The Speaking Stones of Easter

 

“If the people were silent, the very stones would cry out.”                                                                       Luke 19:40

The stones are speaking.  Are we listening?

The memory of stone.  People have spoken of it since humankind first wielded tools to chisel its surface.  What stories might be locked in the smallest of river stones, the bedrock beneath the plains’ rich soil, the mountains crushed into gravel for our roads?  Certainly we find there the record of the earth’s transformations, the bones and footprints of long-dead species, delicate traceries of plants, massive forests.  But what about human lives?  Have stones absorbed the fleeting touch of our lately-come species, the storms of blood, tears, laughter, prayer that accompany our kind wherever we wander?  Do stones remember us?

Stones of Easter: Bread. Photo C.L. Francisco
Stones of Easter: Bread. Photo C.L. Francisco

I love stone.  I have loved it from earliest childhood.  I love the weight and feel of it in my hand, the warmth of it beneath me when I rest from walking, the magic of its kaleidoscopic patterns.  When I can I travel to mountains and canyons and deserts to spend time in its company.  Stone is alive, sentient in some way I can’t explain.  I feel it most strongly in wilderness, where human busy-ness is limited—but it has also caught me unawares in urban alleys.

Stones of Easter: Wine. Photo by C. L. Francisco
Stones of Easter: Wine. Photo by C. L. Francisco

I am unlikely ever to hear a stone speak in human words, or a tree in propositions, or a dog in iambic pentameter.  A stone communicates in the manner of stones, just as a dog communicates as dogs do.  My experience of the speech of stones is deeply non-verbal, partly visceral and partly emotional, untranslatable.  Sometimes I take a photograph or pick up a stone when I feel it; other times I simply let it be.  The imagery comes later.

Stones of Easter: Flesh. Photo by C. L. Francisco
Stones of Easter: Flesh. Photo by C. L. Francisco

I am not a professional photographer, or even educated in photography.  In the past I saw the images in a camera’s eye as an imagined canvas, in terms of shape and balance, tension and flow, light and dark.  Now I find myself photographing scenes that pulse with the energy of subtle presence, and I let the rest take care of itself.  Sometimes my pictures absorb a hint of that power, sometimes not.

Stones of Easter: Blood. Photo by C.L. Francisco
Stones of Easter: Blood. Photo by C.L. Francisco

What is a photograph?  At its simplest it is a record of objects seen, events observed, people known.  But like history, a photograph participates in the awareness of the one who watches and records.  And like a scientific experiment, the photographer’s participation is a variable that must be considered. The same scene taken by different people with identical cameras at roughly the same time may be distinctly different—based on something I call “soul,” for lack of any better term.  At times the camera’s eye appears to mediate an exchange of understanding?  meaning?  relationship?  being?  between photographer and subject, and this fleeting touch (or lack of it) marks the photo.

The Stones of Easter: Release. Photo by C.L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Release. Photo by C.L. Francisco

What are the stones saying with their images?  I believe they are communicating their presence, no more.  “Look at us!” they cry.  “We are alive, in ways you have forgotten you ever knew.  We are—as the trees are, and the waters, and the atmosphere that shields the Earth from the extremes of space.  Truly see us—see all of creation—we who have been dismissed by your arrogance as mere commodities.  See us, before only stones remain to see the sunrise.”

The Stones of Easter: Tomb. Photo by C.L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Tomb. Photo by C.L. Francisco

Slipping unseen along the fringes of consciousness, the temptation is always there—to “clean up” the images, make them perfect, adjust their proportions to fit more neatly into Western ideas of beauty.  Sometimes I make changes without thinking, and then I have to destroy the image if I can’t undo the edits.  We have an implicit understanding, the stones and I—that their images will remain as I find them, removed only from their matrix, and, at most, adjusted for contrast.  After all, they are the language of stone, and much is inevitably lost in translation.

The Stones of Easter: Searching the Skies. Photo by C. L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Searching the Skies. Photo by C. L. Francisco

Many years ago I discovered a new word:  panentheism.  Not pantheism (many gods), not theism (usually one god separate from creation), but pan-en-theism—one Spirit present in all creation, without the great divide between spirit and flesh that seems unavoidable in most Western traditions.  Perhaps this word can suggest a way to bridge the gulf between stones that speak and a planet of dead rock.

The Stones of Easter: Lament. Photo by C. L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Lament. Photo by C. L. Francisco

In Christian scripture the apostle Paul describes the perceptions of ordinary people:  “For now we see in a mirror, dimly . . . .”  These words could describe any human being who has lost her sense of kinship with the web of life in which she lives.  We see the world distorted in a bit of poorly polished metal—and ourselves more prominently than all else.  But unlike Longfellow’s Lady of Shallot, we have no curse to excuse our stubborn avoidance of the Earth’s true face.

The Stones of Easter: Emergence. Photo by C. L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Emergence. Photo by C. L. Francisco

Stone is patient.  Stone does not envy or boast, and is neither arrogant nor rude.  Stone simply is, demanding nothing.  Stone is not false, but embodies the truth of creation.  Stone accepts human abuse and awaits our healing.  Stone endures all things, is always being transformed, yet is ever the same.

The Stones of Easter: Rolling Stone. Photo by C. L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Rolling Stone. Photo by C. L. Francisco

All the photos in The Stones of Easter series* were taken on my brother Don’s mountain during Easter week, 2010, when I was deeply immersed in writing the final chapters of The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat. Starting on the morning of Maundy Thursday and ending on Easter Sunday, each day I packed a lunch and water flask and set off up the mountain with my camera. In a very literal sense, I went in search of a vision.

