Thinning Veils And Speaking Rocks

“In the autumn, Nature withers away and the Spirit wakes. The withering away is no reality; it is a symbol of the fact that the divine forces allied with the Earth are waking,” the spiritual scientist Rudolf Steiner said.

When the morning light is angled just so, you can see a thousand tiny webs lit by the rising sun. They are always there, but only in that brief touch of light can you see them. The spiritual world exists all around us as well, like the fragile strands of silk that stretch across the grass and trail along the fence line, waving slowly in the breeze.

There are worlds and worlds, as close as a breath. They move in, around, and through us, but we do not know it. At certain times, these worlds become more accessible. The barriers between the material world, as most of us understand it, and the spiritual beings that lie behind our world become more permeable. The best way to experience this is to observe the world as if this reality is, in fact, the case.

The rocks have something to say, something to project back to us if we become open to that exchange. The large, flat-topped boulder that lies in the river along the path where we walk is full of stories. Many people, throughout many generations and many centuries, have stopped there.

In the days when this land was still wide-open wilderness, someone climbed onto that rock, perhaps laid down and watched the lazy river flow past, listening to the crows calling from the high pine trees that grow near the riverbank. Someone sat and watched the light filter through the forested hills, watched it slip away until, in the darkness, the sounds of the water and the wind in the trees took on a life of their own.

The flat rock was a meeting place for lovers, a distant fond remembrance told by firelight to grandchildren decades afterward. It was a place for fishermen, even very ancient ones, who spotted and tracked the dens of the largest fish that lurk in the deep, beneath the shadows and edges of the boulder.

If I close my eyes, I can not only see the flat rock; I can feel it. I can feel the loneliness of someone who was there, and the contentment and happiness of another. Emotions swirl from that place, and we can still connect with what was deeply felt there.

Is it imagination, or can a place truly speak? In the end, I’m sure there is a real distinction. Imagination is more closely connected to reality than most people believe.

The rocks have something to say, especially in the fall, when the barriers are thin. They can speak if we learn to look and listen. An object can communicate through stories and feelings that come into us when we allow it to form a connection with our own being. When we are open to an exchange, an exchange takes place.