In stories of scripture, stones show up more often than we may have noticed. They are built into altars. They are set as memorials. They are the medium into which the Ten Words are incised. They are weapons. They are cut by artisans and assembled into the Temple. And they are just part of the landscape—if about anything so solid we may say “just.”

We, too, have stones ... in our pockets, in our shoes, in foundations, by roadsides, in gardens on the edge of town. Some we hardly notice, or notice not at all, they seem so common. Some are burdens to carry. Some to us are

precious gems.

In this season of Lent—after a year in which we have been closed down, curtailed, constricted, a slab of a year that has sometimes weighed on us so heavily that it has seemed hard to breathe—we are going to spin out some stories about stones. We’ll be invited to ask about what seems stony in our lives: what do these stones mean? And what shall we do with them?