Travertine. Happy Sunday

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

Travertine is rock in act of being made. At thermal springs, like the ones at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park, boiling water, heated by magma 3 miles below the surface, rich with dissolved minerals, comes to the surface and overflows down slopes. As the water evaporates (which being so hot, it does rapidly) the minerals are left behind to form new rock...Travertine. The only other place you find Travertine is in stalagmites and stalactites and flows in deep living caves...but there the water is generally cold and the formations take much longer to build. A new hot spring can lay down a Travertine flow like the one above in a very short time...this one has only been building since 2014 and the “terrace” where it sits on the far edge has only been active since the 70s. I find it irresistibly and amazingly beautiful...sculpture in action...an unmistakable instance the sculptor in action...if your eye is only generous enough to see the act, the art, of creation happening in real time. We see the works of God in the landscape, but generally they are so slow we perceive then only as “finished”. At Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park, and the the thermal basis deeper in the park, surrounding Old Faithful, the rock is being shaped so rapidly that the formation changes day to day, year to year, fast enough for us, even in our brief lives, to see the artist at work. All praise be to the God who shapes the rocks, and our lives. Happy Sunday!