Coyote's Den

I had a moment of insight or feeling, when thinking about what I think a soul is. This is how I ended up expressing it.

In the beginning, I was a raw stone.

Life and people chipped and shaped me,

Until I gleamed with facets and with scars.

In the stone was the shape of what I could be chipped into.

In the stone I was, was the shape of what my shapes could be.

As I was chipped and shaped, parts were cut away, or pounded into different configurations.

And yet, I am the same stone.

And as I rolled, and moved, and learned to choose my path from where I was tossed, I mecame different by my journey.

And yet, I am the same stone.

Many hands have shaped me. My own among them.

In different lives, I found I had different hands.

All the people I have met, and all the people I have been, they have worked the stone of my heart.

Sometimes, all that can be seen of what I was is by the shape of what is left behind.

Sometimes, my flaws can be seen, or are hidden, by the shaping.

A flaw is sometimes not corrected, but is smoothed over or cut away.

Sometimes, a hand, my own or that of another, works around a flaw that goes deep.

And where one hand does not do the job well, another hand makes the best of what is left.

As I become smaller, I also move towards the potential of what I could be.

My heart is still the same heart.

As I strike the stones of others, my shape determines how I shape them.

And as the light from other stones is reflected onto my facets, I reflect it from me also.

And the light I pass on is shaped by my shape, by my experiences, and by the heart still deep within me.

It is shaped not only by those places where it reflects from my surface, but also from places where it penetrates me.

Some of my facets are dark, some bright, some clear, some foggy.

But they pass on the pattern of light that is uniquely mine.

And someday, perhaps everything will be chipped away.

And there will be a place in the universe for the soul of a stone.

And I will not only be myself, I will also be the spirit of all stones.

My heart will be all hearts.

But I will still be me.

My soul is the place in the universe in which the stone that is myself will fit.