I like this passage, because it describes the Augusteum– this grand shrine the emperor erected to house his remains. He couldn’t have imagined the site having any greater historic purpose. Yet, his ashes are stolen, and the mausoleum goes through iterations–a fortress, a Renaissance garden, a fireworks depository, and a concert hall.
Right now, our lives are going through urgent changes no one could have anticipated. Yet when we see ourselves as part of a greater wave of transformations that rise and fall with the tide of time: one day we may be a mausoleum, the next day a Renaissance garden…there is some sense of serenity there. We are all just surfers riding the tide of the human experience. Today there is panic, but tomorrow there may be peace.
Sara Grimes 