So many things to share...but the one I thought you might enjoy today is a quotation I am reflecting about. I have been reading Karen Armstrong again. I have read several of her works, and recently read her account of her life, as a young woman, in the convent. Now I am reading her book for the series on myth, and thought I would share this bit:

The earliest mythologies taught people to see
through the tangible world to a reality that seemed to embody
something else. But this required no leap of faith,
because at this stage there seemed to be no metaphysical gulf
between the sacred and the profane. When people looked at a stone,
they did not see an inert, unpromising rock.
It embodied strength, permanence, solidity and an absolute mode of being
that was quite different from the vulnerable human state.
Its very otherness made it holy.
A stone was a common hierophany –
revelation of the sacred –
in the ancient world.
Again, a tree, which had the power to effortlessly renew itself,
incarnated and made visible a miraculous vitality
denied to mortal men and women. When they watched the waning and waxing
of the moon, people saw yet another instance of the sacred powers of regeneration,
evidence of a law that was harsh and merciful,
and frightening as well as consoling.
Trees, stones and heavenly bodies were never objects of worship in themselves
but were revered because they were epiphanies of a hidden force
that could be seen powerfully at work in all natural phenomena,
giving people intimations of another, more potent reality.

Karen Armstrong
A Short History of Myth