A six-month-old baby, placed in 2022 by Cache Owner sunchasercachers, promises to let us read the diary.
Hurtling through space, our planetary ship drags winter from Northern to Southern Hemisphere. We are fine with leaving the Arctic behind.
Hopping off the interstate at Mansfield, today’s geo-detour exits west on Route 30.
Inside the Biblewalk wax museum, 4,000 years connect with today’s pilgrims.
Creation, Fall, and Flood give way to long years of a tiny tribe of desert wanderers slowly growing into a Middle Eastern nation. Onto the scene is born a baby. The next 30 years will pose a puzzle of the perplexity of a powerful Deity joining creation as an offered sacrifice to deliver wandering humans from their wayward anguish.
A Syrian named Paul hears the voice of this Deity in a great flash of light.
Pondering it all, Paul combines decades of study with this new revelation. Turning from the powerful religious class of his day, which majors on excluding and scorning the little guy, Paul grasps the idea of individual value elevated to a new level by the outstretched hand of a Creator.
Now in prison for spreading the word of this great offer from above, Paul writes letters that will be combined into a best-seller for the next 2,000 years. A master plan, extending beyond the grave, explains the fragile and fleeting nature of human existence on a time-bound earth, bound together with a force so powerful and eternal, it is known simply as love.
It will be 1,300 years before Mr. Wycliffe translates this book from Latin to English. He feels there is something wrong with the privileges and wealth of the religious class, who claim ownership of the book. Mr. Huss goes to the stake, defending the right of the people to read the book in their own language. Finally Mr. Luther, in 1517, nails an announcement on the Wittenberg Door. He is sick of the leaders of the book, who are now called the Church, for selling salvation, exploiting those who want to read and follow the book, and giving all the best jobs to their friends. As protesters join the movement across Europe, things will never be the same.
One hundred years later, those called the Pilgrims flee the religious wars which now define the Continent. Believing that their personally known Creator has carried them across a vast ocean, they look for a land where all can worship in the way each knows best. As tribal nations are cast aside, the long distortion of simple, humble faith into religious arrogance and pietism unfolds.
In the 1700s colony of Georgia, the Wesley brothers catch on to the idea of regular Bible study and prayer. John and Charles write over 6,000 hymns and preach countless sermons. Small, white-steepled buildings scatter across the hillsides of pioneer America. Today they still wear nametags of the children of the Reformation. Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran eye one another from safely defined sanctuaries. When senators of 2023 refer to Tiktok as the sheep’s clothing, words from the Book echo across millennia.
Our pictures tell us that, like a mustard seed or a tablespoon of yeast, faith is lived out in a thousand ways, in the simple joys of work, food, sympathy, affection, and a game of hide and seek. We go to find our game.
Ten minutes south of the museum, just off of Lucas Road, the geo-zero rests in Lantz Cemetery. Already precocious, our baby cache description is wondering, Why? Why is this cemetery divided into Protestant here before us, and Catholic over the hill? Dear Diary, what do you say?
In a cache more American than the flag, we see unfurled the freedom to decide one’s beliefs – and how much that matters. Citizens of the sweet land of liberty hold tenaciously to the sense that there is meaning and purpose to be found and lived out, where free agency is not just for football players but marks Two-leggeds as self-governing choosers. The final resting place honors that freedom.
Names echo down the hillside – Pleger, Graber, Klotz, Kiser, Herr, Tucker, Miller, Beer, Meyer, Stover, Weber, Dzurani, Bottorf, DeCenso, Staton, Shrilla. The entangling of faith and ethnic identity adds a second page to the diary. German Lutherans gaze across the fence toward Italian Catholics.
Fallen kernels claim the promise of fresh fruit. A distinctly American identity slowly emerges, nourishing new generations, and delivering a banquet of ethnic strengths.
Finders add to the diary. Baby cache has learned to crawl and was last spotted 60 feet west of posted coordinates.
The watch-frog has things in hand. So many cool toys to occupy our little one. Dear Diary, grow strong and live long!
Across our homeward sky, messages remind that we can’t escape the power to choose, to fight or give up, to help or harm, to cache or couch-potato.
OH Love Of Geocaching 