Thought for the Week

They rise from the mist in an almost audible silence and have stood guard in the Glen since around 3,000 BC.

The famous Standing Stones at Kilmartin have an amazing story to tell, if we just knew how to listen.

Why did our ancestors build these wondrous vertical monuments? Why is there such amazing inter-connectedness between the standing stones throughout the United Kingdom and Europe? What is their significance? What is the meaning behind the stones? Why are they positioned to monitor the summer and winter solstice? What did the people who went before us want to tell us?

The song of their beginnings seems to whisper across the grasses. Let us now go on a wee bit further to Achnabreac and pause to wonder at the cup and ring marks there, which are the most extensive set of cup and ring marked rocks in Britain.

These are the latest works of prehistoric art to be discovered in Argyll, and are reckoned to be around 5,000 years old. But what do they mean?

The people who made their mark on the land would have lived, loved, danced, mourned, farmed, hunted, played and prayed…… just like us.

The mist hangs over them holding its quiet secret. I don’t know what the story is, but I do know that I’m part of it. I don’t know what clues the burial cairns hold, but I do know that I long to find out. I don’t know what hands shaped and carved the markings, or how they lifted the standing stones, but I do know that somehow it is important.

I do know there is wonder in it all, and where there is wonder…. there is God.