The earthy yet otherworldly rock art of the American Southwest reminds us that good religion teaches us how to savor the mystery of life. It allows us to dream, to play with paradoxical images, and to explore. For example, many of the images of the Archaic Barrier Canyon people seem to combine an insect-like head with a human-like body. One gets the sense that different creatures can shapeshift into one another, just as the sound of a human voice I often hear in a remote canyon turns out to be a buzzing fly. Similarly, good religion enables us to see how various pairs of opposites can shapeshift into one another. Things such as transcendence and immanence, humanity and divinity, afflictive emotions and life-affirming energy, being and non-being, joy and suffering, emptiness and form, Buddhism and Christianity and . . .? It is this play of opposites that dreams are made of, allowing us to experience - full-force - the divinity of surprise and wonder.
Photo: Figures painted in red hematite by the Archaic Barrier Canyon people, who lived in the area up to 6000 B.C.E. ; Sego Canyon, UT; November 23, 2012
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