Castle Rigg Stone Circle

So why did this happen? Did the stones grow out of the earth like a fairy-ring of toadstools? Did extraterrestrials bring them down on space ships? Did God raise them himself, or herself, or themselves, through the right temporal cortex of prehistoric homo sapiens whose descendents raised the cathedrals at Yorkshire and Salisbury and Winchester?

What is the religious impulse in human beings? I feel it—felt it stronger and more often when I was younger and with greater blood flow to the right temporal lobe. But here on this little knob of land, surrounded by beautiful mountains and walled fields and God’s own country--the wide and clouded sky--religion is still the biggest question. (2005)