Meditation in the Land of Standing Stones

Was it Michaelangelo who said that he did not sculpt the stone into a desired shape, but only chipped away everything that hid the shape within?

Writing is like that – you make a block of text and then chip away at it, word by word, comma by comma, until the shape within is free.

When I was a young traveller I called house dwellers `the stone people’ because they did not move. Year after year we would come back and they would still be there, tending their gardens and houses. But I learned that even in what I perceived as stone, there was life, creativity, change and wisdom.

Stone is patient, but nature even more so. There is much contained in stone that waits to be freed – gold, minerals, traces of the ancient past, even water.

The Old Man of Hoy may be destined to fall, but he teaches us something – no matter how `set in stone’ we may be, there are patient, persistent forces at work, freeing the spirit within.