For over fifteen years now we have lived less than twenty minutes away from Walden Pond. Surely every American high school graduate knows (at least a smidgeon) about Walden Pond, Thoreau and Concord. Thinking that it was time to round out my education a bit I embarked upon reading Walden. Not bad. Pretty good read. Now comes the embarrassing part. On page 177 Thoreau wrote, “White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of theearth, Lakes of Light.” The paragraph that continues is lovely. The embarrassment is I cannot recall ever hearing of White Pond, let alone knowing where it is; so much for being informed.
This brings me to my incredible ignorance of life about me. While I will not make judgments about you, I am suspicious I am not that unusual. Most of us think we are knowledgeable and aware. We think we are fairly aware and yet there are worlds of things right on our doorstep that warrant our attention. I know my wife will not like me mentioning that there is another complete world for creatures just in the walls of our home. While we sleep they scurry about making sure to stay out of our way. Our yard has a host of wild flowers that I never see. They come and go in the lower woods that have become almost impassable because of an old ice storm.
In our own mind there are levels of consciousness that rarely rise to the surface and yet billions of bits of data are constantly being processed. We rarely think about driving while driving, yet we arrive safely home.
And so it is that all around us is a world of God and angels. They are there just as White Pond is only twenty minutes from my house.
Written by Roger Bothwell on August 11, 2010
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org