) as well as the Buddhism ( Bodhi) or the Christianity (see the religious Conversion), represents the outcome of a personal commitment on a spiritual way. A physical, moral, intellectual asceticism, led(driven) the follower in a radical emancipation (ataraxie, apatheia) convenient to the spiritual awakening: however, This one can also arise brutally (current Zen Rinzai, revelations of mystic order).
It is indeed the renewed experience of the world or the superior truths that offers itself then in the freed consciousness, which deserves the name of spiritual awakening. This deeply moving experience is often described in various traditions (Hindu, Christian, in particular) as a ” second birth “.
The spiritual awakening….my second birth…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDnUXVZMvKg&feature=related
For Carolina Sabath: This is my favourite song by Dimitris Mitropanos with very nice words! [Για να σ' εκδικηθώ = In order to take revenge on you!] Full of passion!
I went to a concert he gave in Limassol a few years ago.
Ωστε Καρολίνα ξεύρεις να μιλάς Ελληνικά ? Έχεις πάει στην Ελλάδα? ¨Ηλθες και στήν Κύπρο?
LOVE, Με Αγάπη,
Thelma. Θέλμα.
Platon … http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mythe_de_la_caverne:
The cave symbolizes the sensitive world where all the people live and think of reaching the truth by their senses. But this life would be only illusion. The philosopher comes to testify of it by a permanent interrogation (in which Platon is engaged throughout the work), what allows him to reach the acquisition of the knowledge associated with the world of the ideas as the prisoner of the cave reaches the reality which is usual us.
But when he makes every effort to make share his experience to his contemporaries, he collides with their incomprehension conjugated to the hostility of the persons “pushed aside” in the (imaginary) comfort of their customs….
The allegory of the cave is for Platon more than a simple metaphor, but on no account a myth . It is about a representation of the reality of what can live a person having made its road of reflection, rise of herself; that is his(her) own initiatory route which she does not have to reserve for herself(himself) but which she must know how to offer to the others, to the fulfillment of a duty with her fellow men, Duty of grip of public responsibilities.
To speak, testify, to share and to explain, to understand, road of life towards another life, the light which enlightens eyes is not the light which you know, to enlighte its soul to lenlighten its spirit, to understand what we cannot see, and which exists near us, and which is hidden for us, and which we have to discover….
Discover by itself, because if somebody says it to you: you will have difficulty in believing it, and will want to understand a parent explain, and knows that his(her) child will understand that when he will have lived
Love / live / see and the light ….
For Muslims, ‘Hira Cave’ at the peak of the Jabl-e-Noor in Saudi Arabia is one of the most notable location where the Angel Jibril bring first revelations to the Prophet Muhammad which are as follows:
Arabic Text: اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ
Translation: Read: In the name of thy Lord Who createth Quran: 96:1
Arabic Text: خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ مِنْ عَلَقٍ
Translation: Createth man from a clot. Quran: 96:2
Arabic Text: اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ
Translation: Read: And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous, Quran: 96:3
Arabic Text: الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ
Translation: Who teacheth by the pen, Quran: 96:4
Arabic Text: عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ
Translation: Teacheth man that which he knew not. Quran: 96:5
It may also denotes a place for seclusion from the impurities of the world where one can go for meditation and contemplation of life.
Abracadabra
Ali Baba
I associate cave with something cold but fresh and clean
i just want to say that I am once again freaked out because I just left a post because of the white feather thing that happened to me today and then how I read that you also see a white feather and now I read this about a cavern.. right after I read the witch of porebello, for some weird reason I started thinking about this time I went with my family to the Howe caverns in cooperstown nyc. I swear to you I didn’t read this blog before I started talking about that and showing my room mates pictures. Now I see you posted a question about caverns.. I don’t know why I thought about the caverns.. but when I went there it was amazing, and I was trying to convince my room mates into taking a trip there.. once again this is such a strange coincidence.. or maybe its something else
refuge … primitive sanctuary.
