Courage Stones: A Winter Ritual
It is during the harsh, cold season that endurance is especially needed. Stones stand strong and endure in all kinds of weather. Likewise, people with endurance stand strong in their winter season of life. They have courage to wait patiently in the silent fallowness of winter’s empty months. They walk through winter’s darkness with a belief that this space of life is a time of creative waiting, holding the nurturing energy that will one day birth within them.
Hold a stone in your hands. These stones have had a home on our planet for billions of years. They have gone through immense transition. They have experienced dislocation and rough treatment by humans. They have lived through the various moods of Earth’s constant changes. These stones have kept their unique consistency and beauty. They have continued to be resilient and enduring. Each stone has its own story to tell of strength and survival.
Use your external senses to “get to know” the stone. Feel the stone with your fingers, notice smoothness, roughness, edges…. Look at the color, variations in shade … its shape…. Smell it…
Feel its heaviness or lightness in your hand. Get in touch with the mystery and secret of the stone, its personal history: Consider how the stone was born from stardust, became part of the earth’s formation from layers of compressed dust … what it experienced of Earth’s upheavals: earthquakes, glaciers, storms, rain …
how it spent much time in darkness, lost in the layers of the planet … how it came to be here … where it was found, who polished it, who marketed it, and who brought it to this place … how it has been treated … displaced, “beaten and polished” in order to have the shine and the smoothness it now has … how it continues to be a sturdy, enduring element of life…
Sit with the stone and reflect on a ‘courage moment’ in your own life.”
From The Circle of Life: The Hearts Journey through the Seasons, by Joyce Rupp & Macrina Wiederkehr.
You must be logged in to post a comment.