Alternative to Throwing Stones 

Once upon a time there was a man who looked out into the world from an easy posture through a large custom paned window. This window was in the grandest room of his home. From there he could see the changing of seasons, the habits of his neighbors and the world passing by. Life was not perfect but it was good. Occasionally, he ventured out to where the streams were flowing and waters lapped the edge of land. There, he would collect rocks of all sorts. He loved them for they were dense and weighty. Each rock was solid and could be collected according to their beauty and his preference. There were so many rocks, but he only collected a few and a few was a lot. He lined them up on his kitchen counter and his bedroom window. He kept them in bowls on his dining tables. The smoothest and most polish stones he kept in his study where he could hold them in his palms and draw his fingers around them. He found that he felt better for the weight of them in his hand. They grounded and stabilized him.

This was the way the man lived until one day. In that day, there was a terrible crash that came from the grandest room of his home. There he found his plate glass window broken. Shards of glass on the floor and a large rugged hole caused by a rock lobbed into his personal space. The rock was ugly. This rock had a piece of paper wrapped round it. The note secured with a rubber band. On the paper he found a message, “I hear you like rocks, what do you think of mine?” The truth, of course, was that he didn’t like it. It has ruined his view of the world. And he knew it would take time to order a custom paned window. Not only was the rock not to his liking, to make matters worse, this rock made noise.

The noise began as a low murmur. Barely audible and yet, the sound seemed to have imprinted on the man. He could not help honing-in, listening for any articulation. And in the honing and the groaning, a language emerged between the rock and the man. The man said, “Rock, what did you say?” And every day the murmuring took on clarity until one day that man heard the voice clearly say “I am not a rock, release me.” The man was in disbelief, “Of course you are a rock. You are hard. You are weighty and if I keep you from the weather, you will be unchanging.” But the man could not unhear what he had heard. “I am not a rock, release me.”

The plea was relentless. The man could hear nothing else. And so, one day the man put this rock in his pocket and carried it with him wherever he went. The rock was with him weather he was crying, sweating, or eating. The friction of the partnership seemed to quiet the weighty pleas. One day, at the end of the long day, the man reached into his pocket to empty his change and relieve himself of the weight of the rock. But in the clutch, the man found only some change and a seed. The seed was gritty to be sure, but unusually warm. And from the seed came a familiar resonance, “I am not meant to stay a seed, release me.” The man had been conditioned to respond. He scanned his mind to remember how one released a seed. Ah yes! Of course! One plants a seed to release it. And so, just outside the broken custom plated window, the man planted his seed. He watered it and it grew. It was a generous seed that gave him food to harvest, chew, and digest. It enriched the soil as it expanded. In a similar way, it gave him strength and energy to expand, trying new things and growing in his understanding of the world.

And so, the man’s hearing was now attuned deeply. He began to hear the low murmurs of all the rocks he had collected. As each one began to murmur, he carried them gifting them with the friction of his life. The released seeds were planted at the forefront of his life. The man found himself waking each morning ready to tend his garden. He often smiled and playfully named it, his freedom garden. When he was quite practiced in his new routine, he found himself ready to design and order a new plate glass window. This one was a bit bigger than before but it was a perfect frame on what grows from hard places.

As for throwing stones, there was no longer a need. They could be put to much better use.

Comment: We now live in an age when data has become hardened and collectible. Something to admire without investment. Something to lob in order to make a point. Something by which we can do distant surveillance on a world without any transformation to the self. But data has a plea. “Release me. Plant me deep in your context. Trust the organic way I can be integrated and take on new forms. Digest me for strength and understanding. Let me change you first before you show me off to others.” Whether it is the data of environmentalism, systemic racism, data on brain development, or data on a virus, the hard data has a plea. “Will YOU release me and take me in? Be careful how you answer! For I will change you.” As we celebrate the concept of freedom, let’s release data to its purpose. Beyond a a token or a weapon, data can help us grow beyond our preferences toward what is life-giving for all. That we may all have life, even life abundantly.