Our family has always been collectors of stones. While on vacations we come home with our pockets filled with stones from beaches, mountains,hiking paths,cabin yards. We carry them back wrapped in dirty socks, tucked into toiletry bags, inside shoes and in leftover sandwich bags. We then often add them to our garden and the little fish pond in the backyard. But most of the many faceted stones we have collected as souvenirs of our travels, end up in our home. They rest in bowls, often with water covering them, so they continue to give off the sheen that attracted our eyes to them in the first place.

I have just such a small bowl of stones sitting in our kitchen right now. I have moved it from the counter to the center of the stove and back again. It began its journey in our home on the kitchen table. Any place where I can be sure my eyes will fall on the unusual green stones several times a day. These are stones I picked up in St. Columba’s Bay on the island of Iona. They range in shades from a deep, dark forest green to a nearly gaudy lime green. There are several that are speckled white and green, orangish-brown and green, like little birds’ eggs. I chose them from the beach after a three hour pilgrimage across farmland, a golf course, past a heather ringed mountain loch and on rocky trails. Our guide told us that, if we were lucky, we might find a completely iridescent green stone known as ‘St. Columba’s Tears.’

St. Columba reached the bay in 563 A.D. after fleeing from Ireland where he had been a priest, an artist, a poet, a prophet. He had copied and illuminated some of the scriptures and kept them which caused, so the story goes, a battle to break out and many people were killed. He and his monks fled Ireland and landed on this tiny Scottish island only to turn back toward the sea and realize they could not see, nor return to, their beloved homeland. They say as he wept on the beach, for the lives lost and the land he loved, his tears fell to the ground and the stones turned this brilliant green. It is a lovely, sad story and a wonderful explanation for these beautiful stones.

I am not a geologist. I do not know what causes certain stones to be the way they are, the color they are, the shape or texture they are. But I love to think about the tears that have been shed in the world…..for lost loves, homes, lives, dreams……and the idea that those tears might turn into something beautiful. Like a green stone. As I look on these stones resting in their white bowl, I know they are covered with good old St. Paul tap water and not the salt-infused ocean. But they carry, at some level I also do not understand, a story of a place and a people that now has seeped into my story. The tears shed on that beach, and I have no doubt there have been many, cannot be washed off or dried up and so they must become a part of the stone itself.

As I move around my kitchen, making a meal or a cup of tea, I find my eyes gazing on the green stones that have become a part of my daily walk. I think of all the tears that will be shed this day. At hospital bedsides. On battlefields. In classrooms. At desks. In shelters. On sidewalks. Under bridges. On playgrounds. So many tears.

May the One who watches over all broken places and people, take these tears and create something beautiful.

Have a blessed weekend………………………