kind of like your blog…
Yo relaciono las cavernas con lugares donde los seres humanos mas primitivos se refugiaban y por ende en cavernas se refugian nuestros mas reconditos pensamientos, alli a ese lugar oscuro y rustico es donde escondemos nuestras debilidades, nuestras tristesas y nuestras frustraciones, a esa conclusion llego con las cavernas. Pero a la vez se que las cavernas fueron los lugares de donde las personas y los primeros cristianos se tuvieron que refugiar para poder sobreviri a ese mismo tipo de personas que eran perseguidoras, y malas, por lo que la caverna se convierte en una cosa de doble proposito, el lugar de resguardo y el lugar de esconder el lado oscuro.
Perdon por las faltas ortograficas no se como corregirlas en esta computadora.
we all live in the 21st century…. some how those cavern times of menkind looks for me just the history class,,, which i learnd mmmmany years ago,,, and maybe when i read Darwin theory,,,, or the nature history,,,,
but not too many feelings…
Plato’s “Allegory of The Cave”:
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html
I associate the cavern with in-depth mystery that is filled with all sorts of things waiting to be discovered. It is a place of shelter and solitude.
I love his voice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUdWxWnXtXU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bt5kgpzGNE
Yia Sou Thelma… :)
Expharisto. ola kala?
Here’s one of my favorite songs, sang by Mitropanos himself:
Dose Mou Fotia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcLMbTCSwig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i6UZOcB-Xg&feature=related
The Zembekiko of Evdokia. Music by Manos Loizos, a Greek Cypriot composer.
For Carolina Sabath!! The … Greek Tavern, with bouzouki and dance and break plates, eat and drink and …. make love! ;]
LOVE,
Thelma
womb of the earth.
the place of treasure golds and of sleeping dragons.
holds and keeps secrets, and secret names for unlocking.
the way out is in.
Lol Paul. :) Mythic! Thank you.
Dear Savita,
Shanti was maybe in a kind of cavern. :) beautiful what you wrote. I totally agree with you, when you say that we leave the play too early sometimes. But by recognizing our lacks, there’s a magic, that makes us become better. I name them “little clic” operating.
From all your exemple Paulo, I could show off the word protection. Ma’s belly is a cavern in a way.
The place where I spend the most part of my time is another one. :)
An intimacy place, where things shouldn’t have to last too long. In the case of the apparition of the White Woman, it did not. In the one of Plato, we learn it is an illusion to stay.
The cavern results in introspection, and as much revelations as in the outside. It developps skills, cut from a time, directed by elements and society’s establishment. And deals with telluric energy. The curved stone keeps memory in a natural evolution. Like a cocoon, warm, or wet, within which we are protected.
The cavern symbolizes also the dark side of ourself. The worse ideas that inhabited us by thoughts, words or acts, we would have to face.
When cut from anything, only us and the Universe remains.
Whether the cavity is open or closed, whether we choose to be locked up or not, it’s a withdrawal.
Love.
I associate The Cavern with the Tavern, The Taverna..
A place to eat, drink, sing and dance, play the bouzouki, break plates and make love.
:)
My first association is Sat By the Piedra and Wept. The second is my stomache (if it’s ok to joke). :)
Love,
L.L.
Cavern:hidden stuff,in the dark lies the truth.We have found many treasures and knowledge in caverns,they are more to find.
I looked up the word cavern in the internet because I wasn’t sure what it was but it turns out to be a cave. So, the first thing that came to mind is shelter. A shelter is where you can think, where everything is at peace and you don’t have to care about the things outside it.
Cavern…Masabielle…Saint Rosalia and Mother Mary of Bridge here in Sicily…
E’ un buon nascondiglio…un luogo dal quale attingere lo Spirito di Madre Terra…devi essere sempre pronto al peggio: il potere degli occhi di una Tigre può paralizzarti uscendo da un buco interno alla caverna!!
