A friend asked me to bring him back a stone or two from our Canadian travels this summer, so that focused my attention on looking for stones of some unique particularity as we traveled from place to place as itinerant campers over the course of seven weeks on the road. The act of looking for stones invited me to think more about the difference between rock and stone. With a little bit of musing, followed by research, followed by more musing, there is definitely a difference. Rock is a geologic material, sometimes in chunks large and small called rocks. Stones are individual rocks, usually smaller and often linked in some way to human interaction. One more commonly refers to a house or wall made of stone, not rock. If rocks are shaped and smoothed by water, and small enough to hold in a human hand, they are most likely called a stone and more likely to be used in some practical way by that human.
The Bible is not shy about using either term, but stone is the more common. It is even used as a cruel verb: to stone someone to death. That definitely embodies the idea of a handheld object and it appears too often in the biblical narrative for my comfort. But on a much lighter note, Jesus ponders turning stone to bread. Much better.
Visiting the holy city of Jerusalem, one can’t miss the stonework everywhere. Light, beautiful stones paving the streets and forming the walls or facades of most buildings. The Western Wall is an iconic and profound place to pray. If these stones could shout, oh the tales they’d tell.
Stones can create barricades as well. The walls that separate Israel-controlled territory from Palestinian lands are mostly concrete, but create a formidable and imposing barrier between two warring peoples. Our US border wall adjacent to Mexican offers a similar intentional separation to those seeking a better life.
On a hike, however, stones are just part of the experience, partners in the journey. Silent and unmoving sentinels, they’re just there to quietly cheer me along, like spectators along a marathon route. They interact with my body in different ways, mostly as the soles of my boots trod upon them, or smaller ones try to hitch a ride inside as I unknowingly kick them into the air. I may pass them lining a stream, helping create the babbling noise that traverses a bridged path. I may scramble over them, on a cobbled beach or a rubbled mountain top. They come in all colors and sizes and shapes, some with mica sparkles or contrasting veins of quartz. Most have been around for millennia but have been slowly shaped and smoothed over many years and circumstances.
On a beach in New Brunswick, Canada, this summer, on the shore of the Bay of Fundy with its massive tidal fluctuation, I walked at low tide across almost a mile of stones that created this short-lived hiking path in the intertidal zone that would be deeply underwater in a matter of hours. I looked for a single stone to bring home for my friend back home, overwhelmed with the choices before me. My geophile friend has been having a rough year, so I wanted a stone that would speak to his situation, that would echo and resonate with this season of his life. One finally caught my eye and I knew instinctively that it was meant for him. It’s a dark slate with a thick vein of quartz bisecting it. It’s a bit smooth but also still far from polished. It fits easily in my hand.
I sent him a picture of it with my phone and texted, “This is your ‘spiritual state’ stone from the intertidal zone (metaphor alert). Harder quartz layer (Spirit) through the middle, giving it core strength. You are in a long, tumbling phase and the grit will keep changing it/you as the polishing continues and the rough places are made smooth (Isaiah 40).”
We humans are as vast and individual as any stone on this planet. We vary in smoothness, texture, composition and size. Many of us find ourselves living in a constantly changing intertidal landscape that perpetually sumerges us while also cleansing us and polishing us. Sometimes, oftentimes, that polishing comes from rubbing up against other stones, gritty communal interaction and a clatter of challenge and consternation. Sometimes those closest to us bruise our heels or work their way into our socks and between our toes.
As I walk in different landscape and among differing cultures of stones, they serve as constant reminders and ambassadors of the power of diversity and community, and the aggregate strength that comes from both. Stones don’t need to shout to get their message across; they must simply be willing to be smoothed and perhaps even be put to work by human hands as they travel their own landscape of being and transform ours as well.