What Can Stones Teach Us?

By Maril Crabtree

For most of us, most of the time, stones form an unassuming backdrop to the rest of our lives. They support the ground we walk on. They provide spectacular scenery for mountain hiking, climbing, skiing, or simply gazing. They help build the edifices that surround our lives: our homes, our workplaces, our churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues, our institutions of learning, our community centers. Their mute existence assures us that the foundation of things seems strong, immovable, safe.

Yet, stones have a far greater role to play. Stones can teach us many things about our sacred connections—to spirit, to self, to memory, to imagination, to ancient energies and to deep, archetypal urges.

Standing before the great sacred stone sites and monuments—Stonehenge, Easter Island, Canyon de Chelly, the Celtic standing stones, the temples of Egypt—creates a stir in our psyches. These ancient stones connect us even today to a transforming power that embodies the spiritual energy of the Earth itself.

We can connect with that transforming power even in the ordinary pebbles we feel compelled to pick up and slip into our pockets. Have you ever found a heart-shaped stone? A “holey” stone? A piece of quartz glinting on the ground, winking at you? Have you ever held a healing gemstone in your hand and felt a headache slip away, tension turn to ease, anxiety to calm? Then you know the immense power of small stones to bring their special teachings to us, and you’ll recognize their truth.

Despite the seeming immutability of stones, there is also this truth: nothing stays the same in this universe. Everything migrates with its own inner rhythm of change, of coming from and going to. Everything dances to its unique movement, however small and invisible to the naked eye.

Perhaps it won’t surprise you, then, to know that sometimes stones move of their own accord—not over eons, but overnight. Mystery surrounds even something as “solid” as a rock.

Not only can rocks move themselves, they can also speak. They invite us to listen and to talk back to them—to sing, to cry, to speak what we hear in the deepest parts of our souls, in the echoed heartbeat of our longing for connection to everything in this world—especially to the wisdom of stones.

The magical stones of childhood, the moments of transformation at sacred stone sites, the ecstasy of building rock walls or skipping stones, the discovery of secret stone refuges—these are a few of the ways we can learn what stones have to teach us. Once you allow their essence into your life, you may never again pass by that strangely-shaped river stone or that gleaming bit of quartz without pausing to look, listen, and reflect on the power and mystery of stone.

Maril Crabtree, author of Sacred Stones: How the Power of the Earth Can Change Your Life (Adams Media, 2004), is a writer, energy healer, and spiritual coach who draws inspiration from feathers, stones, and other natural objects and delights in sharing their powerful messages of truth. For sample stories, visit www.sacredfeathers.com.