:)
after re-reading the definitions – i realise that I have been mistaking the rock when it came to idea of truth being revealed as the human is initiated, leaving the shadows of ideas…
Stalactites and stalagmites
with natural pipe organs
(eg: Luray Caverns)
a serene oasis of calm and magic,
a preserved link back to the beginning of Earth
untouched by chaos, peacful, quiet.
the sacred dwelling / retreat of (flowing) water
and — having just read the book yeseterday ..!!
the holy of holies in Atlantis
A couple of songs (lyrics/videos) related to my previous post on Lazarus’ cavern and the necessity of waiting for the miracle to come:
Leonard Cohen, “Waiting for The Miracle to Come”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-zltLm8X1Y
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kV5XkBQsKU
I’ve just been in Petra, Jordan, last december and that city is build out of caverns. The Bedoeiens were living in it before the government kicked them out some years ago, because of poluting too much. In that way I see a cavern as a shelter, a house, to protect people and animals against the forces of nature. There were also caves in Petra where people painted beautiful angels on the roof, about 2000 years ago. Maybe like the way we decorate our house.
Also I’ve been studying Plato last month, and that story with the cave is really exceptional and very intreging to me.
And than when I was in Africa there were lots of remains of the Bushman for example, that also used it as a home, or a place to gather up and have a chat. And more beautiful paintings of animals and warriors.
I see it as a safe place, hidden in the earth itself. Like humans try to achieve with houses or churches nowadays.
Love
Possibilities of what else there is.
What lies under.
Not explored.
No saying what one place can lead to, like a thread.
The word “cavern” brings first to my mind the Lazarus of the Bible, whom Jesus raised from the dead (John 11). When Jesus went to Bethany to “awaken” Lazarus, Lazarus’ body had been laid in a cavern with a stone rolled across the opening of it. This, at the time and in this society, was a common method of burial and the most typical form of tomb – a cavern, where the dead were laid and left to rot. When Jesus came to resurrect Lazarus and requested that the boulder be removed from the entryway to the cavern, Lazarus’ sister, Martha, protested, pointing out that Lazarus, having been dead already four days, would be stinking by now. In other words, she was resistant to the promise Jesus was making because, in her mind, it was too late. Perhaps if Jesus had arrived when Lazarus was ill, or even right after he had died…but now it was “too late” – the body would have begun already to rot. And Jesus knew this. He was well aware of it, had planned it this way, in fact. He could have come sooner, but intentionally he had tarried two days before setting out on his journey to Bethany. He even knew that Lazarus was ill, even before Lazarus’ death. He could have come straight away when summoned; he could have healed Lazarus and prevented his death altogether. Certainly he could have arrived shortly after Lazarus’ death, even before he was carried into the cavern and the opening of it covered. But he chose not to do this. Jesus chose to arrive four days “too late,” when Lazarus was already laid in the cave, when his body was already beginning to decompose and stink, in part, because he wanted to see just how far Martha’s and Mary’s faith would stretch. They believed in Jesus, they knew of his miracles, but the fact that Lazarus had been dead for so long, rendered the act he proposed all the more “impossible,” at least in the mind of Martha, who expressed her hesitancy in protesting that Lazarus’ body would be stinking already. So, in essence, when Jesus requested that the people roll back the stone from in front of the cavern where Lazarus lay buried, what he was asking for is a show of extreme faith. Certainly, he could have miraculously rolled back the stone himself, but he did not. He asked that the people roll back the stone with their own hands – that they believe in the impossible, even though, in their minds, it was way “too late” for the performance of the miracle which Jesus proposed.
