A House of Living Stones
A surprising image rippled the still surface of my memory one dark, early morning. I was praying and suddenly it was there. Unbidden. A long ago face that had traveled through some forgotten labyrinthian tunnel of years to find me. A little girl. A little girl with a riot of blond curls and pale blue eyes framed in tiny pink glasses slightly askew. A fragile wisp of a thing with a questioning gaze, pigeon toed in her slouching socks and flopping loafers. It was Mary O’Brien. Buffy by nickname. She was all of six and graced me with a vulnerable smile that made me want to instinctively reach out and protect her from harm, though she be but a phantom standing in the pool of my thoughts. Why was she here? All these years later.
Sister Mary Brendan’s first grade classroom was filled with every sort of child imaginable. The loud, boisterous, confident ones – who, even at the tender age of six, indisputably ruled the room by some unwritten law of the universe. There were sweet, shy, young things scattered about dwarfed in their engulfing desks, left by mothers to wonder: where have I landed and should I bolt while I still have the chance? There were knots of tossled boys leaning in to jabber excitedly about space and rockets and how they were going to be astronauts one day. There were kids who were already cozying up to Sister Brendan and campaigning quite openly for teacher’s pet. Alliances were being formed for recess kick ball.
I was there, me with my two long braids reaching to my waist. I was wearing my carefully ironed, hand-me-down uniform that had seen better days but which also gave me undisputed clout. It meant I had older sisters and brothers in the school and that I was accepted without question. I was painfully shy but openly willing for friendship if someone were to offer it. I had my own pair of little pink glasses with a large patch over one eye by order of the ophthalmologist who was blissfully unaware of the painful predicament he had put me in – facing that daunting first day of school with such a ready-made bulls eye for wounding arrows. I had forgotten, of course, that I had a secret weapon. I had brothers. They loped by the first grade doorway in their easy stride and deigned to pause for a moment, flashing crossed eyes and goofy grins my way; these unlikely but undisputed gods of the six year old adoration. The seventh and eighth grade boys. I had the happy fate of walking unscathed in the midst of these gods, some of whom I called brothers. I was never teased.
Mary O’Brien was not so lucky. She entered, a lone warrior, into the fray of first grade, the first and only one of her family. She did not stand a chance. She also had the dreaded pink glasses, a spanking new uniform which hung on her slight frame like a sagging tent, knee socks pooling at her tiny ankles, and a head of exploding curls that seemed too heavy for her head. She had no context, no history, no brothers. She was a stranger in a strange land. But for all that, Mary O’Brien was not shy in the least; she most definitely marched to the sound of a different drummer and she openly expected to be loved as such with an unquestioning purity of heart. Alas, poor heart.
She had what I would now consider an enviably rich and delicious imagination, but back then I would have considered it the kiss of death. She was, in short, the dreaded ‘different’. She played with her pencils like they were people, lost in her own little world, and she acted out little scenarios for them out loud at her desk for anyone who wanted to listen. If anyone did listen, it was to laugh - at her. She skipped about at recess to her own inner music dancing sometimes right out of her loafers. You always felt invited to join in by her beckoning eyes, but you never did. It would have been social suicide. I felt a great urgency well up in me at times to warn her to lay low, to conform, to comply; but I waited too long. She was pronounced ‘weird’ by the unquestioned leaders of first grade and that was that. Cut in stone. The collective had spoken and the collective had shunned her. Even as a small child of six, I watched her wither over that year with a great, uncomprehending sadness and fear welling in my heart. Something beautiful and unique was being destroyed before my very eyes by the capricious command of a “group” - mere six-year-olds held that kind of power. I felt helpless to save her. I was too afraid.
"Living Stones" by Andesine is marked with CC BY 2.0.
She no longer danced around after a time but hid behind the fence and cried her way through recess. She had discovered that some laughter is not kind, and her pure little heart felt wounded and battered by the disillusionment. I know. I found her there once. I suspect her poor mother found her there more often than me and what heartbreak was hers I will never know. Her child shunned by the whims of some unwritten rule called “weird,” by a gaggle of children who should have known better. Thankfully, however, the story did not end there.
I was invited one day to come over and play at Mary O’Brien’s house. I was filled with sudden dread. The collective had gotten to me. I was genuinely afraid. But my wise mother made me go. So, go I did.
Suddenly? Mary O’Brien had a context. She was an only child with a rich imagination. Of course she talked to herself and invented scenarios. There was no one else to tell when her mother wasn’t around, and she had so much to say. Her room was full of drawings filled with action and delightful creatures that looked like flowers. She had made her own little stage with pretty paper dolls as actors. She had a lovely, big dog that followed her around in tongue lolling adoration. In context she was the queen of all she surveyed. In context, freed from the strangling, arbitrary collective, she had been watered back to life again and bloomed there before me. She led me into her real world that day and I entered cautiously.
We had the most enchanting afternoon. We played dolls, we painted pictures together, we sang songs along with records her mom put on for us. We danced and twirled with our eyes closed. She didn’t seem odd anymore, in context. In fact, she released something magical in my own heart that had been afraid to show its face. It creeped out shyly and rejoiced in the light of her ready acceptance. Her mother smiled and handed us a plate of cookies with teacups of milk. We sipped and giggled and wore funny hats.
