Heroes Not Zombies

I took this photo a long time ago up at the Bracklinn Falls in Scotland. As you walk through the woods from the car park, you hear the roar of the water long before you can see it. Once you reach its banks, or stand on the bridge, the “new” bridge from 2010, the “old” one having been washed away by the power of the water in a storm some years before, you can hardly hear each other speak for the noise.

There’s a hint about the power of water in the volume of the noise. There’s another hint when you learn the history of the bridge, see the height of it, and wonder about the day the stream turned into a torrent and destroyed the old one. I’m old enough to remember standing on the old, iron, one. I never imagined it could be washed away. The new bridge, is, I think, even more beautiful than the old one.

What caught my eye in that first scene, was the shape of the rock.

It looks like there is a giant mouth opening up to swallow the water.

In fact, many of the rocks here smoothly sculpted by the power of the water. They are beautiful. The water itself does not run smoothly over this section of its path. It is never still, never quiet, and constantly breaks into foam and bubbles. It’s sort of counter-intuitive to think that water can shape rock, yet it’s obvious too because we see that all around us, whether we are looking at cliffs along a coast line, the rocks along the banks of a river, or even stones which lie at our feet.

One of the things which so delights me about these scenes is realising how the rock has become the shape I’m looking at only by interacting with the water.

It hasn’t grown to that shape all by itself.

Because it reminds me that nothing is the way it is all by itself. Everything we see, everything we are, emerges from an infinity of experiences to become the way it is today.

When I look at these beautifully fashioned rocks I see a relationship. I see a history of water and rock. I see continuous motion.

Which isn’t what you’d expect to see when you look at a rock!

Wow! We live on such a creative planet don’t we?