In considering this story, I ask myself how often and in how many situations am I like Martha? I believe in miracles, and yet, when things don’t go my way in a timely fashion, according to personal clock or calendar, I say in my heart, “God has failed me, because now it is obviously ‘too late.’” I look at the situation before me, the situation over which I have prayed and prayed until my prayers were exhausted, over which I have cried until there are no tears left to cry, and in my mind that situation becomes like Lazarus, a stinking dead body, too far gone for miracles to be performed. And I, like Martha, at that point, declare in my own heart, “It is done – the miracle did not come, and now it is too late.” I just roll a stone over the entryway to that cavern and deem the situation “dead” and done with, beyond redemption, as I have stretched my faith to its limit. I don’t even look for or expect any more a miracle at that point – I just move on, with perhaps a little more bitterness in my heart: “Why did God not answer my prayers? Why did he not come when I called for him?”
Martha sent for Jesus, too…but he tarried. Intentionally, he held back from coming right away, he waited to see how far her faith in miracles could be stretched. And when he did arrive and ask that the stone be rolled back, she resisted: “The situation is dead – let it rest,” she seemed to be saying. She did not want to dig it up again; she wanted to leave it buried.
How often in our lives does God work in this way? I certainly do not know the answer to this. But I do wonder: How often do we insist that things be done according to our time schedule, that the miracle come immediately when we ask for it? And if it does not come within the window that we use to frame the “possible,” how often do we just give up, bury the whole thing, and say in our hearts, “God has failed me – the miracle that I prayed so hard for is now impossible, because it is too late.”?
So, that cavern where Lazarus was laid, that same cavern where his body remained until it began to rot and stink, that is the cavern in our hearts where we lay “dead things” to rest when we have given up on them and simply ceased waiting for the miracle to come. And maybe sometimes this is appropriate – sometimes it is not just necessary that we do this, but actually healthy. After all, we don’t want a dead body lying around, stinking up our lives. But, at the same time, there are likely certain instances where we simply give up too soon. We deem the situation “impossible” and no longer afford room for miracles. And then when the hand of God does enter into our lives and attempts to roll back the stone we’ve placed over the entrance to that cavern, we are wholly resistant to having that boulder moved. We say, “No, no! The situation is finished! I’m not going there again! I’m not even going to entertain the idea of reviving that corpse.”
…And just as I am writing these last few lines, I hear a noise, outside my house in the yard, that is a frightening sound, like the sound of heavy footsteps passing by. My pitbull puppy, Kali, who is asleep in my lap, notices it too. And here is the sound again, heavy, thudding. I notice that there is just a little light coming through the curtains – it is no longer completely dark out. And yet I am still hesitant to go to the window and peek out, because the noise is just too unfamiliar. What could it be? My mind searches for the answer. And as it does, the noise comes again, but this time even louder, lasting even longer. It’s not footsteps at all! It sounds more like scratching…clawing…beating against some heavy, immovable object. I left a plastic tablecloth hanging on the clothes line yesterday. Maybe Mohamed – another pup, who is a bit older and, so, whom I leave outside at night – perhaps Mohamed is trying to tear the tablecloth off of the line. Having attached itself to this proposal, my mind is a little more at ease, and so I find the courage to step to the window and look out. But the tablecloth is hanging limp in the pre-dawn mist, and Mohamed is nowhere in sight. Then the sound comes again – a beating, thudding, like Lazarus arisen and trying to claw himself out of the grave, beating his hands raw against the backside of that boulder I have laid in his way. Finally, unable to endure the sound any longer, I go to the back door and peer out the small window there, my hand on the knob, thinking, “Should I open it?” And then I realize – it comes to me all at once – it is Shanti, my female pit who just had puppies a few days back. Yesterday evening I had guests over who had small children, and although Shanti is not at all aggressive, she can be rather annoying. I had locked the dog-door which lets into the barn, to keep her inside and out of the way while they were here. I must have forgotten to unlock it last night when I fed her. The noise, I realize, as I open the back door and step out onto the porch, is Shanti, scratching and pawing at the heavy barn door, wanting out.
L’homme de Cro-Magnon
In the black, there is another light.
A light which enlightens the heart and the soul.
A light intense and filled with love .
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