SOMETHING TO PONDER (volume 2); THOUGHTS FROM RABBI ROB: If you remember my last missive, we met two of our hominid ancestors, Homo Habilis, and Homo Neanderthalensis (Fred and Oliver). Science tells us that Fred walked upright (his ancestor, Homo Erectus started that) and made some crude tools. Olivers people had a fairly complex society, probably has some kind of language, and buried his dead with ritual. WAIT! He did what? Yep, science tells us that some of the burial sites of Ollies people suggest ritual burial. wow! Thats big. Why is it big? Its big because it suggests that somewhere along the line between Fred folks and Olliess somebody began to wonder about how and why they got there. Imagine this, if you will. Sitting about the camp fire one of them looked up at the sky and wondered, Where do I come from? How is it that my hunts are successful, that there are so many kinds of anima;s out there? Why does it rain or snow? Who is responsible for all of this? Perhaps I should find a way to ask. In short, wonder bespeaks of ideas. Certainly, we can guess that our hominid ancestors didnt know about God in the way we do now, in our own time. But, I posit, they might well have had an idea that somebody/something was pulling all the strings. Our Neanderthal ancestors, we know, made stunning paintings on their caves walls that expressed ideas. No, we dont know exactly what the ideas were, but the paintings suggest that our prehistoric ancestors were in some way reaching out to an entity they themselves may not have understood. Give us a good hunt, they suggest. But WHO were they asking? Well....ummm....we dont know. why hot? Probably because they themselves didnt now, but they had this idea. They had the idea that somebody/something......perhaps several somebodies/somethings were sort of directing the show. So.....what comes next? Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of SOMETHING TO PONDER!
Posted on: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 15:42:23 +0000