3/16/25
I Believe in Stones
This is number 103 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I’VE OFTEN TALKED about my disdain for organized religion. I promote individual responsibility and acting because something is simply the right thing to do. Deep down, though, what is it that I believe?
There are obvious answers to that. Love. Humanity. Good and Evil. I’ve talked about believing that all living things and some (or all???) inanimate things have the ability to communicate and an intelligence that we simply do not understand. They—that is all of earth—deserve our respect, even if we don’t understand them.
I wrote what I thought was the last volume of the Living Next Door to Heaven saga between December 2015 and February 2016. Two years later, I decided to add volume 10, but it didn’t change what I’d written in Heaven’s Gate.
In the story, we see the main character/narrator of the series, Brian Frost, as he is ready to wind up his television career and simply become the bread baker he found was his real occupational love. This was a story I poured my heart into and many things in it struck a resonating note within me.
In the previous eight volumes, Brian built a community, had a dozen intimate partners, battled against forces he could not control, and went from a cooking show host on television to a talk show host. And then, at the ripe old age of 30, he ‘retires’ from television to follow his real passion: baking.
Oh, for such success that we could all just retire at thirty and follow our life passion, yes? But Brian was also a leader in his community and his farewell speech in the television series came straight from my heart.
When asked what he believed, he answered, “I believe in stones.”
Heaven’s Gate and the entire Living Next Door to Heaven series are available as a collection or individual eBooks on Bookapy.
I believe in stones.
Look around you. There is ample evidence that stones exist. We even classify them. Igneous. Sedimentary. Metamorphic. We name certain kinds of rocks. Marble. Granite. Limestone. A’a lava. Sandstone. Quartz. Basalt. Slate. Coal. We assign value to particular kinds of stones. Diamonds. Rubies. Opal. Emerald.
They are all just stones. We go through our lives mostly ignoring them. Even if we chose not to believe in stones, we might still trip over them. We might hit our heads on them.
But think of all the things we can do with stones. We can build bridges, palaces, cathedrals, skyscrapers, castles, and shops. We can carve them in to timeless statues that outlive both artist and subject. We can make them into memorials to great achievements and to great tragedies. We can mark the corners of our property, build fences and walls, and make dividing lines between our countries. We can crush them to provide a paving bed for our roads and highways. We mold them and bind them together into bricks to protect our homes from the heat of the fireplace. We bake those bricks and build with them. We take ground up rocks and blend the aggregate with cement, which is itself just more fluid rock, and make blocks to build bunkers or the foundations of our homes.
You can grind up certain stones into silica sand, heat them up, melt them, and when they cool you can see through them. Did you know the windows that we look out of, that keep the heat in and the cold out in the winter, that protect us when we are driving our cars are just stones?
If we go back in history, we find incredible structures like the pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, Edinburgh Castle. All made out of stones. And in the same period of time, we find huge siege engines capable of hurling rocks into the air with such force that they can break those walls down. We’re told that the earliest weapons man used were no more than stones, thrown at their prey or at their enemies.
Yet they are tools, as well. We use the miller’s grist stone or the peasant’s mortar and pestle to grind grain into flour and feed ourselves. Stones can be used to pound and shape other things. Just strike the stone flint against steel and it creates the spark that will light our fires to heat our homes and cook our food.
Or you can lie in wait for your enemy and tumble big boulders on his head. You can set a stone in a sling and, like David, hurl it at Goliath and bring him to his knees.
Or on your knees you can present a stone in a golden ring to your loved one and ask her to marry you.
And at the end of your life, you can engrave a stone to mark where your remains are buried, returning to the soil, becoming minerals, absorbed into stone. Or you can create a river of pebbles in which to scatter ashes of your loved ones and rake them until you and they are at peace.
Stones simply are.
They have never asked me to believe in them. No stone has ever sent me to war against people who differ from me. No stone has ever demanded that I believe in no other stones, that I not take its name in vain, or that I bow down and worship it. No stone has enslaved people. No stone has considered one person chosen and another damned. No stone has subjugated a woman or made chattel of her children.
Stones are not capricious. They don’t treat one person differently than another. They don’t honor one race or nationality above all others. They don’t give blessings to one person and curses to another. Stones obey the laws of nature. They fall to the ground because of gravity. If you hit your head on one, it hurts because it is what it is. It is nothing more nor less than a stone.
What do I believe in? Don’t get me wrong. I believe my daughter loves me like I love her. I believe in the brotherhood and goodness of all mankind. I believe in Mom, apple pie, and the American way.
But when it comes down to it? When I need to depend on something constant?
I believe in stones.
I have a lot of ideas. I have folders filled with story ideas. Notebooks that I carry around with me. And even 3x5 index cards that I rearrange. The things in my head often overflow my memory allotment. Next week, “Keeping Track.”
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
