This is the Ring of Brodgar, built some 500 years after its neighboring ring, the Standing Stones of Stenness, and Skara Brae, the nearby Neolithic village, both dated to around 3000 BCE.
I can't decide what amazes me more - that these long-ago people created these wonders, or that any evidence remains, despite 5000 years of civilizations coming and going on this same land. And the big question - why, if these lands have been continuously inhabited, do we not know for sure what that earliest civilization was really like, why standing stones and burial cairns were so important?
Their meaning is lost to history, as they say, yet they remain as evidence that 5000 years ago on a remote island, people gathered for rituals that bound their community together.
We still gather in community. Whether it's church, performing arts, affinity groups, or simply meals around a common table, we gather. Our rituals vary in form and purpose but ultimately they are a way for us to connect with one another. Whether the divine is invoked or not, our rituals connect us with something greater than ourselves.
I am grateful for the witness of these standing stones, and for the experience of standing among them, listening for the whispers these ancestors also heard and honored, whispers from beyond the visible world. Promises, guidance, dreams.