Cairns: When There Are No Words

 

And Joshua set up twelve stones

in the midst of Jordan,

in the place where the feet of the priests

which bare the Ark of the Covenant stood. . . .

                                                                                    — Joshua 4:9

           

           

We ventured all over two islands in Hawaii, the remote and exclusive Lanai, and the laid-back and touristy Maui. On both islands, we lucked onto two places -- very different, and very holy.

 

One was the silent, lonely "Garden of the Gods" on Lanai. It was a small but other-worldly hilltop with nothing but stones and sand. You feel bathed in warm light. Wind and time had shaped pinnacles and buttes, boulders and stones, without a speck of vegetation anywhere. The Hawaiian people believed it was created by the gods. They called it Keahikawelo.

 

You can only reach it with a rented Jeep or a four-wheel drive vehicle, and the one-lane road is rutted and challenging. That just made our adventure all the more enjoyable, and our reward, a few moments of quiet contemplation, all the more sweet.

 

We hiked for a little bit and stood on some outcroppings that gave a sweeping view of the ocean. It was like being in the most stately church in the world, silent and reverent in the midst of magnificence.

 

 

 

Here and there, we saw cairns - piles of smooth stones. Five or six in a column here, 10 or 12 in an arch there. Not obtrusive, but not to be touched or rearranged, either. These were sacred stones, you could tell. They were obviously left for some unknown purpose by humans, and had significance at which we could only guess.

 

Cairns have been left by people marking special spots for thousands of years, from Scotland to the Chesapeake Bay. There are something like 10,000 on the coast of Finland alone. The ancients built them, back in the Stone and Bronze Ages, before printed text, where all you had to express your soul was the nature around you. So it wasn't surprising to find them here in Hawaii, where so much of the native people's ways are honored and preserved.

 

Or maybe some were far more recent: maybe left last week. There was no way to tell. Each one was a silent symbol that the mind couldn't translate, but the heart could understand.

 

Was this one a spontaneous act of worship for the beauty all around? Or a tangible memorial to something great that God had done in that person's life? Was this one built by someone who was sick, and seeking healing? That one a memorial left by a grieving spouse? Over there, a marker of hope for a bright future, created by a bride and groom?

 

 

 

 

The other holy place that made us catch our breath was the Nakalele Blowhole on the northern tip of Maui. A huge, flat shelf of lava rock sticks out over the ocean with a gap in it. If the tide is high and the incoming surf hits it just right, a tall blast of water shoots up into the sky over 100 feet. There's a power and majesty that is simply unmatched in the Nebraska Flatlands. If you stand too close, you could get sucked right in. This, we had to see - from a prudent distance, of course.

 

So we drove past civilization at Kapalua and braved another crummy little road, more or less risking life and limb, to venture out to that special place and stand and gape.

 

 

 

 

No silence or solemnity here: the surf was roaring so loud, you couldn't be heard, even shouting. This was a vibrant, shimmering picture postcard of every color in the rainbow. The clamor and obvious danger made your heart beat fast.

 

What did we see, in that boisterous, totally different place? More cairns.

 

More little rock piles, sacred to those who left them, mysterious to those who came after, but obviously to be respected and left alone, their silent symbolism undisturbed.

 

 

 

 

It was almost preposterous that these cairns hadn't fallen down. It was as if each cairn was taking a simple and ubiquitous element of nature - stones - and doing something impossible with them.

 

But that's the whole point. The beauty of these places is so impossible, so awesome, so unlike anywhere else, that they speak to us of God. Because that's what He's like.

 

And people want to speak back. So they do it with a humble form of applause: they make a little pile of rocks. They just want to take a few tiny pieces of the beauty in those special places, and create a reminder and a monument.

 

It's like leaving little pieces of your soul, acknowledging that you are a little part of God's.

 

Now I know why people have been marking His presence with cairns, all over the world, for as long as there've been people.

 

That's all you can do . . . when there are no words. †