"Bring me back a rock!" was the last thing my youngest said to me before I left for the travel class I took over her spring break. This is a request she makes of almost anyone who travels outside the state. Friends have brought her pebbles, rocks, and stones from many far-flung places, and she has quite a collection.
A busload of us, some seminarians - most not, journeyed through several states in the deep South, meeting veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, pausing at monuments and memorials, meditating and praying at gravesites of those who died too young. I'm not too proud to say I cried several times - and the UU principles we covenant to affirm and promote were tested. It is HARD to continue believing in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, when one is confronted with a gravestone that has been repeatedly vandalized and still bears marks of having been used as target practice. The people who denied others their rights, who worked against justice and perverted the democratic process... remind me how they deserve my compassion? Even harder - how do I change the system in which we're all embedded that still works to divide people along lines of color and culture?
One of my fellow travelers picked up a stone at a significant spot, which is being allowed to fall down, we think in hopes that people will forget the tragedy that occurred there. The smooth, flat stone was something for that person to hang onto when the going got rough - and there were rough times.
I picked up a couple of stones, too, remembering the admonition from my child to "bring her a rock." When I got back, I showed her the stones and said she could choose one. But, I told her, they both have stories - and you might want to hear the stories before you choose. "So, tell me the stories," she sighed. So, I told her what I remembered (any errors are mine).
Well, first is this muddy, reddish-black stone. It's smooth to the touch, and almost as long as my little finger. It came from the parking area next to a church in Marion, AL. It was at this church that Jimmie Lee Jackson attended a mass meeting of people organizing to work to get their right to vote. After the meeting, the people leaving the church were attacked by a mob of angry white people who did not want Jackson and other African-American people to get the right to vote. Jackson hurried to the cafe around in back of the church, where his grandfather was waiting for him.
(The marker in the photo is at this site - the cafe is long gone.) When he got there, someone was about to beat his grandfather, so Jackson intervened. He was shot in the stomach. The closest hospital wouldn't admit him because it was for whites only. He died several days later of an infection. I don't know if this stone was there back then, but that's where I found it, next to a building where people told us about that night when Jimmie Lee was shot, and the pain and rage that still lives because his killer has never been brought to justice.
The other stone is lighter colored - mottled, beige to tan - still semi-cylindrical in shape, but smaller. This stone came from the end of the Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL, where there are monuments to a day called Bloody Sunday.
(Some of them are in the photo.) Still hurting from the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a large group of people decided to march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery to protest and demand their legal rights. At the front of the line were two men, John Lewis and Hosea Williams.
(Williams is on the marker to the left, Lewis in the center.) As they crossed the bridge, the state troopers met them and told them to turn back. They politely asked to speak to the person in charge, but were refused. When they took another step, the troopers attacked. Many people were injured that day in the midst of tear gas and mayhem. Some of the people we talked to in Selma were part of the march, and shared their memories of fear and hope with us.
When I finished telling her the stories, she said she'd have to think about it. The next day, "Mom, I wanted a stone - I didn't want a stone with a story. You can keep them."
I guess she hasn't learned yet that every stone has a story. Maybe she's never heard the stories of the other stones she's received - maybe her mom is the only person she knows who thinks that it's important to know a stone's story, to know where it came from and what happened there. I know at least one other person who believes it's important to talk about a stone's story - our guide in Selma had us pick up pebbles and then told us stories of holding a piece of stone that different people had stood upon during the struggle.
I have a small collection of stones at home, myself. Some are from nearly forgotten rituals with a women's group. Some are from vacations. Some have been shaped and carved into beads - and some of those have been made into jewelry. On my desk now are three stones, the two I describe above and a third from a ritual a class member offered a few weeks ago.
I try to remember where I get the stones I have. If we don't know the stories of the stones, we don't know the stories of the people - their hopes, fears, and dreams. In fact, one of my friends maintains that it is/was fear that motivates the people who do things like desecrating graves - and that it is/was fear that motivated similar people to act with violence against people who were only trying to gain rights that every citizen of this country should have easily been able to exercise. I choose to think of hope over fear - and these stones will represent for me the hopes and dreams of the people in the places where I picked them up. I will remember these stones' stories, for I have been changed by these tiny, unlikely touchstones.
...We are made of Dreams and Bones..."
(lyric from "The Garden Song" by David Mallet)
