Discovering ruins of a medieval abbey, wandering through it with a strange reverence, awe, one is filled with a feeling of wonderment. Upon exploring a castle nestled along the Rhine, why is it that our thoughts are elevated as we reflect to an age long past, stories recreated in our minds? Why when touring France and upon entering a cathedral, with its towering nave and illumination of light, we enter, not with a cheerful exuberance as we might have felt upon discovering the structure externally, but once inside this immensity, with a sense of solemnity, spiritual contemplation, rejuvenation and inspiration?
When a tourist navigates the ruins of the forum in Rome, the mind takes an imaginative journey to a day when all of this was in its grandeur, when the jagged remnants once housed senators and emperors. Westminster abbey recalls to the mind a sense of a thousand years of English history- kings, queens, stirring our minds and our hearts with a distant past, contrasting the busy streets outside and the flashing lights of the city. Even more so the ruins of Stonehenge in rural England bring to mind strange images and indescribable feelings of an obscure past to the soul- a mysticism is experienced at the mystery of an ancient culture with unseen abilities to create such a structure. The human spirit is elevated to new heights- as at the pyramids at Giza- a tribute to human capabilities and spirituality that is baffling to our modern sensibility.
Such is the same with wondrous contemplations of nature. The cliffs of Dover, on a cloudy day with stormy sees inspire the mind. The sun as it sets over the Pyrenees in the south of France; a forgotten rustic cottage nestled in some wood in the Alps- a sense of pure magic is felt. Even more dramatic are the moors of England, the Highlands of Scotland- they fill us completely with feelings unknown- a fullness and awe at the sublime creations of nature, and a connection with the Earth and that which is eternal.
The glory of the Danube meandering through Salzburg, the Volga, produce a new feeling with every turn and every mile of its continual flow of waters flooding our inner being with a wealth of permanence in the land; in this connection to that which is timeless we feel a security in the present- in our own self. We feel connected with the waters of the Mediterranean, the islands of Greece, the sun over the valleys and vineyards of Italy- a sense of calm repose with what once was and still is and will be continue to be. This sublime feeling of the world, that outward world, physical and natural, gives a greater sense of who we are, the possibilities we possess and the possibility of things to come challenging the anxieties we may have felt before we are transfixed by these revelations.
As we leave behind those things of a more temporal nature and contemplate that which is timeless and sublime, we reconnect with the spirit of humanity. The past and the present become one and for a moment we forget our troubles, feel the minutia of our lives and feel a sense of calm, a peacefulness and repose as we are lost in the wholeness of the universe. All in life is transient: the world seems to move forward at an alarming rate. One moment we are in our youth and the next we are experiencing the signs of age. Those things which connect us with something outside of ourselves, something of a more permanent nature, a timelessness, galvanize us for a moment to the non-ephemeral, the universal.