“One
who speaks for the tree roots and stones. Who speaks with the tree
roots’ and stones’ voices. One who speaks as the grass and
rivers. One who speaks as fields and woods and hills and valleys and
the salt marshes and waves and tides. Yet who speaks as what is close
to home. With the mouse’s voice or the seagull’s or the fox’s
or the badger’s. One who speaks in cadences that go beyond the
darkness and beyond stars, encompassing what is unmeasurable. One
whose entire being vibrates to the spirits’ words in nature, like a
reed at dawn in a pool where trout swim.
Picture
a living world of tree roots, grass roots, little streams, big
streams, great oceans, waters seeping into the deep rocks, recharging
the headwaters of rivers and streams. The world is alive with
whispers.
Wildwood
mystic Rae Beth wrote of one of her familiars, an old cunning
man who lived in Britain over a thousand years ago. He spoke to her
of prayers. He said that we must know all the prayers of the world
around us; of the birds, beasts or fish. I can understand the idea
that a sparrow or a fox might pray; but the prayers of streams or
stones?
What
does water dream of and pray for? Does the drop of water in a tiny
brook remember when it was part of a mighty ocean? Does it remember
being a snowflake, a glacier, or a tiny drop of rain? Does it
remember being another tiny rivulet? Flowing from rivulet, to stream,
to mighty river and finally to the sea. Does it remember being caught
up by the warmth of the sun only to become a new drop of rain. Does
it remember the long fall from cloud to earth, the sinking into the
soil, the slow drift into tree roots, the release from leaves into
the air and back to clouds to fall again.
What
does a stone remember? Does it remember when its atoms were part of
the primal lava flows? Does it remember further back when the atoms
were formed in the death throes of a super nova? Do the atoms
remember their lives in a cliff face being ground down by relentless
breakers? Does it remember the endless pressure as the sandstone was
thrust again into daylight or carried down into the heart of the
earth to return again as a lava flow?
Imagining
the dreams of a bird, badger or fish is difficult enough for a human.
Normally we see water, grass or stone as inanimate, unaware. To
imagine their prayers; that is a mystery.
No comments:
Post a Comment