My daughter Katie loves rocks. Always has. Show her a gravel driveway and she’s happy for hours—discovering, examining, imagining. To me, an expanse of gravel. To Katie, ROCKS!
One of her favorite Christmas presents was a collection of rocks from all over the world. It’s a clear plastic box with fifteen little compartments, each holding two versions of the same rock—one polished, one not. A nascar driver and an opera singer in each little pocket. What a concept.
Given Katie’s geologic tendencies, when our family went to Atlanta for a January getaway last weekend, it made sense for our first stop to be Stone Mountain. I was the only one of us who had ever been there, and hadn’t been back since our family moved to North Carolina when I was ten. I had blurry memories of Stone Mountain—family picnics by the lake, almost-ripe persimmons (yuck!), swimming in the mill pond, resting at the halfway house on the way up the trail, watching a blimp flying overhead on a gray winter’s day, so close I thought I could almost touch it. Happy memories. It’s good to remember that I have them.
When we got there this time it only seemed vaguely familiar. The big carving on the side of the mountain is unforgettable, of course: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, all on horseback, as tall as a five-story building. An imposing trio. But the amusement park-style development around the base of the mountain is new. None of that was there thirty years ago, and John and I were just as glad that part was closed for the winter. We decided to splurge on tickets to ride the skyway to the top, and then hike the trail down.
After a quick ride up, I emerged from the shiny building to find that the mountain top was just as I remembered it. A huge expanse of curved granite with all the busy-ness of metropolitan Atlanta spread on all sides below. It took my breath.
As I stood taking it all in, my eye wandered to three men dressed in burgundy robes and sneakers. The older of the three was engaged in a halting conversation with a young woman wearing a sari with a baby in her arms—they clearly didn’t know each other. I drew closer and they welcomed me with smiles, so I perched on a ledge and listened. He was a Tibetan monk, an abbot, in fact, and she was asking about his religion, why he seemed so happy, his opinion about why most people are angry (“including me!” she said. “Especially in the morning,” her husband chimed in), and how she could be more like him, more serene in the midst of the ups and downs of her chaotic family.
As I sat and listened, looking out from that amazing mountaintop, I thought, no matter how humans may deface mountainsides and build tacky things, there will always be sacred places in the world that transcend all of it. If you pay attention, in the midst of the metropolis, the sacred places are still there. Thirty years later. Thousands of years later. Still there.
My life has felt out of whack lately. I nearly gave up on my dream of writing a book. I’ve been trying to think about priorities and the now clichéd concept of the “big rocks” in my life, the things that matter most.
Maybe I need to focus on the sacred spaces instead. When I stop and listen to the wind, I realize that the big rocks, the things that matter, are the sacred spaces in my life. It’s the sacred spaces that matter most.
But I have to see them as amazing rocks, not just gravel, to realize how sacred they are.
One of her favorite Christmas presents was a collection of rocks from all over the world. It’s a clear plastic box with fifteen little compartments, each holding two versions of the same rock—one polished, one not. A nascar driver and an opera singer in each little pocket. What a concept.
Given Katie’s geologic tendencies, when our family went to Atlanta for a January getaway last weekend, it made sense for our first stop to be Stone Mountain. I was the only one of us who had ever been there, and hadn’t been back since our family moved to North Carolina when I was ten. I had blurry memories of Stone Mountain—family picnics by the lake, almost-ripe persimmons (yuck!), swimming in the mill pond, resting at the halfway house on the way up the trail, watching a blimp flying overhead on a gray winter’s day, so close I thought I could almost touch it. Happy memories. It’s good to remember that I have them.
When we got there this time it only seemed vaguely familiar. The big carving on the side of the mountain is unforgettable, of course: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, all on horseback, as tall as a five-story building. An imposing trio. But the amusement park-style development around the base of the mountain is new. None of that was there thirty years ago, and John and I were just as glad that part was closed for the winter. We decided to splurge on tickets to ride the skyway to the top, and then hike the trail down.
After a quick ride up, I emerged from the shiny building to find that the mountain top was just as I remembered it. A huge expanse of curved granite with all the busy-ness of metropolitan Atlanta spread on all sides below. It took my breath.
As I stood taking it all in, my eye wandered to three men dressed in burgundy robes and sneakers. The older of the three was engaged in a halting conversation with a young woman wearing a sari with a baby in her arms—they clearly didn’t know each other. I drew closer and they welcomed me with smiles, so I perched on a ledge and listened. He was a Tibetan monk, an abbot, in fact, and she was asking about his religion, why he seemed so happy, his opinion about why most people are angry (“including me!” she said. “Especially in the morning,” her husband chimed in), and how she could be more like him, more serene in the midst of the ups and downs of her chaotic family.
As I sat and listened, looking out from that amazing mountaintop, I thought, no matter how humans may deface mountainsides and build tacky things, there will always be sacred places in the world that transcend all of it. If you pay attention, in the midst of the metropolis, the sacred places are still there. Thirty years later. Thousands of years later. Still there.
My life has felt out of whack lately. I nearly gave up on my dream of writing a book. I’ve been trying to think about priorities and the now clichéd concept of the “big rocks” in my life, the things that matter most.
Maybe I need to focus on the sacred spaces instead. When I stop and listen to the wind, I realize that the big rocks, the things that matter, are the sacred spaces in my life. It’s the sacred spaces that matter most.
But I have to see them as amazing rocks, not just gravel, to realize how sacred they are.
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