Cairn-Space. N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
of remembrance, we bring the meaning of our memories to the fore and we dust it off. We stand before all phenomenal reality and wrap ourselves around and all through existence, perception, conception, and being; and then we store that in consciousness.
We encounter things anew because of cairns. They are visible stories from our days gone by; stories that ask us to somehow interact with those past moments and create new moments of growth right here in the present; bringing what was into what is. Simple things reveal eternity.
I am encouraged by the sight of familiar cairns around the camp where we now live. They instantly bring back memories of my past that bolster me up and remind me of who I am and who I have been. I may have added a stone to a pile because I sat and prayed at this place. I may have added a stone because I sang a hymn in this spot. I may have built a cairn to mark off the place of my repentance. I may have laid a cairn to remind me Jesus spoke to me here. Cairns shape who I am becoming using the stuff of who I have been.
Cairns lead us somewhere. They lead us to and provide us with a sacred space— to a particular spot here on this earth-place or within our interior-space. From within this spot we recreate sacred time anew. They ask us to stop. They ask us to pause and recall—taking a moment to get our bearings.
It is not uncommon to find stone cairns that have been set up as trail markers. These geologic GPS coordinates, piled on the ground, help us to find our way. We remember our way in life because of the piles all around us.
The photo albums that lay about our home are GPS co-ordinates to other places in time and space. Each picture, a cairn that marks whole chapters of life that have seemingly disappeared. The birth of our sons, the hiking of a trail, a trip to the Isle of Skye; they are not gone. The photos remind me of the place in my consciousness within which I have planted those days and ways of life. As I water the seeds of my past, I am informed with a whole new vigor that my life has led me to this moment. This moment is built on so much more than I can see; but it is available within me.
We are called to pull the past into the present in order to shape our future—in our remembering. This is always the power of signs. They lead us to our future, by way of our past. We stand at a cairn and remember; we dream, we hope, we become.
This is not unlike the call of Jesus to “do this in memory of me”; to celebrate the Eucharist. The cairns in this Jesus-meeting are the species of bread and wine. They bring clarity to this moment and present us with images and facts that may not be visible, but live deeply in us as realities we assent to. We learn that we are to be broken and poured out for the life of the world as these Jesus-meeting cairns suggest. The words “in memory” or “in remembrance” of Jesus in this short passage come from the Greek word “anamnesis.” This word is all about the concept of bringing the past into the present and the present into the past. It is a merging or confluence of time.
The cairns we speak of from this time forward will be cairns that may embody all of this. They may mark off God-space, heart-space, memories, or ideas. They may reveal hidden causes in the fabric of our phenomenology, or hint for us to listen for the whispering wind; sacramental cairns on the landscape of our lives. They may point to interior dimensions we had no idea existed within our heart, and mind, and soul. We will amble around the ideas of sacred-space, prayer-space, and sacramental living. We will encounter and wrestle with God all along the way. We will look for and stop at the cairns along the geography of our spiritual heritage.
What markers have we used to remember God in prayer? What markers have we laid to remind us that union is possible? How has the Church (itself a cairn of God) found its way and marked its journey on this earth-place? What have we learned from all that we have lived? Who has been important to us? What have they revealed in the way of meaning?
Jacob erected a cairn after he awoke from his dream. He piled stones on top of the stone he had rested his head on through the night. An odd pillow for some. His dream was of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth. In that dream there were angels ascending and descending on the ladder. Jacob marked that place of “holy encounter” and named it Beth-El; the “Place of God.” It later became the place of meeting in the Temple of Israel—the Holy of Holies. His proclamation that “surely God has been in this place” is a critical passage in understanding the meaning of cairns in our lives. They mark off epiphanies and theophanies: God-meeting places.
Cairns are not meant to be towers of Babel, reaching to the heavens to find God—somehow off in the future. They are meant to wake us up to finding God right here—NOW—right among us. We encounter a cairn, we stop, and we turn within to figure out the meaning behind the encounter that is marked off by these rocks. What does this place mean? What does it exude? What does it call us into ourselves to find? This is how it is with everything there is. Everything has the chance to be a marker of union with the Divine—NOW. Not off in the future. Not if we do “just one more thing, or build it just a bit higher.” HERE. NOW.
I am sure Babel must have started as a cairn, but the obsession of the task carried the builders away. They forgot they were laying a marker and figured they could keep building a stairway to heaven. Out of control, and perhaps believing “more is better”, they thought they could navigate the heavens by building an escalator to God. They got lost in their project. The true stairway was within.
Babel shows us the natural outcome of trying to build a cairn high enough to experience the abode of God outside of our heart. Once we reach a certain fevered pitch, and the rocks are high enough, we forget that God is accessible within and our ability to communicate becomes hampered. Trying to climb to God on rocks, our language is put to confusion. We begin to lose our ability to make sense and interpret all that we see. Babel is a cairn gone bad.
It reminds me of the present nature of the Church. Our lives in Christ were meant to be a testimony of God with us, God within us. We started building and then lost control. We built the pile so big that confusion descended on us and everything went to pieces. Mainline denominations are failing because—like Babel—we have focused on building “the machine.” We thought our tower would take us to God; that our buildings and our programs would take us to God. Again, the stairway is within. The heart is the sacred space, not the program, or the building, or the tower.
Cairns are simple rock piles on the surface of the earth, marking spaces in which we encountered and wrestled with God in the commonplace hugger-mugger of our daily existence. They are meant to help us remember our dreams and meetings and to use those memories to live our lives more fully into the future. Cairns are asterisks on the landscape and geography of our simple lives. But, they are powerful asterisks. Like all images, they will fade and breakdown; our analogies will sometimes fail. But, as markers and asterisks, they are starting points. If one does not begin somewhere, one has not begun.
***
These Simple Foods
Holding
these simple foods,
bread
and wine,
I am forced into
my heart
to meet Jesus,
to wrestle with Him
as He changes me
into body
and blood.
This remembrance
is so real,
I am undone
and become someone I would
not have become
if we did not
meet
to eat
His sacrifice.
They
mark more than
time along the
way of my life.
They
mark time
along the
path of God with
man.