There is a special standing stone somewhere on the west coast of Ireland that I met many years ago and I am going to try to write about this encounter now, some 15 years later, because I believe that stone is calling to me, reminding me of a promise I made.
Shirley and I were traveling on the west coast for about 2 weeks when we chanced upon this stone. I think it was called a marriage stone of which there are a small number scattered about Ireland. It was about 8 feet tall with a hole carved through it about 5 feet up that was worn smooth by all the hands that have reached through it over the centuries and millenia. Apparently couples would hold hands through the hole to sanctify their union. That is the lore of marriage stones, but I am sure there were plenty of couples who were simply in love who evoked this ancient medicine power of the stone to join their hearts together who had no intention of marrying. Love is love. But I think the hole has also served as an opening for other kinds of communions, for example, with the souls of those who have passed.
But here is where I want to get personal. As I stood next to it, or even as I stepped up to it, I knew that I was in the presence of an intelligent being. Please understand that this is not a thought so much as a powerful memory like when you meet someone who leaves an indelible impression on you.
This stone had its own kind of awareness that I had stepped into, like when you enter into the perfumed circumference of a rose bush. What was on the order of a thought was my appreciation for the story of this stone, which was easily 100 times older than my story. . .But wait a second. I am one of those people who has "an old soul", which is not just a cliche, but an empirical fact. So, on the grounds of my own modest claim to untold age, it felt proper and respectful to introduce myself as I peered through the hole in this ancient one, with my "old" eyes.
That was when something shifted in my awareness and I found myself out of time. I mean, the second, minute, hour, day, month, year vanished as reference points and, with that suspension, I began to weep. It was a profound unburdening of something I had been carrying up to that suspended moment, something the stone lifted from me.
Whatever it was, it was like a wave. I had to get out of its way. Until it passed, I was helpless, but afterwards I felt the way you feel after a summer storm passes through. I think I was hugging the stone the whole time!
There was something about this experience that bound me to the stone the way I hear men or women are bound together by combat but there was no violence involved, certainly no hint of trauma. Here is how I unpack the significance of what happened:
That stone is a dream-holder. Every time someone came to the stone with something that was too much to keep to themselves, whether a dream, a prayer, for release, forgiveness, mercy, wisdom or even vindication or restitution, or some couple pledged their love, the stone as much as said: I will let what you express pass through me with my blessing, but I will also hold it, forever - (perhaps just a quantum of) that wish, that prayer, that blessing. I think that's what I sensed that made me love that stone so much that I couldn't bear it, so the wave that washed though me was mostly my love for the stone!
But in my weeping there was also the unburdening of everything I was holding in my heart. The stone taught me something that I never tried to put into words. I think if it could have spoken English it would have said something like this:
"My dear pilgrim, my dear friend, you need a hole in you, like me, that lets everything pass through, like the wind", instead of letting so much get trapped and held in my heart (as if my heart were a vault!). But I understand that some of what I let in has to stick so it can change me, but I mustn't let it fester or stew, but, after I have held it for a while, then I have to ground it, just like that stone.
Before we left I promised the stone I would come back some day. I guess by writing this I am renewing that promise.
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This felt almost too personal to post, but these are liminal days we are living in so it would be irresponsible of me not to post my reflection on this encounter with the marriage stone. I am reading a book right now, The Light Pirate, by Lilly Brooks-Dalton. It is about the realistic, some might say inevitable, end of Florida as we know it. In this book, Florida it is being reclaimed by climate change, first by powerful hurricanes and rising seas, then the evacuation of Miami, then the shrinking of towns, cities and communities of Southern Florida with the concomitant shrinking of the tax base, followed by the failing of infra-structure, the collapse of power grids, heavier seasonal rains and, finally, the failure of the Herbert Hoover Dam (that holds back the waters of Lake Okeechobee), the finale of the rehydration of the lower half of Florida. If the story of The Light Pirate comes to pass, Florida will be the first state to slip out of the grasp of so-called civilization to be reclaimed by nature, but more will follow like dominoes.
Back to my encounter with this remarkable living stone on the west coast of Ireland. It has "seen" 2, maybe 3 thousand years go by but, this is the crazy part -- so has the old-soul part of me, that the stone awakens in me. What I am saying is, the marriage stone awakened my "old eye" that opens me to an awareness of time out of time, so, when I was with this stone I was experiencing time more like the stone might be said to experience it, as one ever-lasting moment.
And, what I realize in retrospect (and I do believe it took me all these years to see this) is, it was teaching me how to weather the quickening calamities of our own time, by letting the winds of time pass through me, leaving only quanta of the drama of the phenomenal world sticking to the flypaper of my psyche, so that I am not impervious to the pain of the world. I allow myself to be affected by what passes through me, but, like the stone, my teacher, I always stay grounded, like a lightning rod.
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