I have always loved stones. As a kid, I collected a rock everywhere I went. When I was three, I found a gray, flat, smooth stone from the brook beside my playhouse in West Townshend, VT. Living in Petersburg, VA, at five, I excavated the watermelon patch, which stretched for miles behind our house, and found an odd-shaped orange rock. When I was 8, I lived in Germany. My prize was a delicate white and black square stone from the top of the Eagle’s Nest in Germany (maybe Hitler had touched it). From a family vacation in Atlantic City, age 10, I brought home a gray pock-marked stone. Miss Mulraney, my teacher, told me it was a fossil of a sea creature from thousands of years ago. I’ve continued the stone gathering throughout my life, attaching each rock to a place, an experience, a mood.
When my husband, son, and I spent time in Scotland for a family wedding in the 1990s, we were hiking in the Kilmartin Valley. One thing was paramount in all the plans for the trip to Scotland: I wanted to see and touch stones—ancient stones, stones moved and carved by my ancestors, stones touched thousands of years ago, stones with meaning.
We were climbing to a site the guidebook said had standing stones and petroglyphs.
I picked up a pink stone – a rose quartz. I turned it over and over, feeling the spiritual experience of being part of the natural and historical world. On one side, I saw the distinct image of a bird – the head, the beak, and the wing – as if someone had carved it. “Look at this rock. It’s almost as if someone carved a bird on it.”
Andrew, my son, took the rock and inspected it carefully. “Cool, Mom,” he said, “I see it.” He continued to turn the stone. When you turn it this way, it looks like a broken heart.”
I took the stone back and readjusted my eyes, looking from a different angle. “Yes, I see it. It’s a broken heart.”
I passed the stone to Howard, my husband. He slowly turned the stone, finding the bird and the broken heart. Finally, he stopped, looking intently from a different angle at the side of the rock. “I found a lamb. See its nose, eyes, and ears?”
Andrew took the stone and said, “Yes, I see it. Look, Mom,” and handed me the pink rock.
“Me, too,” I said.
The three of us sat quietly, lost in our thoughts and imaginings. Memories and images are set in stone. Perspective is everything. How often do we get stuck in a certain view of life, people, and God? Our stuckness prevents us from looking from different vantage points.
God, open my eyes to see the fullness of your perspective, the eternal view.
