Three Rivers Petroglyphs
By James Anthony Curtis
It might not seem like the post for Thanksgiving, but bear with me for a bit.
So on our way to Arizona, we had the privilege to visit what some might consider sacred places along the way. ‘Sacred,’ to me, means touching something deep inside, a part that reflects love in a manner that cant easily be given or received, but involves a space of gratitude, empathy, and attention which provokes the heart to see something more than the mere moment of passing impermanence.
Some beings choose to express these times in art, writing, and music, while others immerse themselves as the flow of the ‘sacred’ allows, giving the current permission to carry them where it wills as the path unfolds. All of us experience the ‘sacred’ through the acknowledging of something meaningful, greater than what we believe ourselves to be, vast, yet small, precious in valuation of what we know based on our current relationships. 
Most times for me there is a period of integration, a space of ‘allowing’ for what has been transmitted, and received, giving time for reflection to manifest back to the universe an acknowledgment of the journey here. Maybe that’s why I choose to write, sometimes in recording, others in expression, both sending those emotional energies to myself and others as apart of universal connection in cooperation with the life lived here. 
It might not seem like we have an impact at times, or like we are here fulfilling purpose, but some of the smallest of actions very well may be the most precious in circling back to our roots, granting ourselves passage as the ‘divine,’ or ‘sacred’ beings that we are — like these testimonials etched in rock, from a people long ago that farmed a once fertile valley, leaving small, unsubstantial traces of animals, actions, and feelings. We too carve out moments in time, possibly left for others to feel as they find, and maybe its not what we think in terms of preserving or recording our memories, or culture, but those ‘expressions,’ feelings that we leave in our absence, ‘signatures’ we leave of our life here in how we interact with our divinity in human form.
The people at ‘Three Rivers’ left no record for us to find, no monuments to any great civilization, but as you sit upon the rocks, walk paths they walked, and touch the pictures they left, you find yourself in the sacred, feeling a place in the heart for family, friends, and a deep gratitude rooted in the preciousness of life. They even buried their dead in the floors of the places they lived, perhaps to keep them close, or maybe as a reminder, to the spark each life holds, that in time transcends all boundaries of limitation.
Today we offer thanks, not for any set discovery, land, or celebration of peoples, but for all beings, on the sacred pilgrimage of love, as we come to know our relationships and why we journey with them. May you be blessed, may you be loved, may you find ease in the open heart of healing.
Namaste. 