gratitude to the rocks
Oh have rocks captured my attention. Seems fitting on this day, the fourth of July, instead of celebrating the colonial violent birth of America, to instead revel in the sentient energy of rocks and give gratitude to the mother rock, mama earth.
We steady and stabilize our entire life upon this rock.
And yet how easily we overlook rocks, kick them, move them to our whim, break them apart. What a metaphor for how we, colonial settlers in America, have embodied supremacy at the disregard of land.
Rocks are ancestral. They are living lineages, a compilation of shifting sediments and ecosystems, a witness to the rise and fall of empires and species.
Two favorite passage of mine from Tyson Yunkaporta’s book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World remarks on the creation of rocks as accountability to supremacy, which I suppose is the exact tension I am feeling on this day of America’s birthday.
We have stories for this [supremacy] behavior, memorial stones scattered along songlines throughout the landscape, victims and transgressors transformed into rock following epic struggles, standing for all time as cautionary tale. All over that place in Tibooburra the red rocks are people turned to stone for breaking the Law. There is Law and knowledge of Law in stone. All Law-breaking comes from that first evil thought, that original sin of placing yourself above the land or above other people. (pg. 28)
Stones to me are the objects that parallel all life, more so than trees or mortal things because stones are almost immortal. They know things learned over deep time. Stone represents earth, tools, and spirit; it conveys meaning through its use and through its resilience to the elements. At the same time it ages, cracking and eroding as time wears it down, but it is still there, filled with energy and spirit. (pg. 32)
Here’s a nugget of a poem I wrote after spending time sitting with the rocks of the Chuckanut Mountains ::
hold me
feel my edges
smooth to soothe your system
to texture your life
let me hold you
who are grounded on this moving earth
this sentient rock
break me into a million pieces
and I'll be whole
rest with me
be still
hear the quiet
thumbnail image credit to bemya nymh
