The old story about strangers making stones into a hearty soup for everyone to enjoy needs to be looked at again. And what better day to do it than on American Thanksgiving.
Perhaps there is a new message here that can be taken from this tale about fostering community spirit.
In this version by Jon Muth, one of the villagers throws out an interesting comment
"Stones are easy to come by"
While there was no food ( vegetables meat or spices) to make soup initially, without utilizing the three stones to begin with there would have been nothing at all to start cooking with.
Stones are the overlooked heroes of this story.
They are the unnoticed ingredient in every household.
Look around the courtyard in your village, or your neighbourhood. See if it's not so.
Almost every property you walk by has one or two rocks lying around somewhere.
They obviously have been deliberately placed there, but for what reason?
I'm not talking about the proverbial retaining wall or stone walkway. I'm not thinking here about dry stone walls or decorative stone features. I'm referring to just plain rocks - small and BIG.
Often they are just ordinary stones randomly placed, almost inconspicuously.
It's as though we have this unacknowledged reluctance to come to terms with our own codependency on these quiet slow moving mysterious objects we share the planet with.
Yet almost everyone feels a need to accommodate them somewhere in their lives, perhaps dotted in the garden, at the end of the driveway, on a window sill or maybe huddled around a solar light or up against the front porch steps.
This unchallenged unconscious inexplicable need to keep them around (be it ever so understated) is a peculiar phenomenon.
Maybe we don't understand that we need stones or that they are important to us. And while people may not know what they are supposed to do with them, they can't just dismiss them either or be completely rid of them off the property.
"Hmmm ... stones are easy to come by. " said the little girl's mother "I'd like to learn how to do that " ( Meaning, I'd like to know how to make something with them)
This Thanksgiving why not cook something up with a few stones then. Let's make something of them. If nothing else, discover how much sense they make.
