Cairn-Space. N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
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Some tell us that waiting for Godot or searching for God is an empty task; it is absurd. But, it is not the search for the Holy One (the search for our core self and its relation to God) that is empty and absurd in the end. What is empty and absurd is not recognizing that we are all seeking wholeness in God—NOW.
We all hunger and thirst to find our completion in the Divine Wholeness. Some pretend they are looking for something other than God. They believe they aspire to be “better” people or more “learned.” It is simply that they do not know to call this aching passion within a hungering for God and the divine completion this represents. They have not examined the lineaments of this craving. All craving for completeness is a craving for the Holy One. It is a yearning to be One with the One. It is the rest of Saint Augustine that is only put to rest when it rests in God.
This path of hungering, longing, craving, and desiring is a path toward the heart. The heart is the place of ultimate encounter and union. Whether we believe we are questing for wholeness, integrity, actualization, or God, the quest is the same. In the non-Christian East it is said that we already have all that we long for; we must simply wake up.
We are hunting the Divine. We look everywhere for the perfect spot to unite. We turn everything upside-down to find our center—our heart. We look all around outside, to find the place that is inside. The greatest cairn is already within, and at the same time it clambers to be established. We have what we need, we must simply wake up.
Ultimately, all cairns are about getting into heart-space and experiencing the relationship we have with the Creative Father. Each cairn asks us to look at Him through the lens of some idea, topic, or event. “What does this marker say about who we are and where we have been with Him?” Everything has the ability to make us hungry for union with God—NOW.
When we find the cairns or our life, we must sit with them and honor them. We do this by going in to the space inside—into the heart—and seeking an encounter and chance to wrestle with what that cairn represents. What does this thing say about God, about waking up.
We ask ourselves what this marker offers us in order to be in union—NOW. When we have woken up, we should add a stone to the marker. When we have found Him, we should add a stone to the pile.
Every cairn is an image of the Great Cairn. The Great Cairn is our beloved heart-space. Being awake is the multi-dimensional awareness of all phenomena being present throughout all time in that space. The point that is our heart is the endless space of the Divine Milieu. We have the opportunity to meet God at every moment because meaning is layered on meaning throughout all creation. Everywhere we go we have arrived.
***
Under Every Rock
I am looking
under every rock
I find -
for something.
I am not sure
what it is
right yet.
I have been told
that I will
know it when I
find it,
when I see it,
or smell it
I will know.
I cannot help
but wonder
if I have forgotten
I am searching.
Turning rocks
is just
such fun.
What is it I am doing
again? Am I
looking for rocks,
or somehow looking
for myself?
***
It is remarkable how each religion finds its own way to image the heart and the journey within. We all build places to mark off encounters and wrestlings with God. Everyone has them.
Monks’ cells carved in sandstone and limestone cliffs, stone huts built along glorious pilgrimage vistas, cairns piled high to mark off the sacred, shrines along roads and trails, large stones in a field, they are all markers of the heart. “Something of importance happened here”, the cairns call out. “Stop and remember what these rocks stand for”, the rocks cry out.
All of these places shadow the interior space we go to when we pray. All of them give us an outward nexus from which to make an inward journey. All of them remind us that we know our ultimate solace comes from meeting the One in the silence of the heart. The outward “holy places” of the religious person are really emblems of the heart. They mark a place on earth where someone found the path in; they show everyone that “It happened here. I found God here.” It may be a garden, it may be statue, it may be a cross by the side of the road; whatever it is, it offers us hope.
We all need a place outside of us that images our inner heart. We need to create places that sign for us to go within—NOW. We need spaces that are caves of the heart. We do not need to wait for them. We have them now. They are this moment. They are this place. We need to learn how to feel confident enough to sanctify this moment in time and this place in space.
There is a need to show everyone that holy occurrences happen in space and time. There is a need to show ourselves. We mark them to help us remember that time and space were altered by a meeting and wrestling with God; that we were changed in a meeting and wrestling with God. We mark them to remind us that union is possible. Cairns at holy places scream out, “Someone opened up to God here. You can, too.” Our hearts groan with this longing intent. Our lives clamber toward this hope of meeting.
The landscape all around a cairn—all around a heart—is changed by the Presence of meeting and wrestling with God. Moses’ face shone with the Glory of the LORD. People were healed in the Presence of Jesus. We are born-again when we engage God.
Sometimes the words we share in this discussion will feel forced or just a bit beyond comprehension. What we are trying to work with here in this text is the notion that all space and time come to bear on this moment and this place. We can unite with God here and now. That takes bringing together both the local and the non-local. Of course this will be tough. We will have to sustain the power of juxtaposed positions and images. Bear with it. Treat it as poetry and let the words roll over you, creating an impression that is itself the meaning.
***
When we are talking about caves, chapels, cells, prayer rooms, and cairns we are talking about sacred space, “walled off” or “set aside areas.” They are markers in space and time. These are sometimes called “hermetic spaces.”
Hermes shows up over and over again in these types of discussions because of his birth in a cave and his re-swaddling of himself as an infant (after he stole his brother’s cattle). The cave and swaddling are walled-in notions. It is that sense of seclusion (cave-like) and surrounded-ness (swaddled-ness) that keeps Hermes name close to these settings. He is seen as the “god” of the interior and interior quest.
The heart is an Hermetic space. It is the interior place for meeting and wrestling with God. The heart is a walled garden, a cave fed by an underground spring, a hollow in the side of a rock, and the shade of a sheltering pine. Set apart, it is Holy unto the LORD. It is a comfort object from before all time.
***
Hatefulness tends to produce hatefulness, love tends to produce love, and humility tends to produce humility. How can we transform the places we go to for prayer? How can we transform the inner chapel of our hearts—change them to reflect the Glory of the One? How can we mark the landscape of our lives with the wrestling encounters we have with the Uncircumscribable One from all ages? How may we discern the meaning of the landscape?
My hope is that we will begin to look at the markers of meaning in our lives