” So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?”
” The story with animals is the better story.”
” Thank you. And so it goes with God.”

~~ Yann Martel, Life of Pi ~~

I’ve been a rockhound all my life.

While taking a program at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, I spotted a fascinating beach stone of pink granite embedded with an intriguing black basalt image that spoke to me most powerfully. I took it back to my room and daily marvelled upon the image, wondering”How on earth did you get this way?“

Toward the end of the program, the facilitator asked that we each bring an item for the center altar, so I placed the stone on the altar, along with many lovely offerings from other participants. The next day, the center items were handed out as talking pieces for small discussion circles – surprisingly, the host handed that very stone to me for my circle! Seemed a coincidence since she didn’t know I was the one who had put it there. Thus the stone served as a talking piece for our circle.

Anyway, when the program finished I knew that the stone had to stay on the island so I placed it beside an impressive granite *erratic in a forest clearing on the Hollyhock property.

I never forgot that stone. I sensed that it carried a message.

Three years later, at a Hollyhock program post covid lockdown, I went looking for the stone and found that someone had placed it, with cedar leaves around, on top of the granite erratic.

Again, I carried it with me for a few days and, before leaving the island, placed it in cairn form back on the granite boulder (as shown in the photo here). Afterwards, I noticed a young woman taking a photo of the cairn; drawn, I imagine, to the beauty of the pink granite/basalt stone on top.

I still sit in Council with that young woman but have never told her my history with the stone; she will have imagined her own story of how it got there.

And now that intriguing stone turns up on this blog. This single stone has many stories.

These turns of human attention to this particular stone are curious and fun; they make me giggle, really. But the stone story speaks of something deeper – about all that is hidden from sight or even how superficial it is to think that what we see starts with us.

Truth be told, this pink granite/basalt stone’s story began eons before in the belly of wind, water, sand and geologic forces. Now that is something wondrous. That is the better story!

Human stories are always built on previous stories. The original stories fade into the background, rubbed away and reworked over time, like *palimpsests. Human civilization is rife with palimpsests.

This simple stone story illustrates how the universal is contained in the particular; how stories are steeped in layers of deep time that we human animals build upon – oftentimes to our own detriment. At this point in human history, the layers are putting excruciating pressure on our collective ability to discern Truth. When we pull back, way back, we can see the bigger story of our intersecting relationships within a living Earth risen from a 14 billion year epic journey.

That’s a story to Trust. That story shifts my perspective, gives me space to breathe and stay grounded in the love of being here to witness the utterly profound interbeingness of all life.

Erratic: a boulder that differs from the surrounding rock and is believed to have been brought from a distance by glacial action:

Palimpsest:  a piece of writing material on which the original writing has been washed or rubbed off to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.