Fascination With Life

I've been reflecting on life a bit lately.  Walking the same streets as the Apostle John then coming home and seeing the moose in the swake has that effect on me.  There is a rhythm to life that is universal but I think we forget it too often and we miss the fact that others before us have been part of civilizations that have made great strides then fallen into ruin.

I'm having trouble writing this; it seems too deep for Saturday morning and I'm not sure my thoughts will be coherent to anyone else.  But the long and short is that I'm grappling with the pattern of development.  We, as in people, develop, invent, create, and then we figure that life will always be improved.  We are totally immersed in our western culture in the concept of always improving.  Whether it's our fitness level, our homes, our knowledge, our bodies - think Botox.  But history shows that time and again what was once great is demolished and remains as a ruin that we should be learning from.  Blame this all on the next port on our Mini-Tour, Ephesus.

Ephesus is an amazing place, set in the hillsides of Turkey.   The Ephesians built the city with water collecting cisterns, a clay pipe gravity fed water distribution system, sewer disposal and lots of other useful things that still don't exist in some third world countries several thousand years later.  Yet for all the forward thinking the city of Ephesus is today, simply another fascinating stroll through streets of ruins that echo with past life.  Today the lovely tile work, the amazing sculpture, and the Grecian architecture lay in fragments at the tourists' feet.  You walk by, yes we walked some more!  And you read the plaques and listen to the tour guide's fact and fiction.  Then what?  Other more normal people probably go home and tell their friends and family that they toured Ephesus and it was cool.

Courtesy of M. Lobert

I come home and ruminate for weeks about how great ancient cities with advanced civilizations are now just rubble to be toured; struggling with how we fit into the overall scheme of life.  Then my monkey mind jumps over to the swake, and what it must have been like thousands of years ago, because a young bull moose wandered past not once but twice yesterday.  I'm sure moose were on the swake long ago when Ephesus was a bustling happening city across the ocean.  And that's kind of a fascinating thought.

So in the midst of this fragmented and crazy pondering, it's really mind boggling to think that we are each a piece of a giant story of life on earth.  Sometimes this fascination with life gets too intense and a little fun is needed.  My wonderful kids are the balance, always willing to help me laugh and reminding me not to think too hard or my head might explode.  They humoured me recently by all lining up inside Kanti's newly moved, enlarged, and renovated kennel area.  As the offspring and their 'loving others' entered the kennel, Kanti provided the kodak moment by being on the outside of the kennel with her frisbee in her mouth as if to say "isn't life grand, won't you come out and play?"