I wrote this last month intending to post it ... and then I didn't ... until today. So, this unfolded a month or so ago. In other words, the time of a rock ... or a kiss ... or God knows what.
I drove down to Camp Hanover the other afternoon from Northern Virginia. I’ve made that trip hundreds of times so I know the way by heart, but I still turn on the Google Maps because: traffic.
Maps are a good thing, a super useful tool. Think treasure maps – X marks the spot; or maps of great routes of ancient explorers; or trail maps for the AT; or just maps of camp. It is good to have maps even of familiar places.
Camp is a familiar place for some of us; for others it’s brand new. Everyone is welcome! Even though it’s a familiar place for many, there was a lot this summer that was not familiar because of Covid. For example, if you’ve been to camp in previous summers, you know that sessions usually begin with a campfire around the old senior fire circle. I missed that piece of the familiar, but creating a much more physically distanced option on an open field was a wise and joyous pivot.
Still, during my two weeks at camp earlier this month I did wonder down the path to the old fire circle for a bit to visit. In the middle of the fire circle a huge mound of ashes from campfires from many other years.
I was thinking about that ash pile as I was driving down I-95 listening to the radio. I was listening to an NPR show called the TED Radio Hour.
They were talking with this journalist who travels the world finding really interesting people to talk with and shares their stories. He talked about this Peruvian hip-hop artist who raps in some indigenous language I’d never heard of – and it was amazing. And he talked about this artist from Kenya who started an arts movement she calls African Bubblegum Art – it’s art for art’s sake all about joy. It was fascinating.
Then he talked about this paleontologist. He studies fossils and basically the history of the earth through fossil records – so, really, really, really old stuff – rocks and rock layers and fossils of things that lived millions of years ago. This particular scientist discovered the fossils of the largest dinosaur yet found – a creature that weighed something like 10 T-rexes.
He was talking about finding a place where he believes the key to understanding what happened that led to the extinction of dinosaurs – and here’s where it got me. Apparently, the key to understanding what happened to the dinosaurs lies in a huge pit, off a parking lot, behind a Lowes in New Jersey.
As soon as I heard that, I knew this was what I had to talk about at the opening campfire … if only because of the weird New Jersey connections on the staff of this Virginia summer camp.
Anyway, what really caught my imagination was the way he talked about time and places. He said that his work has made him look at things – like a rock, for example, and think not just about a spot on a map where such a rock might be found, but also to think about things in terms of time – what happened in the place to make the thing what it is, and what happened in the place to transform things. He talked about the end of the age of dinosaurs as “an event.”
He talked about some really simple events – as simple as a kiss.
We tend to think about something like a kiss as just a moment – a really brief gesture – a way of saying good-bye to loved ones, or good-night to children, or welcome in some cultures, and, of course, I love you. A brief, simple gesture with a beginning and an end pretty close in time.
But the paleontologist said, in terms of geologic time, a rock is just like a kiss – something simple with a beginning and an end that are – again, in geologic time, pretty close to each other.
That got me to thinking about the ashes from past campfires. Sometimes I’ll sit in the campfire circle and think back to friends I’ve met at camp going back decades, and those friendships seem wonderfully old, and those ashes feel like they’ve been around for a long, long time.
But in geologic time, well, they’re not even as old as a kiss – more like the blink of an eye.
Now you could think about that – about the relative shortness of our time in the vast scheme of things – and feel really insignificant, feel really small, feel like you don’t matter.
On the other hand, you can think about it a little bit differently. In all of the great vast history of time, the stardust that is you is unique. The stardust that is me is unique. There’s never been someone just like you or just like me.
As the psalmist prayed in scripture, “I praise you, God, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Which is to say, "Wow! Thanks, God, for the gift that is this one life."
The theme at camp this summer was prayer – our various longings and how we express them to ourselves, to each other, and to God. To me the amazing thing about prayer is that I can open myself to the mystery of the God of all creation – of all time and space and matter, the God of the dinosaurs, of all those layers of earth, of that pit behind the Lowe’s in New Jersey, the God of the rocks and of the kisses, the God who bends low to us and says, “you are my beloved, you are enough, I made you and I love you.”
I try to let that be the answer to prayers whenever I am at camp – that we meet God in this place, and in each other. In that way – in the event of a meeting in a particular time and place – prayer is a map through time and space.
