Stone of Anointing

There was an old man sitting on top of that hill. Sitting, smoking, scratching. The usual. You sit and you scratch and you smoke and the next thing you know you get around to thinking. Thinking isn't all that bad as long as you keep it in check and don't think about the things you're not supposed to think about. You know how it goes – you start thinking about things like being free or following your own will or someone's will or how we are all so different and that it isn't such a bad thing and then the next thing you know you might start to think differently than other folk want you to think.

That's OK for you and me, but it sure isn't OK for them.

You have to think the way they think.

But I probably digress. Anyhow, back to what I was saying. The old man was sitting there, up on top of that hill, and he was smoking and scratching and then he did indeed get to thinking his own thoughts, and some of those thoughts were a little inflammatory, but they weren't all that odd – lots of folks had actually had thoughts like his in the past, but most had abandoned thinking that way.

Crazy how it goes like that, I say.

So he gets to thinking, and wouldn't you just know it, but some folk didn't appreciate it all that much. They tried to distract the old man with offerings of smoked meats and a few bits of cheese, but it wasn't any use. “This is a discussion we probably shouldn't have,” said one of the folk when the old man spoke up about what he believed. Everybody opened their flapping yaps and made the mumbledy-mumbledy sound until they drowned out the old man.

Well, that old man thought better of it, so he shut up his ancient mouth and went back to just thinking and smoking and scratching. Everybody walked away, confident that they had convinced him to shut his mouth and change his mind. They were relieved that his ways of thinking had obviously been changed, and they believed that now he was convinced that his ideas were part of “a discussion we probably shouldn't have.” Everyone was quite happy.

The old man sat on the hill and looked to the place where that other fellow had been silenced. Someone else who said things that no one wanted to hear just then.

Hell. Just then or ever, you might say.

So they shut that other fellow up as well, but the old man sat on the hill (not far from where they silenced the other fellow) and he smoked and scratched and thought. And light poured forth from the little bitty hole on the side of that hill, and as the old man touched the living rock he heard the stones cry out, and he heard a voice that echoed a familiar song.

Smoking and scratching, and thinking eternal thoughts. And soon all that remained were the old man and the rock.

The living rock.

And the rock isn't something you change. The rock changes you.