God does not change by our prayer, we do.
Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary (Lk 18:1).
Persistence in prayer is not changing God. We are not wearing him down like the woman did with the judge. God does not need us. God is completely and totally self-sufficient. We are the ones who need him. Our persistence, our daily habit of prayer, changes us, helps us to develop our relationship by interacting with him more consistently. Things happening in our lives help us to see that we are fragile and vulnerable and in need of help. Our persistence in prayer, especially when we are in need, helps us to become more patient and to become more aware that, sometimes, what we believe is a crisis is not that much of one when some time passes. Also, when we are dealing with a crisis or very real trauma, our persistence and faithfulness in prayer will help us to experience the closeness of Jesus in our midst as he accompanies us through our suffering.
In fact, the practice of stopping everything and praying for five minutes when a crisis arises, often helps us to resist slipping into a fight or flight mode, helps us to resist reacting, and consciously breathing while praying helps us to act more prudently than impulsively. We may also come to see that what we thought was a crisis, was more of a problem to be solved rather than something catastrophic. Our instant reactions to perceived crises can often escalate an issue rather than de-escalate one.
In the greater scheme of things, God answers all prayers of petition or intercession by saying yes, no, or not yet! Most seem to fall in the not yet or not the way we originally intended category. Remaining patient and faithful can help us to move away from seeking to conform God to our will and instead allowing him to expand our hearts and minds to his will. Through this expansion, we can come to see the situation from a broader perspective. Our persistence in prayer also helps us to move away from seeking instant gratification to trusting more in God’s will and timing. Sometimes we become grateful for what appears to be unanswered prayers because with time, hindsight, and some distance, we find our original request was more an apparent than an actual good.
Persistence in prayer is also a discipline that deepens the roots of our relationship with God. Ready access through our modern technology, higher internet speeds, one-click access, and overnight shipping, can offer plusses, but we have to be careful that this mindset does not shape our mental, psychological, and spiritual growth. Physical fitness, wisdom, or spiritual maturity does not happen in an instant. More importantly, development as human beings and our relationships take time, experience, discipline, prayer, and trust in God’s plan.
Patience, persistence in prayer, freeing ourselves from attachment, developing an authentic relationship with God and one another are all worth the effort. We need to take some time to breathe deeply, slow down our pace, discipline ourselves to resist even small acts of instant gratification each day. No matter how busy we are, it is important to slow down, and the busier we are the more we need to slow down. Even if we stop to pray and feel like nothing has happened and that it was a waste of time, something has happened. But to see the effects we must be patient and persistent. God has our back, we can trust in that.
Photo: A quiet moment of prayer after school a few days ago.
Link for the Mass readings for Saturday, November 13, 2021
Both/and, not either/or.
This was actually to be posted yesterday and yesterday’s was supposed to be for today. Still not a 100% as you can see!
Asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus said in reply, “The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you” (Lk 17:20-21).
Many of the Pharisees were scrutinizing Jesus’ every word and action, unfortunately, with a hard heart. They were closed to the reality present before them because they were looking for ways to accuse him, to catch him, to have cause to show him to be a fraud. They were closed to the actual events happening around Jesus that the blind saw, the deaf heard, the lame walked, lepers, were healed, the dead had arisen, and the poor had the good news proclaimed to them (cf. Matthew 11:5).
They missed the very reality that the Kingdom of God was in their midst. We see this very much today through the mental posturing of “scientism”, the belief that the only reality is that which can be measured empirically, through the five senses. Scientists have brought about many advances and innovations that we enjoy today, yet there is a reality beyond the physical. This is the spiritual, which transcends the three-dimensional reality that we experience and are aware of through our senses. We understand the world around us better when we embrace both science and theology, the physical and the spiritual, as well as embrace the gifts of our reason and our faith.
If our mind is closed to an idea, a reality, and/or a belief we will not only resist believing, we will also seek rationalizations to explain it away as did some of the Pharisees. From a hypersensitivity to accept only the physical, we can brush off acts of synchronicity as mere coincidence. Yet, if we are open to the spiritual reality of interconnectedness beyond that which we can measure finitely, these incidences can be termed, God-incidences.
