Sitting with Stones, part I

Cemeteries can connect us with our community, our history, and our own mortality.

Stones tend to sit still. Might we -- for just a bit -- too?

So much of our waking lives are spent in motion: either physical movement, along the road to the next point on our journey; or eye/hand movement, clicking from one link to the next on the information highway. Whether by plane, train or automobile, or eye, hand, right click, the speed - the overall pace - is oh so quick.

We often aren’t anywhere long enough to see what’s right there, simply, actually there. And because ‘out there’ has disappeared, along with it vanishes the finding and feeling of our soft edge: the sensitive, porous boundary between interior and exterior, our life and our world.

Sitting like a stone - becoming still - we begin to feel our breath rise and fall. Suddenly the skin comes alive. We sense temperature: the cool of the ground and the direction of the sun. We find and synchronize with larger movements: the play of wind, of shade, the symphony of other beings. Our eyes, ears and heart turned on, we begin to step out of the limitations of self and into the larger experience of place.

Taking it one step further: beyond sitting like a stone, we might consider sitting WITH stones.

Stepping off to the shoulder of life into a cemetery -- that shadow land where death resides -- invites us to sink in, settle even more deeply into our experiences of self, society, history.