Around Christmas time, at St. Mark's, we sing one of those less traditional hymns that I positively love. I say that it is less traditional only because I never sang it growing up, and it doesn't exactly make the list of common carols one hears in shopping malls in December. Amazingly, and wonderfully, we sing the same hymn around Easter. The verses of the hymn track the life of Christ, and the refrain hits on even nature's amazement: "and every stone shall cry."
And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry! What a powerful image - that the wonder of God was such that stones wept.
I know many of you know that I recently returned from a trip to Haiti, where I worked at part of a medical clinic. The clinic is connected to a school. Before I went down on the trip, I had watched a DVD which chronicled the history of that school, from its beginnings in the back room of a mud hut to a beautiful structure with over 1,500 bright and happy minds. One of the things that makes those minds happy is food. You can't reasonably expect a child to learn if he or she is literally starving. And so they embarked to start a school feeding program, to ensure at least one meal a day for their students. And in the DVD I was struck by something one of the school workers said. She said that there were children who were literally so thirsty that they would suck on cool rocks they would find in the morning, covered with the slightest bit of morning dew. Children literally trying to suck water from a stone to avoid thirst. If stones are still weeping, it is surely in Haiti.
And yet stones are capable of causing great pain. I am now working at a burn center outside Philadelphia, and we are treating an 11 month old who fell into a pit of burning coals at a camp. His tiny hands wrapped around the coals. A confused, frightened child, falling towards fire, puts his hands out and clenches what he can – the instinctive grasp of a child working against him. Hopefully, he won't need surgery.
The news reminds me that today is the 40th anniversary of the landing of man on the moon. And if ever there was a rock that inspired and filled a generation with wonder and amazement, then surely it is that small rock orbiting our own planet. One upon a time I dreamed of walking on that rock myself, and while my current life and dreams are far from that, it is always something that I cherish in my mind.
And so here I sit, alone in a library, between patients and the OR, thinking of all these rocks and what they have meant to so many different people in so many part of the world. The constant theme seems to be one of action. Stones react, they can give, they hurt, they inspire. There is motion in all this, a motion that we, as bystanders, are privy to if only we look.
And so let us look!
