Unearthed

In the town of Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina there has been a startling, recent discovery. An archeologist named Semir Osmanagic, thinks he has found pyramids! Not just one, but at least two. The largest is one third larger that the Great Pyramid of Giza. At first glance they look like mountains...green and covered...but take a minute and you notice they are perfectly formed pyramid shapes. No pyramids are known in Europe, and there is no evidence any ancient civilization there ever attempted to build one.

But Osmanagic, a Bosnian archaeologist who now lives in Houston, has spent the last 15 years studying the pyramids of Latin America. He suspects there is one in his Balkan homeland. He learned about them in April 2005 from Senad Hodovic, director of a museum devoted to the history of Visoko. On a recent visit, Hodovic asked Osmanagic did he want to see "our pyramid shaped hill". When the pair climbed the hill, the sweeping view revealed a second, smaller pyramid-shaped hill. It reminded Osmanagic of pairs of pyramids he has seen in Latin America that together create a gateway into a valley.

Anomalies include some hard to dismiss items. For one, the four perfectly shaped slopes point exactly towards the four cardinal directions. Additionally, NASA satellite photography shows the pyramids give off a thermal signature consistent with man-made objects versus natural objects. And finally there are huge evenly thick blocks of cement-like material consistent with the material found in Egypt found just below the surface. These blocks are even "glued" together in an unknown manner that is the same as Giza.

This, of course, has set off a wave of optimism and hope in Bosnia. It is estimated up to 10,000 people a day come to visit this possibility. What is stunning is how something so big, so grand and so spectacular could have remained undiscovered all these years. Literally a town is built at its base, and people have been living in the shadow of this discovery for many generations. But maybe this discovery was revealed at just the right time. A Bosnian friend told me, "I think this is what we get as a country for all the horror we have faced. God gave us something very good because we also got something very bad. We are lucky it was discovered when it was. If revealed before or during the war they would certainly have been destroyed."

Time, of course, will tell. But for Bosnia and its people I hope they are real. The country needs some good news, some mystery, some symbol of great hope and possibility. I remain moved by this larger metaphor both for Bosnia and for my own life, and am left thinking about the great undiscovered realms that exist for us all…and that they may be right next to us, just below the surface.

Beauty

I recently returned from a trip to Bosnia-Herzegovina where I witnessed the high value placed by Bosnian women on looking beautiful. For over four years during the war, Sarajevo was under siege and basics such as food, water and daily safety were in short supply. Bosnian women, in part, fought back by looking as fashionable as possible. One woman told me, "A Cosmopolitan Magazine was as valuable to us as a next meal". This meant that any bits of cloth were often used to try and create a fashion statement, and Bosnian women would take whatever they could find and try to turn it into something extraordinary.

Today, wandering the streets of Sarajevo, a visitor is passed by elegant woman in the latest fashions resembling Milan. You'd think these women shopped in the new trendy stores of Old Sarajevo, such as Ralph Lauren, but you'd be wrong. Most of them are quite poor, and consider an evening of wandering and window shopping to be the limit. There is very little buying going on--simply put there is no money for anything extravagant. So most evenings end in a smoky cafe discussing how current fashion might be reproduced from already existing clothing. Which raises an interesting question. If you can't buy, why spend so much time in the stores? Because they are, as one woman told me, "A theater of hope. A reminder of what once was and could be again, letting us know what a better life looks like."

Towards the end of the war, a very important moral victory was won by the besieged people of Sarajevo. The international clothing company, United Colors of Benetton, opened a store on a war scarred road within 200 yards of "sniper alley", the deadliest deadly sniper spot in the city. The store was barricaded in sand bags, and a "shopper" would have to risk their life just to make it to the front door. Regardless of the danger, it was a very popular destination, and many Bosnian women sprinted past sniper alley to head directly to see the latest fashion possibilities.

Today there are many shrapnel holes in the sidewalk, a ghastly reminder of hopefully how far the country has come. The poet Mary Oliver wrote, "Imagine grief as the out breath of beauty". When confronted with fear, the Bosnian response is to rise above the forces of destruction and instead embrace that which enhances human splendor. You can see it in the many tiny rose gardens that dot the region, and of course in the individual fashion statements.

Anisa Suceska, program manager in Bosnia for Women for Women International (http://www.womenforwomen.org/), an organization that empowers women in conflict and post-conflict countries, said it well. “We cannot change the facts” she stated. “We can only change our situation.” No matter what your situation, there is always an opening for beauty.

Ask yourself how can I bring beauty forward daily? How can I partner more effectively with my own soul’s call for this essential, life giving quality?