Snowshoeing stories, redux . . . as I continue to spend some of my free time snowshoeing through the forests of the upper Midwest, moving quietly through the lingering stillness of winter, I am always struck by the unabashed freedom of the trail, the openendedness of trekking through the world as it most is, untouched by human building or appurtenance, alone, unscathed by mechanical noise and sound, pristine and apart.  I could snowshoe for days, really, each morning waking to the receding brumal darkness, the ever present challenge of snow and cold, breaking camp and moving on once again, stepping into new horizons and visions of natural wonder.  It is a feeling of eternality.
     Then I catch myself, reminding myself that this world is far from eternal.  But we still think about eternity, don't we?  We still tend to frame life in terms of eternity.  And it's hard for me to see how this wonder and longing is stimulated by things purely chemical:  how can the material produce thoughts of something which it is clearly not?  Does a rock ponder its lifetime?
     It's difficult to see how we material beings think about the immaterial without there being something in us that leads us to do so, something that is, well, immaterial and eternal, a necessarily personal eternal.  It's difficult to see how we come to ponder the eternal unless there is an eternal that is speaking itself to us.
     So psalmist says:  "The heavens are telling of the glory of God" (Psalm 19).