The Stones of Easter: Gone Away. Photo by C.L. Francisco
The Stones of Easter: Gone Away. Photo by C.L. Francisco

The result of the vision that met me there is Yeshua’s Cat.

 

And, of course, one of Wendy’s cats.

EasterCat

 

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* Sixteen photos in The Stones of Easter series are available for sale at http://www.zazzle.com/moon_seasons. The original series included 24.

 

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To Nazareth Village, with thanks

NazPan
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

While I was writing Yeshua’s Cat, I watched with interest as Nazareth Village took shape both on the internet and in the town of Nazareth. In case you’ve never heard of it, it’s now an amazing non-profit tourist attraction in Israel, based (as far as I can tell) on careful archaeological and scholarly research. Because their research into 1st century architecture and culture was helpful to me in my writing, I decided that this might be a good time to return the favor.

photo, nazarethvillage.com
photo, nazarethvillage.com

Finding the kind of everyday details about ancient Israel that I needed was difficult without access to a university research library–and I did my writing miles away from anywhere in the Rocky Mountains. So when I stumbled on a small website documenting the process of reconstructing a small 1st C village near Nazareth, I was delighted. I’m grateful to have discovered Nazareth Village during its formative years, when they were actively struggling with bringing a dream to birth, just as I was.

I’m a visual person, and it helps me enormously if I can really visualize the places I’m writing about–and as a retired professor, I have to be sure it’s accurate! Floor plans and ruins will work in a pinch, but accurate reconstructions are by far the best. If you look carefully through The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, you can see the influence of Nazareth Village’s architectural research in three different areas: Yeshua’s skills at home repair, the structure of Keturah’s house in Capernaum, and some of the structural details of the Capernaum synagogue.

Yeshua’s house repairs

Then without waiting for a response he bent to his task, tearing away the rotted cane and broken plaster until he could test the strength of the exposed beam underneath. I lay in the sun and thought my own thoughts while he came and went at his work, weaving cane mats to patch the holes, and mixing the first batches of mud to seal them in place. His strong hands were quick and neat at their work, and I guessed that I was watching him at one of the skills he shared with his family.”                                                                     The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Chap. 5

House roof construction. Photo, nazarethvillage.com
House roof construction. Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

The photos above show the construction techniques that resulted in the kind of roof Yeshua was working to repair for Keturah:  support beams, covered by woven cane, and various layers of mud and plaster. To the right is Mari’s view of the interior ceiling before it fell on her head. This was also the roof the four friends tore apart to lower the paralyzed young man.

Below you can see a plastered room similar to the one Yeshua was repairing in the following text:

Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

“It was the morning after I had followed him to the spring, and he was chipping the crumbling plaster and mud from Keturah’s kitchen walls. He was slow to answer me, but I recognized the signs of a lengthy response in the making. I sighed. After all, I’d asked the question. He paused and looked at me where I sat across the room, out of reach of his dust.”                                    
The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Chap. 6

 

Keturah’s House

Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

Nazareth Village’s basic house plan (right) was similar to the one I used for Keturah’s house. You can see the entrance into the courtyard, with Keturah’s main room and bedroom. The stairs to the roof would have been at the north end of the courtyard–with the goat.

 

Below are a couple of pictures illustrating the cistern and the runoff channels that carried rainwater to it. The runoff channel on the roof  is mentioned in the text:

“I took refuge on the roof and watched as people craned their necks for a glimpse of his face. From where I sat I couldn’t see much, although I did notice that the crowd parted when several elders, dressed in fine linen turbans and fringed shawls, pushed their way from the street into Keturah’s house. But my curiosity about them died abruptly at the noisy approach of several humans across the roof beyond ours. With a growl, I flattened myself into the cistern’s channel.”                                                                                                      The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Chap. 8

Photo, nazarethvillage.com
Photo, nazarethvillage.com

 

The synagogue

At last we come to the synagogue. There are numerous synagogue ruins in and around Israel, many dating from near the early first century, and their floor plans are very similar.

Gamla . . .

Image ESV Annotated Bible
Image ESV Annotated Bible

Capernaum . . .

Image bible-lands.net
Image bible-lands.net

Masada . . .

MasadaSyn

 

But Nazareth Village created a reconstruction in three dimensions, and in full scale. Fantastic!

Exterior photo by Kluke, Panoramio. Interior photos by nazarethvillage.com
Exterior photo by Kluke, Panoramio. Interior photos by nazarethvillage.com

This was the synagogue I was imagining in the scene below:

“As he and his followers disappeared into the house of prayer on that Shabbat morning, I ran up the smooth bark of a great tree and jumped down onto the stone lip of the mud roof. Rising from the roof’s center were smaller stone walls with cat-sized windows all around. I leapt carefully into a window and crept through to the inside.

Far too much air hung between my feet and the floor to jump through the window. Flattening myself on the sill like a mouse in a crack, I inched my head over the inner edge and crouched there to see what I could see. Many men and women sat on stone steps around the sides of a large room, and directly below my window I could just glimpse ben Adamah’s head where he stood speaking.”                                                                                                                                        The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, Chap. 6

Drawing by C.L. Francisco
Drawing by C.L. Francisco

To the right is an image of Mari in the synagogue that never made it to the map, probably because I couldn’t quite get past the fact that she didn’t really go in!

 

 

From what I can tell, Nazareth Village is a great success, and visitors love it. Maybe some day I’ll visit it first hand, but for now, I’m grateful for its presence online.

 

 

 

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