We cannot solve or prove God like a problem because God is not in the genus of being, he is not an animal, a human, an angelic, spiritual, or even a supreme being. There are no words to adequately describe God. This is why pronouns are woefully inadequate as well, for God is neither male nor female. We can say more about what God is not than what or who God is! The best attempts we have are that God is an Infinite Act of Existence or to use the phrasing of St Thomas Aquinas, Ipsum Esse Subsistens – The sheer act of ‘to be’ itself, or as God said to Moses, “I am, who am” (Exodus 3:14). God is completely transcendent, beyond categories, beyond the genus, beyond the grasp of our finite minds, yet we can experience him because God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.
We will not encounter God by forcing God to come to us on our own terms, by attempting to force-fit God into our finite conceptions. God meets us where we are and as we are, on his terms. As we open ourselves to his presence, accept his invitation, he then helps us to expand, to experience more broadly, who we, others, and our world are. We experience this best when we truly love, when we go out from our own self-centered stance to will the good of another, to love. We become more when we follow what truly brings us joy and fulfills us. We encounter God through embracing the wonders of his creation!
As Jesus said to Philip, “Whoever has seen me, has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). The Kingdom of God is among us because Jesus is who he said he is. Jesus is fully God and fully man in our midst. By his very presence, he shows us that there is no opposition or competition but a union between heaven and earth. We will never fully comprehend God, but we can come to know and understand God, ourselves, and the world around us better when we breathe with both lungs of faith and reason, embrace our intellect as well as our spirit. As St. John Paul II stated, “Faith without reason is superstition” and as attributed to Albert Einstein, “Reason without faith is boring.”
Photo: Georges Lemaître, priest and astrophysicist, father of the Big Bang theory.
Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, November 11. 2021
“The Kingdom of God is among you.”
In today’s Gospel account, Jesus continues to answer the Pharisees’ question about “when the kingdom of God would come” (Lk 17:20). Jesus reminds them about how during the time of Noah and during the time of Lot many were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, buying, selling, planting, building (cf. Lk 17:26-29). In effect, other than Noah and Lot, and those few listening to them, no one else had any clue about the impending calamity or wanted to know. They were so absorbed in their own pursuits and desires they did not heed the warnings of Noah and Lot.
Another focal point was on those who were attached to only material and finite things. When the final hour came, people on the rooftop or in the field were directed not to go back and get their possessions. Jesus pointed out succinctly, “Remember the wife of Lot” (Lk 17:32). Lot left Sodom with his wife, she did so physically, though she could not resist looking back, she was too tied to what she was leaving behind, and so she lost herself to her attachments.
Spending time speculating when the end will come is a pointless pursuit. What is more important is being aware of the kingdom of God in our midst, developing a relationship with God now. Matthew shared in his gospel account that Jesus stated only the Father knows the time or the hour as to when the end will come (cf. Mt 24:36). If we are only going to prepare at the final hour, we may be too late.
Asking, “When will the kingdom of God come?” also misses the point of what Jesus is teaching us. There is an intrinsic value in developing a relationship with God and one another, now, growing and maturing as a disciple, now, instead of fulfilling our own self-centered-interests. Jesus shared this truth in the first words of his public ministry, that the kingdom of God is at hand (cf. Mk 1:15). All we need to do is reach right out and grasp his extended hand of invitation and walk with him.
For many of the Pharisees, this meant letting go of their own power and prestige and participating instead in the living reality of God in their midst. So many of us are caught up in the day to day affairs of existing that we are barely living. We can also be distracted by false lures and attractions of security and gratification, wealth, power, pleasure, and honor, that we miss what is for our highest hope and good. Jesus is inviting us to wake up, to breathe deep, to slow down, and to be aware that he walks among us. Jesus calls us, as Lot called his wife, to keep our focus on God and the things of heaven.
Lord Jesus, help us to recognize when we are caught up in distractions and diversions, when we are choosing to put our self first, and where we are attached and bound up to empty pursuits. Guide us, such that we, in the words of Pope Francis, “understand what faith means when we open ourselves to the immense love of God that changes us inwardly and enables us to see our lives with new eyes” (Costello 2013, 12). Eyes that see the kingdom of God in our midst and the promise of which is our eternal home.
Photo: JoAnn, Jack, and Christy hiking ahead of me during our California visit in December 2015. Little did any of us know then that we would be back in 2019 for JoAnn’s walk with Jesus going ahead of us into the eternal Kingdom of God.
Costello, Gwen. Walking With Pope Francis: Thirty Days with the Encyclical The Light of Faith. New London, CT: Twenty Third Publications, 2013.
Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, November 11, 2021
Thank you!
Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?” Then he said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you” (Lk 17:17-19).
Bloodline doesn’t matter, gender doesn’t matter, nation doesn’t matter, ethnicity or race doesn’t matter. Ask Mary the mother of Jesus, ask Mary Magdalene, ask the woman who suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years, ask the Roman centurion whose slave was dying, ask the Samaritan leper what matters. Each of them will share with us that what matters is our faith in Jesus the Christ.
The lifeblood of Christianity is our belief in and developing of our relationship with Jesus, the Son of God, who made his dwelling among us. St Irenaeus of Lyons (born in Smyrna about 135-140 AD and died about 202-203 AD) in his work Against the Heresies wrote: “The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did through His transcendent love, become what we are, that he might bring us to be even what He is himself.”
That Jesus became one with us in our humanity so that we can be one with him in his divinity is something to be thankful for! Many times when we are feeling down, maybe it is because we are focusing on what we do not have or who is not in our life instead of being thankful for who or what we do have. A way to adjust our perspective is to think about three things we are grateful for.
The leper from today’s Gospel helps us to take the next step. Once we become aware of what we are thankful for, we are to reach out and thank the one who made what we have possible. Our time on earth is too short to allow the temptations of indifference and complacency to take hold. May we be more aware and take action to reach out to those who are important in our lives and tell them how thankful we are that they are in it, how much they mean to us, and how much we love them. Make some time to thank God today for his constant presence, the wonderful gift of the invitation of Jesus to share in his divinity, and the Holy Spirit who leads us to love one another as he loves us.
Photo: I am thankful for the best day of my life, our wedding day and grateful for the twenty-three years we had together!
Link for the Mass readings for Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Are we willing to be “embrace by the truth”?
When I ask my students if Jesus ever sinned, inevitably, someone references the account from today’s Gospel. In these verses, we read how Jesus, “made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area” (Jn 2:15). Jesus is not sinning here, rather, he is acting in line with the prophetic tradition. Jesus is making a bold spectacle to drive home the point that the temple is not a marketplace but is to be a place of worship and right praise to his Father.
Greater still than the temple, is the people of God. Further down in the text, when those present ask for a sign to justify this act, Jesus said: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19). Clearly, he was pointing to his body as the temple of God and referring to his Resurrection to come.
The temple, the house of God, believed to be the corporal presence, the very seat of God among his people, Israel, was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans. This left a tremendous spiritual vacuum. Two groups that were intimately tied to the sacrificial cult of the temple, the Sadducees and the Essenes, very soon after the destruction, ceased to exist as a sect within Judaism. The Pharisees, who already were moving to a practice of home worship that mirrored the worship in the temple, would survive and be the ancestral root of Judaism today. Another sect would also arise as the followers of the new way of Jesus which became the Church, the Body of Christ.
Each of us has a unique part to play in the Church. We are called to bear witness and practice, in our own unique way, our faith in our everyday experiences. We may be the only Bible someone ever reads. This call to put our faith into action is not an invitation to be overwhelmed by nor an excuse to assume a posture of elitism. We are no better than anyone else.
Pope Francis wrote: “Believers should not be presumptuous; rather, truth leads to humility. We know it is not ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us” (Costello 2013, 14). We are to seek and follow Jesus, the Truth, and allow his truth to shape our lives. We need to resist being defensive and rigid. Instead, we are called to be flexible and open to dialogue, sharing our stories and experiences, and inviting others to do the same. When we are willing to encounter and walk together, we learn and grow from one another. In this way, we become less other and more human to one another.
We need to resist all that contributes in any way to the dehumanization, hate, and violence that is rampant in our country and the world by rooting ourselves in Jesus, the living Temple. We all fall short of the glory of God and on our own, we are limited in how far we can go. We need to be willing to be conformed to God’s will through spending consistent time in silence, prayer, meditation, study, worship, and service to be empowered by the love of Christ to be instruments of peace, contemplatives in action, and advocates for healing and reconciliation in a wounded and weary church, politics, country, and world.
Photo: Exiting Mass from Mission del Rey, Oceanside, CA. One of the ways we are dismissed after Mass is to “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by our life.”
Costello, Gwen. Walking With Pope Francis: Thirty Days with the Encyclical The Light of Faith. New London, CT: Twenty Third Publications, 2013.
