Regaining Time

Its early morning and I am up. There is nothing unusual about that, I am always up "early" compared to my partner. He and I have different internal clocks that compliment each other nicely. But being up early gives me time, something that I have not felt that I have had lately. There is no reason for not making time, or finding it, but it still has been elusive to me. Yet, when I put it into these terms I find that I smile for time is an illusion as well.

We count seconds, minutes, and hours on a clock; there are days which turn to months on calendars, but in the end we are the ones that create the fractured moments that we call time. Once created we then gain or lose the bits and pieces of a day. We can feel good or bad about how we spent our time wondering how the next day will be as if we have no say. It is all a choice. To an extent that is true, pressures outside of ourselves can dictate how we spend our day, our month, our life even. But not this morning; this morning is mine in the wee early hours.

I have changed my life, begun to reconstruct it in a manner that is pleasing to me. That sounds selfish and yet it is not. If I do not give to my family the best and most honest me that there is I am robbing both them and myself of what is most precious... an honest relationship. I had lost myself, lost in the world and its demands to be a "good" mother, partner, employee, employer, or whatever other label you would like to put there. But another self was crying to get out and be with the world. That self had been shuffled away for a few years in order to stay in front of all the demands that life and society had placed before me. I allowed it, I was partner in my own captivity, I could stop it, and I did.

I changed my life; reinvented it to an extent. I walked away from all of the things that I thought everyone placed value on and that I envisioned that was required of me. When I turned my back and walked away an amazing thing happened. Those that mean the most to me, those that I love, smiled. They were pleased that I no longer agonized over how my time and energy were taken from me every day and that I had nothing left to give at the end of each cycle. Everyone smiled and they still are smiling. I am now my true self, the self that I wanted to give to them but felt I could not. The person inside is no longer screaming to get out; she is out and gently sipping coffee in the very early hours of the day.

So who is this new person that sits where I use to? Well that is the beauty of it all, I do not know. I have a lifetime of discovery with family and friends before I answer that question. All I know for know is that time has returned to what it should have been all along. It has returned to the turning of the wheel, to marking passage through seasons not seconds, and most of all it moves at nature's pace and not man's.

Have you ever read a book that you could not put down; that you devoured until you reached the last forty or fifty pages? At that point you open it often and read a few paragraphs so you can finish, but somehow you find reasons not to continue. You do not understand why, it is a wonderful read and then it happens. You realize that you are delaying so that the story will not end. That is the only way I can describe Dance of Stones… a story that you just do not want to end.

Kenn Day, a modern day post tribal Shaman, retells the story of his 1998 trip to sacred sites in Europe. The trip was one of opening and enlightenment for both Kenn and his companion. Moving from site to site using intuition as their roadmap and magpies as their guide posts, self realization and new life paths were opened to both travelers in this story. It was a delight to take the trip with the two of them, but it was not just a matter of reading their story, it was also an opening of self for me as I took the journey with them. I had been thinking of this book for a while but had made one excuse or another for putting off reading it. As with all things, when it was time to act on this thought I dove in and I’m glad that I did.

My own journey has taken many twists and turns not unlike the journey in this story. The reading of the book happened when I needed to be reminded of lessons long ago learned. How many times has it happened that we slip into complacency and forget the magic around us? When that happens to me I begin to feel as if I am walking a fog; this book was the tunnel out of the fog. Passages of text to quote elude me as I write this. Maybe each person needs to read Dance of Stones to find their own unique lesson. If you need an inspiration to help you find a new perspective Dance of Stones will not disappoint you. Suffice it to say that I gained insight to the journey of two individuals as well as to my own path in this world.

Kenn has written in a manner that makes this book accessible to everyone. That is not to say it is a watered down bit of writing, rather it is in the language common to all of us; it is the written if he were speaking. I could not have gained what I did if it was written any other way. In writing about his journey, Kenn speaks to us as if we were sitting around a campfire, engaged in his words, body language, and voice and allows us to take the story to our heart to remember time and time again. Kenn’s talent in using story telling has moved from oral tradition to the written page beautifully.

Dance of Stones is a story to read over and over and I would recommend it to both those well along their path and those just beginning to search for one. It is a wonderful and gentle reminder that regardless of our experience we are all travelers sharing a common road and in one way or another we all have something to teach and to learn.

To purchase Dance of Stones please click here.