A sense of freedom was bequeathed to me as soon as I entered that front door of Mary O’Brien’s home. Freedom from the collective. I suddenly came face to face with one life all opened and glowing before me, full of beautiful nooks and crannies waiting to be discovered and inscaped. This generous, accepting little girl whose soul was so eager to be known, was even more eager to inscape my own nooks and crannies and to dwell in them most comfortably as a friend without the weight of judgement. Even at six years old I knew that I had chanced upon a kind of lofty vision that I could not yet grasp. Each individual soul. In context. And in seeing Mary I also, to my surprise, discovered myself. In context.
I lost touch with Mary O’Brien after that year. She moved to another city and receded from my life as sweetly as she had entered it. But here she was before me in prayer. Part of me hoped in a fierce surge of emotion that wherever she had landed, she had never succumbed to the judgement of the collective. Yet, another part of me wanted to cry out in shame, “Mea Culpa! for the things I failed to do.” I had been complicit in almost destroying this heroic little soul who dared to reach out in lovely vulnerability as the gift God created her to be, because I had chosen silence. Terrified silence before the almighty collective. I did not speak up for her soon enough. I had traded my heart of flesh for a heart of stone. Almost. Mercy had reached out to me just in time through a little girl with glasses all askew. I know that now with the crystal clarity of hindsight.
"The Living Stone" by Bill Gracey 26 Million Views is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Human beings are made for community. Without God, however, we are quite awful at it. We build Babel towers to the skies, we pile stone upon stone, making walls to keep some in and others out. The landscape of the world is dotted with our collective creations surrounded by stone walls built of conformity, prejudice, judgement, and fear. It is this fear of being alone that, in the end, destroys attempts at true community. It is fear that builds the wall, fear that keeps us quiet, fear that shuns the light of inquiry, never thinking to ask, “What if?” It is fear that makes us consent to dullness and makes us so ready to conform to arbitrary nonsense. We trade love for our safe walls of fear. Those walls cannot hold in the end. They crumble, and to the foundation.
Sameness is safe and predictable, but we are not meant for sameness. We are meant to praise and adore and to celebrate the infinite creativity of our God’s mind that sets before us one beautiful thing after another in love as though He were breathlessly laughing, “And I have THIS one and THIS one, and THIS one!” We are the only ones of His creation who can rejoice in His creativity. It is our happy duty to do so. We must always be ready for another beautiful surprise. Surprises can be shocking and messy and defy our control even as they dazzle the eye. We discover sometimes that beauty is too large and expansive for our intractable, fear-made walls. Our stones cannot contain it without breaking into a million pieces. What are we to do then, we creatures made for a beauty so large?
“Unless the Lord build the house, those who build it labor in vain,” says Psalm 127. In this building of the Lord, we are not the architects, we are the stones. We are the living stones with hearts of vulnerable flesh. And this house is built not by fear, but by creative love. The Eternal, generous love of God. The living cornerstone of this house is Jesus Christ – the most unique, beautiful, and vulnerable Man that ever lived. A man who knew the dangers and the glory of living with a heart of expandable flesh. Who dined with thieves, and held the hearts of prostitutes in the palm of his mercy, who made fishermen popes, and placed a little child in the midst of judgmental elders and said quite pointedly: “Unless you be like this?” This God Man committed social suicide on countless occasions. He defied the Pharisaical collective with every fiber of his being. He came to show us how to build our house upon His living heart – to make room for each other with living, vulnerable hearts of flesh that can stretch to welcome more and more beauty into its walls without crumbling at the effort. Charity is elastic and expansive. It ever grows with the Body of Christ until the end of time.
"Lithops (living stones)" by Martin_Heigan is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
In this living house of the Lord, a magical thing happens. We grow so closely to one another that our living vines begin to intermingle. As we come to know another, we come to know ourselves. It is in loving others that God coaxes our true selves into the light. It is a mystery marvelous to behold. That quirky little man dancing at the bus stop reminding us of the unalloyed joy we might be feeling at being loved by God, that person who reads all the interesting books we’ve never heard of making us wonder anew at the human capacity for knowledge; that Latin Mass guy who invites you to “come and see” and you open up to a new beauty your heart was searching for all this time. That twenty-something hipster who has real problems with Boomers and their ideas and has questions – and you try to answer them because maybe you have always had the same questions and never knew it. That lady who kneels for Communion at Mass and gives you the courage to do this exact thing that has been weighing on your own heart for a while now. That utterly eccentric, madcap aunt who dresses the way you would love to truly dress if you only had the nerve to be your eccentrically true self, and she gives you the nerve to do so. The singers, the artists, the quiet ones over there in the corner taking it all in, the friendly outgoing ones who won’t take no for an answer and make you talk – and it does you good. The circumspect ones who help you to slow your own thoughts down and you discover through patience that answers are there if you wait. Each of us coaxing the others out into the open of their unique existence. Each of us giving the other context and space to grow and intertwine with the whole. Each of us calling to each other, you “Are fearfully, wonderfully made,” as the sap of living grace sings through our veins. In this way we, “Grow in the house of the Lord for years to come”.
Buffy stands quietly in the pool of my thoughts smiling in that way she had long ago. As she turns to go, I whisper “thanks” almost inaudibly to this little six-year-old girl who had saved my heart from turning to stone so long, long ago and grew next to me for a time in the House of the Lord. Deo Gratias.
