The Endurance of Things…

“The stones speak to me of the endurance of things and how nature will persist. When I spend time among the granite and limestone, I remember all of the prayers uttered by the generations of people living in these sacred landscapes. I find myself aware of being part of a great lineage of people trying to live well and find meaning.” –Christine Valters Paintner

After hearing many times that everything is energy and alive in ways we can’t always understand, it makes perfect sense that Christine Valters Paintner says “the stones speak to me.” The perceived solidity and endurance of stones offers a show of quiet strength after unsettling news stories about climate change and politics.

In her book Earth, Our Original Monastery, Paintner goes on to invite us, out among the stones and trees, to lay our heavy burdens down. She calls the stones “an icon of grace; they reveal to me a face of the Divine that endures and is ever-patient with the world’s unfolding.”

Are you carrying any burdens like worrying about the future of the planet or the health of a loved one? Why not let the stones around you, even a small rock in a garden, speak to you of endurance, perseverance, and quiet strength? It can’t hurt and it just might bring you peace and an awareness that you’re not alone.

May you lay your burdens down among the stones and may their presence give you strength.

Study the Stone

Be yourself. And if what this means
is unclear to you, look around at

the things of this earth. Study the stone
which always does what it was made

to do: it doesn’t always fall in the
same way, sometimes resting in hight

places and at other times finding its
rest where the earth allows it to lie,

but its purpose is to move downward,
and in this the stone loves God in the

way it can, singing the new song
which God gives each creature and thing—

and also you who read this and at times
wonder what to do and how to be.

–Meister Eckhart*
*Featured in Earth, Our Original Monastery and from Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart: Meditations for the Restless Soul by Jon Sweeney and Mark Burrows.