Proclaimer Blog
Man’s search for something…
Mrs R and I reading The History of the World in 100 Objects, one short chapter each night before sleep. Or, rather, I am reading Mrs R a chapter each night. Who said romance is dead? Neil McGregor, the author and director of the British Museum is no particular friend of Christians, I don't believe. But some of the early chapters are intriguing, especially the discovery of very old (however you count) stone spear heads in the North American continent. What is amazing about these finds, apart from their antiquity, is the way they spread south very quickly. McGregor (as you may recall from the BBC Radio 4 series if you heard it), calls upon Michael Palin to explain this movement:
I've always been very restless and, from when I was very small, interested in where I wasn't, in what was over the horizon, in what was around the next corner. And the more you look at the history of homo sapiens, it's all about movement, right from the very first time they decided to leave Africa. It is this restlessness which seems a very significant factor in the way the planet was settled by humans. It does seem that we are not settled. We think we are, but we are still looking for somewhere else where something is better – where it's warmer, it's more pleasant. Maybe there is an element, a spiritual element of hope in this – that you are going to find somewhere that is wonderful. It's the search for the perfect land – maybe that's at the bottom of it all.
Interesting. Or, as Mrs R said as she nodded off, "he has put eternity into the hearts of men,"