Time’s Bedrock
Arches National Park. Photo by Eric Alan.
Months pass as quickly as moments. Years and lives seem to flicker in and out of existence, as fleeting as fireflies. Time appears to accelerate as we age, since each passing year becomes an ever-smaller percentage of the lives we’ve lived. Yet everything that’s ever happened is forever etched in time’s bedrock. I find it comforting that we'll inevitably, eventually become part of that bedrock. All we’ve loved and accomplished will never be lost, even if it invisibly integrates with future soil.
I celebrate that grounding remembrance. I recall a friend recently telling me why being a geologist helps her stay steady through the wild ups and downs of these tumultuous times.
“When you think in terms of geological ages,” she said, “The troubles of this moment seem vanishingly small.”
I return to that truth again and again. The vastness of geological history leaves me in silent awe, especially when pondering ancient natural cathedrals, such as in Arches National Park. The ages within time’s bedrock are more than my capacity to conceive. Four billion years of planetary changes, in a universe much older than that? How to even grasp that, with a mind made to only experience a century or less?
Even the brevity of human history is etched more deeply into time’s bedrock than we first knew, as ever-older evidence of ancient societies is unearthed. In all of its forms, life has been persistently and intelligently here for a very, very long time. Thus, as another new year begins, I celebrate with confidence that life will be here still, for another time so long that our minds can’t even grasp it.
On a moment-to-moment level, we’ll never know what the next moment will bring. Yet it’s oddly easy to know the course of greater history to come. The sun will rise, new growth will sprout, people will fall in love, tyrants will fail and die, inspiring new books will be written, the climate will always keep changing, and life will adapt in unimaginable new forms. Time’s bedrock is so strong, so able to absorb the infinite forms of shifting ages, that there is nothing we can do to destroy it.
Time will go on again this year, and many have already been born today. Other unborn generations will inevitably carry this loving celebration on, whether or not they notice our existence within the bedrock on which they someday stand. Time’s bedrock is one the most beautiful sights I’ve been grateful to see in this life. May we all experience this turbulent, vibrant earth as an awe-inspiring cathedral, yet again this morning, this year.