Doors and Stones

Say not "I have found the truth", but rather, "I have found a truth."  Say not "I have found the path of the soul" but say rather "I have met the soul walking upon my path."  For the soul walks upon all paths.  The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.  The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

Kalil Gibran

 

I find myself fascinated with the stone history of  England, of the British Isles. Whether prehistoric Avebury and Stonehenge tracing the Dragon Lines and the eddies and flows of the subtle body of the land, or the tall spired medieval cathedrals with their stonework carved and curved and tendrilled like vines and trees that will never wither, the stone castle I visited, once a Saxon fort, or the heavy, massive old slate roofs I find it hard to believe continue to be supported, not for decades, but for centuries.   Everywhere the people of this rocky land patiently took the stones, great and small, and built everything they inhabited, whether temple, church, barn or well.  These stones have songs in them, stories with almost-words.  I take my shoes off,  bare feet on the cold bedrock, perhaps to listen.

I think this pebbled mosaic, this quarried bedrock, these standing stones so carefully placed by ancient   hands ..... speak, strangely,  of  constant change.  All the feet that have walked here, the hands shaping, touching,  shimmering.
 

 

"I have been a blue salmon,
 I have been a dog, a stag, a roebuck on the mountain,
 A stock, a spade, an axe in the hand,
 A stallion, a bull, a buck,
 I was reaped and placed in an oven;
 I fell to the ground when I was being roasted
 And a hen swallowed me.
 For nine nights was I in her crop.
 I have been dead, I have been alive."


From the Song of Taliesin 

(possibly 8th Century)