Can you see her?
Can you see the black silhouetted face gazing out to sea serenely, chin resting on water, puckered lips ready for the kiss of birds, of lost sailors; where her gently sloping forehead and brow become tight, little balls of plaited hair swept up and away down her massive torso by endless winds coming in off the ocean?
She’s my constant guardian.
She resides in Auk Point at the farthest reaches of Roaring Beach. Perched on her upper lip would have me 50 feet above the water. At her hairline I am approaching 200 feet high.
I look to her for guidance when feeling overwhelmed by the sorrows of this earth, when tiny fears of insignificance and powerlessness creep into my confidence.
Her poise and calm demeanor after millenniums steadfastly bearing witness to the tides pulled in and out by the moon’s waning and waxing wanderings, always dissolves and makes light any burden my soul is carrying; always fills me with wonder and connection.
Although of stone, she is not a stony silence. Walking her sandstone flanks is to read in her geologic layers a several hundred million year old “record” of the story of evolution. Re-cord: from the Latin “to put to the heart again and again”.
“Hear my story”, she asks of me daily. By listening with open heart I make peace with myself as with others and am made peaceful. Her story is my story in this great unfolding.
By listening, I come to understand, yet again, that to be present on this earth just this once is enough; that simply to be here in this — my body, your body, our slowly diminishing bodies — is so much more than we could ever imagine.
Yet only once.
“Once for each, only once. Once and no more.
And we too: just once. Never again. But
to have lived even once,
to have been of Earth — that cannot be taken from us.”Rilke, from the Ninth Duino Elegy
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