Blog 597 – 04.09.2017

I Am A Rock

Simon and Garfunkle had a hit song by that title and in it pay homage to John Donne’s poem about no man being an island entire unto himself. I invite everyone to revisit the song and listen carefully to the words of one of the Twentieth Century’s finer popular poets, Paul Simon. He writes and sings:

“I’ve got my walls, and my poetry to protect me.
I am shielded in my armour.
I have no need of friendship.
Friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain and an island never cries.”

We have all of us tried to be rocks and there are some wonderful things about rocks too. They make good foundations and even a comfortable, cool, place to get out of the weather if you can find a cleft or cave in the rock. Rocks offer a promise of stability, safety, and continuity. It is quite a compliment to hear some one say to you, “You are my rock.”

Rocks also as the song implies have some not so attractive qualities – A coldness, an inflexibility, a separateness, a hardness, so hard that it is really a weakness leading to fracturing. When moisture finds its way into even the tiniest cracks in a rock and freezes it can turn the biggest, hardest, heaviest boulder into a pile of rubble.

I mentioned in a recent blog how we tend to think of some things as inanimate objects but that all things vibrate and have a spirit or life to them. All matter is made up of atoms and atoms are doing the continuous dance of creation like mini solar systems with planets orbiting around a central star. Rocks look solid but looks are deceiving. All matter like the visible universe is made up of particles flying about in space. There is so much unoccupied space between the revolving particles that if we could harmonize frequencies we could actually pass through solid rock without getting stuck. I am sure that there are some geeks somewhere working on that one right now. I mean it has been theorized in science fiction for ages and yesterday’s science fiction is often tomorrow’s science fact.

But back to being a rock. People who live in rock houses should not throw glass and visa versa. Glass after all is a rock created either by nature or man by heating silica sand and melting it into larger shapes. The glass manufacturers will probably have a field day with my over simplification of glass production. But glass is a very useful rock both to see through and reflect back our own image. I am both a rock and a mirror reflecting the image of my Creator right down to the atomic structure of the body my spirit inhabits. So, too, are you my friend. These bodies are made up of reassembled rocks from the past. It is very likely that George Washington, and a host of other knowns and unknowns have contributed to our physical make up. Yet as fearfully and wonderfully as our bodies are made the life force, the spirit, that holds them all together is the really cool stuff,  the Rock of Ages as it were. He/She is the Rock upon which all is built, and we but chips off the ole Block. Poetry may not seem as precise as science but then sometime poets make the best scientists.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White