Stone Stacking Story

I hiked the mountain last week and found a stack of rocks along the trail, and reflected,

Someone had passed this way. I felt motivated to add a rock.  And further up the trail, I started a rock stacking of my own. I occasionally see these along a path, or at a beach. Sometimes they’re even stacked unbelievably balanced, small end down. I’ve tried stacking a few stones that way, and it is difficult. As I hiked, the next few days, the stacked stones were still there. But today when I saw them they were scattered over the ground. The thought came to my mind —

I had to decide, “no, an intelligent being had not passed this way, nor did this happen on its own. ” An intelligent being wants to contribute positively to the order of the universe–to better the world.  It is the mind of chaos that knocks down, destroys, and disorders life. Chaos is disorganized matter. It is a complete disorder. To order takes energy; it takes effort and intelligence.  It requires the intervention of those who want to build-up,  to overcome the natural law of disorder, and the actions of those who want to tear it down. In fact, the Egyptians believed that chaos had to be controlled with the mind, with effort. They felt  “surrounded by an omnipresent and ever-threatening chaos. They were intensely conscious of the second law of breaking down — it haunted them” (Nibley). And so they tried to preserve life through mummification and temple building.

Chaos is the opposite of order. I believe an intelligent being brought order to chaos — that God took matter unorganized and brought order, and in this way created the earth. All those that contribute to that effort, to work for the better, are doing good.  The tendency to disorder is everywhere present, and it takes a lot of thought and action to keep it from taking over.  Just ask a mother of five kids — without my intervening to clean up, the home falls into massive disorder.

Good people are those that choose to build up, support, and not knock-down and destroy.

I again stacked the stones. A week later, they were gone. I was surprised and in a way, I was not. This time, I couldn’t even find the rocks to re-order them — a more complete disordering had taken place. I looked around and found they were not gone, but someone had moved them so that it would take more effort to re-order.

Sometimes life disassembles to a greater degree, so much that we must work even harder to undo the chaos. I rebuilt the stone stack. I think that if I hike up to the top, where few people venture to go, a stone stacking may last longer.

But this much I know–I want to build, not destroy.  And, I want to be with those kinds of people that build as well.