“A stone of stone is born but once; a stone of light is three-times born.” Many years ago, this phrase was given to me during a spiritual vision – something that happens for me from time to time during contemplative prayer or in the twilight time of dreams that are slipped between the covers of wakefulness and sleep. I share it now with you with acknowledged vulnerably and with humility. Take from it what serves you well and please gently leave undisturbed what does not.

Within the context of the vision, images of stones in a river, stones along a path, stones at the base of a cliff, and stones set within a stone wall all came to mind as examples of stones that are “born but once.” The narrative history of the earth as a dynamic and transformative system within the physical cosmos is inscribed within the sedimentary layers of its rocks and yet flourishes in writing new chapters within the life we know during our brief time dancing dizzily upon it. The stones born but once form the foundation of the earth that life inhabits, upon which soil gives rise to new life, the continents are risen from watery depths of the mantel firmament, and from which human societies created tools and homes and ornaments and used as great canvases for art, story telling, and education. All such stones born but once were formed over billions and millions of years of tumultuous birthing before the gaze of the eyes belonging to the first hominids looked upon them and then laid down their bones into the stony layers that tell the tale of life’s history here. Stones born but once surround us wherever we are like a great geological library of books that beckon our remembrance, comprehension, and appreciation. As sacred texts, for me the sedimentary layers of fossils are more precious to our identity and heritage than any gemstone. The earth is made of the bones of our ancestors and is sacred enough by that alone. Stones born but once make all the earth holy ground.

Within the spiritual vision I am recounting, images of what constitutes “a stone of light” flickered by in rapid succession. The images suggested the emergence of life. I saw life that consumes sunlight or thrives on dark energy at the bottom of the ocean. I saw life that is nurtured first within soil before reaching towards the sky, life that is interconnected with other lives on which it depends, life breaching from oceans, squirming onto land, life that emerges from water and is sustained by the fresh water that flows like blood through complex arteries of riverine systems. I saw everywhere life emanating a golden light that I associate with Divine Spirit, the Spirit that enfolds all life within its golden cloak and includes the full cycle of life of which death is simply the manner by which life is reborn and renewed, sustained and nourished, built upon and cherished. In this way, it seemed in my beholding that death is never the end but the way in which life and light emanate, exist, and adhere within the coherency that is Creation. All that we would consider alive are stones of light and are given a second birth or way of being as life itself. In the reel of images shared with me in my vision, I was shown that to become a stone of light that is “three times born” is a state of being in harmonious relationship with all that is once and twice born and that is based on a personal choice.  To be a living stone that is three-times born is to choose to live in relationship with the Sacred that is all around us, that is in all the earth and in all that lives, and that is within us.

For Christians, to live as one who chooses to live within intentional relationship with the Sacred is symbolized by Baptism. However, I was shown in my vision that all that exists that is of the earth participates in the Sacred and that all life has the capacity to choose to live in harmony or to live outside of harmonious relationship with the Sacred, with the rest of what is and with what is alive. As a species, humans tend to ascribe choice to what we define as consciousness and associate with free will. In my vision, humanity is invited and encouraged to see and define existence and life far more broadly. Heaven, I was told, is a condition of relationship that is available here/now, if we so choose to live in and from relationship with the Sacred. As Christians, we have perhaps heard this imperative from Christ as, “Love one another, as I have loved you,” but my vision of the Sacred earth that is the here/now heaven so longed for is found/renewed/born when we love/live in Sacred relationship with the earth, with all life, with the Divine  in such a way that we intellectually realize and spiritually actualize that there is no “other.”

I am not the first or only human being to have been given this vision. Today, it is seen and held within many faiths, philosophies, and cultures. In Western Culture it is, I believe, best articulated within the physical science of cosmology, the study of the nature of the universe, and by those who have paused to gaze upon the stars and recognize them as ancestors who have made wishes upon us.

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“Since the first human eye saw a leaf in Devonian sandstone and a puzzled finger reached to touch it, sadness has lain over the heart of man. By this tenuous thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are linked forever to lost beaches whose sands have long since hardened into stone. The stars that caught our blind amphibian stare have shifted far or vanished in their courses, but still that naked, glistening thread winds onward. No one knows the secret of its beginning or its end. Its forms are phantoms. The thread alone is real; the thread is life.” (Loren Eiseley – The Firmament of Time)

“Just as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a flower, we are the universe in the form of a human. And every time we are drawn to look up in the night sky and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe, we are actually the universe reflecting on itself. And this changes everything. Four billion years ago the planet Earth was molten rock; now it sings opera!” ( Brian Swimme – Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe)

“We come into being in and through the Earth. Simply put, we are Earthlings. The Earth is our origin, our nourishment, our educator, our healer, our fulfillment. At its core, even our spirituality is Earth derived. The human and the Earth are totally implicated, each in the other. If there is no spirituality in the Earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves.” (Thomas Berry, “The Spirituality of the Earth,” in The Sacred Universe)