Diving Deeper

Washing a rock

 



Washing a rock, one finds rocklike presence within.

“Zen Dust, Zen Sweep” Dominique Leigh, Mothering Magazine.


Ursula K. Le Guin  on rocks:

In general, rocks aren’t living in the same way or at the same pace that we are. But you can find a rock, maybe a big boulder, maybe a little agate in a streambed, and by looking carefully at it, touching it or holding it, listening to it, or by a little talking and singing, a small ceremony, or being still and quiet with it, you can enter into the rock’s soul to some extent and the rock can enter into yours, if it’s disposed to. Most rocks live a long time. They’ve lived a long time before we pass them, and they’ll live a long time after. Some of them are very old, grandchildren of the coming to be of the earth and sun. If there were nothing else to be known from them that would be enough, their long age of being. But there is much other knowledge in rocks, there are things that can be understood only with the help of rocks. They will help people who handle and study and work with them with pleasure and respect, with mindfulness.

Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guinn, p. 309

[The above quotes were gratefully received from Susan Wiseheart, a fellow rock lover!]

A note on collecting rocks

The urge to collect is the natural response of the human psyche to an aesthetic object that speaks directly to it, stirring memories that lie deeply within.  Collecting confirms the indigenous belief that the human psyche reads and understands symbols and that attraction to beauty is a function of psychic awareness. 

Malidoma Patrice Some. The Healing Wisdom of Africa.

In nature there are so many things that attract the eye and elicit the urge to collect and arrange - flowers, leaves, twigs, stones, feathers, seeds - and rocks.  Andy Goldsworthy's natural and ephemeral outdoor sculptures are an extraordinary example of this. 

Whilst we should take care not to do damage by picking wildflowers before they can seed or removing fossils from special reserves, many items are just calling to be noticed and appreciated in this very human way.  It's also a way to remember a wild place you've enjoyed.

Here is a 'Stone Walk' from a book called The Artist Inside by Tom Crockett which contains many intriguing ways of cultivating your creative self.  I used this often with guests at my previous retreat and many of them went home with rocks that they (much) later wrote me about!

Five labyrinth poems by Sulis

Flute

"By the air that is your breath"
I would begin, and stand
On the threshhold stone
Yearning

Without fail or so it seemed
Through my closed eyes
I could feel your voice
Blowing

In a myriad of mild or wild
Tempos to match my need
You spoke in the wind
Announcing

That all I had to do was ask
To listen well or to be heard
Your breath in mine
Singing

"By the air that is my breath"
I would continue, and walk
The flute of my body
Playing

My feet feeling like fingertips
Holding down each note
Each long-held pause
Releasing

A Labyrinth of Promises Kept

It's Full moon, Flower moon and
May gets ready to burst into June
Time to plant soaked Okra seeds
Cast a line for a Sunfish supper
Waiting for Thunder to bring rain

Gathering the Blessed four waters
Well, Spring, Pool, Stream so clear
Crystals in a jug of sea salt water
All laid on a tray of Moon Silver
Preparing for a Rain Dance ritual

Say softly: Chalice of the Grail
Guide us through the Mists that separate
Reveal to us the Land within the Land
Free the Waters of the Sacred Springs
That we may Wet our Wisdom

Carrying our Prayers into night air
The moon comes over the dark hill
Fireflies light our way to the Circle
A shaft of Moonlight falls across it
Ah! Coming to rest on the Spirit Cat

A Labyrinth of Rocks spirals light
As Moon rises over the white pines
Whipoorwill calls up the Mysteries
Walking to the Center, the Heart
The Owl and the Pussycat went

To Sea in a pea-green boat, a forest
Listen!  The Creek's riffle whispers
Our Ancestors the rocks are waiting
They are gathering about you here
In a Labyrinth of Promises kept

Rocks that breathe

Rocks that breathe,
Cool as night water.
Bright as a bluet.
Singular yet blended,
Like curdled clouds.
Scattered by design,
Dried flutes of leaves.
Spelling in spirals.
Dreams that are veiled,
In violet reflections.
Silver-skinned trees,
Float silently by.

 

No barrier to my walking

I left the socks
out in the rain.
Threw them down
in rank weeds.
Threw myself down
sweat and blood.

Soaked the soil
with this history.
Muzzy and thick
as a woven winter.
I've walked miles
in the cold now.

So I peeled them
and lay them down
Put my tired feet
against cool grass.
Felt my soul sink
deep into raw earth.

Felt no barrier
to my walking now.
Leaving the socks
to rot in the rain.
Leaving my spirit
unsmothered.

The burial

It came to me while walking
There is sadness in my hair
In my long bound braid

Samson's locks had strength
But mine held silent grief
In their burnished inches

I pulled back my thoughts
Until they weighed me down
I tied them up with that rope

No kind efforts to disentangle
What was entangled in my hair
Had honored the pain so well

As that thought while walking
That it should be cut and laid
To rest in the earth with them

All those dead years like rings
Around a tree's heart broken
Let them fall back to the soil

Delilah, redefined in Terri
Cut that plait away with ease
And did not make me look

Nine good inches she said
Would give a sick child hope
But not this weave of death

This was treasure to be buried
With those for whom I grieve
In winter's earth before spring

For more on the labyrinth that inspired these poems, please see the previous post.

Like Water, A Labyrinth

To celebrate the first World Labyrinth Day (May 2, 2009)when people all over the world will be 'Walking as One' at 1 pm their local time, creating a ripple of movement as the world turns, here is the story of my own relationship with an outdoor rock labyrinth I created on a lovely piece of land in the Ozarks.  Although I am no longer there, I have many memories of the healing that place brought me and also, I believe, some of the guests at the retreat I co-created there.   In the next post, I present some of the poems that the labyrinth inspired.

Labyrinths have been known to the human race for more than 4,000 years as a symbol of wholeness and may have evolved from the spiral forms appearing in nature. Early labyrinth designs have been found on Cretan coins, Sardinian rock carvings, Hopi medicine wheels, Tibetan sand paintings, and in representations of the Tree of Life in the mystical Jewish Kabbalah. Lauren Artress, a psychotherapist and canon of the Episcopal St. Francis Cathedral in San Francisco, began a labyrinth revival a few years ago.   Now they can be found throughout the US in public parks, spas, hospitals, and churches.  People from all walks of life have been finding solace and solutions through this simple practice.

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Like water, a labyrinth follows a purposeful but meandering path.  Over the last decade I have practiced a form of aquatic bodywork that, in simple terms, involves floating (while gently massaging and mobilizing) another person in a warm water pool.  This has many physical and psychological benefits and, just like the labyrinth, it is also a movement meditation that helps one to open to the mysteries.  Both practices became part of my own spiritual path while I lived at the place I called Aquaest Retreat.