Grace

Grace. That's the centerpiece of Stone Crossings, shared through the hard and hidden places of my life and the bible.

In sun-dappled creekbeds and strawberry fields, in the dark belly of a whale and on parched desert plains, grace makes surprising appearances. Along the way, it calls, “Where have you been, where are you now, where do you want to be?” Then it gives strength to answer, to hope and to heal.

1 Stepping Stones • conversion

I came to God through a want ad. "Piano for sale," it said.

Backstory Extra: Filtered, a musing on grace

2 Christmas Coal • shame

I stood in the center of those laughing men, a child of nine years old, and my heart turned to wax. I would have given anything to be a moth and flutter into darkness. There was nowhere to hide.

Backstory Extra: Christmas: Choosing My Scars

3 Tossed Treasure • messiness

My stepfather was a messmaker. He tossed my treasures; he filled my life with scraps of betrayal. Sometimes his messes floated in broad daylight. Other times they sank to hidden places. The guest room from which he tossed my rock tumbler was one such hidden place. The door was often locked.

4 Heron Road • suffering

When I consider my mother and her decision to marry my stepfather, I remember a story about Salvador Dali. As a budding artist he painted with stones, attaching tiny rocks to his canvas. He glued cherry stems to a still life. His parents supported his creative efforts and hung his stone sky painting in the dining room. Every once in a while a pebble would dive to the floor with a tap. Salvador's father assured people, "It's nothing; it's just another stone that has dropped from our child's sky." Then he added, "The ideas are good, but who would ever buy a painting that would eventually disappear while the house grew cluttered with stones?"

Backstory Extra: Beloved Child talk

5 Sword in the Stone • resistance

...his war-torn fingers are trained to ease a trigger, and I remember how he fed us fawns, and mothers and fathers of fawns, throughout the years. I cannot forget the sinews in my plate, or the carcasses falling limp from the back of a blue pickup, or the white bellies hung on an old maple tree. My stepfather's recent telephone calls to my mother are the paralyzing beams of a hunter's headlights; I do not doubt that he will do as he is promising.

6 Howe's Cave • baptism

I only wish I'd been awake to the deeper, richer sense of baptism's symbols on the day I stepped into tepid water, closed my eyes to chlorine and a pastor.

7 Palisade Cliffs • doubt

I don't remember what sparked the doubt that pushed me to the edge of faith....It could have been Philosophy 101. Or reading our perplexing Old Testament in detail, for my college's bible requirement. It could have been Marx or Skinner, or a natural exploration that came with leaving home for the first time. Maybe it was the sudden impression that a lot of the people at my Christian college had grown up safe and happy while I had grown up suffering violence and exposure.

8 Holding Pfaltzgraff • inclusion

...some people don't see the side of Christian faith that opened my heart and gave me an unexpected gift. These people assert that Christianity is based on exclusion, or insider thinking. In certain senses— both historical and theological— they have a point. Nevertheless, I invite them to incline their ears at the door of God's own tent, to listen for the melody of inclusion that began pianissimo in the Old Testament only to crescendo to forte in the New.

9 Indiana Jones • fear

... I understand Jonah's initial fear to die at the hands of his enemies and his reticence to see these enemies given mercy. I also understand his ambivalence about living when it finally meant he'd have to coexist with people who wanted to hurt his people.

10 Old Stone Church • love

I believed I was worthy of abandonment, based on my past and my present, yet I remained beloved. I began to feel like Sixo in the novel Beloved who said this of his Thirty Mile Woman: "She is a friend of mine. She gather me....The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order."

11 Goldsworthy's Wall • sacrifice

I went home that day knowing I was at a crossroads. My daughter wanted me, but I wanted a life.

12 Clefts of the Rock • responsibility

Memories of her land and her pantry quicken my desire to live in godly responsibility to others...When I think of my grandmother's blueberries, raspberries and currant berries folded into rich jams, her pies that were fat with hand-stoned cherries, her willows and pear trees that swung shadows onto our lakeside path, such abundance calls out. It invites me to care for my own vineyard with great attentiveness. This takes sacrificial discipline, and sometimes it takes temporary emptiness and want.

13 Olive Press • gratitude

I'm not about to compare Jesus to an apple cake. But I realize when thinking of my grandmother that, for you and me, a stretch of years as a Christian can produce a similar forgetfulness. Over time we can lose a taste for how sweet and beautiful is Jesus' gift of "paying the price".

14 Forest Star • humility

I'm one of a crowd of eighteen siblings, most of whom were picked up by my father's marriages. These siblings occupy his memories and energies. They occupy his time and resources. Some of them reside in his heart. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that I have strange dreams of being honored with a stone star monument.

15 Seedstone • healing

...I felt sorry for Abzug. It must have been embarrassing to be exposed by some moldy strips of paper swimming around in smashed peas. As I considered her dilemma, though, I slipped into the shadows. If Weberman searched through my trash, what would he find? Or if he searched the crumpled moments of my day, who would he really see?

16 Sugar Face • forgiveness

Recognizing my frailty...I went upstairs and quietly said, "I'm sorry. I love you more than Rid-X." I wish forgiveness and reconciliation were always this easy.

17 Lava Rock • witness

For me, coming to maturity has meant accepting God's ability to bring people to spiritual ripeness without my final participation...

18 Climbing • justice

...when I am experiencing the freedom of healing, things change....I can embrace the words of Toni Morrison: "The function of freedom is to free someone else."

19 Roxaboxen • heaven

...I'm almost willing to trade my semicolon for a comma, to let there be but a breath between life and life everlasting.

20 Blood from a Stone • completion

...it may be time for the church to encourage the thought that growing old is a vital opportunity for new or deepened spiritual tasks.

Epilogue

As he promised, my father showed me my grandmother's stone. It was dark gray with a large white eye spot, palm-sized, flat and silky smooth. I rubbed it on my face. I smelled it. I even licked it when no one was looking. My father declared that someday, when the time is right, he will pass it on to me along with the note from my grandmother...