Daily Sauntering

The stone sits upon the mountain
as though it had been there before the mountain learned its name.

Long ago,
when ice still ruled the young earth,
some great hand of winter carried it— rolled it,
lifted it,
cast it forward— and left it here.

Since then,
millions of years have passed like birds across the sky.

Rain has entered its ancient silence. Wind has written upon its face. Snow has covered it,
then uncovered it, as though the seasons were searching for something buried in time.

The stone has never spoken. Never complained. Never rejoiced.

It has not waited for tomorrow, nor mourned for yesterday.

It simply is— held in the deep rhythm of becoming
without movement.

Yet sometimes
when I look upon it,
I imagine a memory sleeping
inside its darkness: a remembrance of motion, of fire beneath the earth, of glaciers moving like white kingdoms across the young world, of a time
when nothing had yet settled into its final shape.

Perhaps even stone remembers becoming. Perhaps stillness is not the absence of longing, but longing that has grown so deep
it no longer needs a voice.

Time walks across its skin. A thousand winters leave no complaint. A thousand springs bring no applause. The mountain changes around it, while the stone keeps its silence.

And yet
the whole world is gathered there— the storm, the sunlight, the cold moon, the migrating bird, the green moss after rain, the first snow of another winter.

The stone does not stand outside time. Time lives inside the stone.

To be stone is not to escape becoming. It is to become so slowly that movement
looks like stillness.

I sit beside it. The mountain breathes. The wind passes through the grass. Somewhere below,
water searches for the sea. And for a little while
I borrow the stone’s silence— its patience, its million-year breath, its freedom from the tyranny of hurry.

I think of my own years. How quickly they have passed. A child, a young man, a husband, a father, a pastor, a traveler, an old man sitting now beside a stone.

All those lives seem to move through me
like clouds crossing the mountain.

The stone does not ask how many years remain. It does not count the seasons. It does not fear the coming winter. It simply receives what arrives. Rain. Sun. Snow. Silence. Light.

Perhaps this is the wisdom
I have been seeking— not to become less alive, but to become less hurried.

Not to escape time, but to enter it. Not to demand that life change for me, but to let myself be changed by life.

I place my hand upon the stone. It is cold. Then warm. Then cold again beneath the passing cloud.

And suddenly I understand: the stone is not dead. It is only speaking in a language older than words.

It says: Be still. You do not have to hurry toward your ending. You are already inside eternity.

The mountain does not ask you to conquer it. Sit. Listen.

Let the wind pass through you. Let the years fall away like leaves. Let what must change change. Let what must remain remain.

And for one brief moment, I am no longer a man counting years. I am stone. I am mountain. I am silence
remembering movement.

I am the ancient earth
breathing beneath
my borrowed name.

And somewhere beyond grief and hope, beyond beginning and ending, the great wheel of becoming
turns without hurry.

The stone remains. The mountain remains. The sky moves. The seasons return.

And I sit quietly among them, learning at last that stillness is not the end of becoming— it is another name

for eternity.