Link for the Mass readings for Tuesday, November 9, 2021
May we open ourselves to receiving Jesus’ forgiveness so we may be more forgiving of ourselves and others.
“If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive him” (Lk 17:3-4).
Forgiveness is one of the foundational principles of our faith tradition as Christians. If we question or struggle with the degree of forgiveness we engage in, we are in good company with Peter. Thinking he was being generous, Peter asked Jesus how many times should he forgive, seven times? Jesus responded, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times” (cf. Mt 18:21-22).
Luke records the exchange of the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray. He taught them the Our Father or Lord’s Prayer. While reciting this prayer often each day or multiple times each day, we say, “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” or “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” (Mt 6:11-12).
One of the barometers of being a faithful disciple of Jesus is that we are people who practice the sacred act of forgiveness. To forgive does not mean in any way that we justify the offense or even necessarily forget. We are to hold people accountable and lead them to respect our dignity and the dignity of others.
Holding on to grudges, seeking revenge, being unwilling to forgive, can be incapacitating, debilitating, and can lead to a premature as well as eternal death. What can be of help is if we can choose to be more mindful of our thoughts and actions. At the moment we experience discomfort from what someone says or does, instead of giving in to the temptation to react or to let our mind run with the offense, we need to take some deep breaths and relax our shoulders. As the negative thoughts attempt to rise again, don’t fight or feed the thoughts, just return to being aware of our breath and ask Jesus to help us be more understanding and forgiving.
Often we project onto others our own stuff, but we also rarely know what another is going through or dealing with. This is not a justification for the harm done, but a way to see a different perspective than our own limited point of view, and possibly bring us a few steps closer to being more understanding and supportive instead of defensive. In this way, we can provide an opportunity of healing for the one who has inflicted us.
We may struggle with being forgiving because we may not have sought forgiveness ourselves. Advent is coming. It is a season to prepare to celebrate the coming of Jesus into our lives. This season provides a wonderful opportunity to participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Forgiveness is a healing gift of God’s grace. Once we have felt the healing balm of forgiveness, we might be more willing to forgive others.
A good practice to engage in is to go to a place of quiet, ask God to help you to forgive, even if your prayer begins, “God, I cannot forgive, I hurt too much, but help me to let go, please help me to forgive, (insert name).” Return each day until you can bring yourself to say, “I forgive, (insert name).” Visualize yourself saying that you forgive the person face to face and imagine a healing between each of you. If the opportunity presents itself you may want to say that you forgive the person directly, send an email, or write a letter – even if you do not press send or mail it.
With the intent to forgive and asking for the help of Jesus who has forgiven us, even if in the beginning we are unwilling, with time, reconciliation is possible. Depending on the hurt that has been inflicted you may not reach out to the other person as it may be healthier to stay apart. Forgiveness will help you to heal and not allow the person who has hurt you to continue to do so. In our willingness to forgive, there is freedom. Let us remember: “Forgive and you will be forgiven”.
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The quiet of the morning is a good time to seek forgiveness and begin the day renewed. Photo from retreat a few weeks back at Our Lady of Florida Spiritual Center.
Link for the Mass readings for Monday, November 8, 2021
We can do better as citizens and the Church by trusting more in God and one another.
It appears like our church, society, and government is coming apart at the seams.
What is an answer and what can we to do?
First and foremost, we need to acknowledge that we are suffering. We can’t hide, run, shop, drink or medicate our problems away. We need to realize that we need help and that we are not alone in our suffering and pain. God is present in our midst, we can find support in him and one another as well as be support for one another.
We also need to resist buying into fear, hopelessness, or hate.
To be a faithful disciple, we will turn to and align our will with God, know and live our faith in action.
We are to trust as did the widow of Zarephath from our first reading and the poor widow giving her last two coins to the temple treasury in the Gospel,“…she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood” (Mk 12:44). Each of these women were practicing a spiritual physics that defied what appeared to be the reality before them. Each had barely anything, one her last meal and the other two coins, yet they gave all they had, trusting that God would provide for them. They trusted in God’s providential care.
Each of us, the baptized, are the Church. Each of us have a unique and particular part to play in God’s plan. Gathering together each week to worship, to be encouraged, to learn about our faith, to become holy in our participation in the life of Jesus, and to pray for the needs of our world is a significant counter to the culture of death.
As people of faith we are to aspire to care for one another and creation, to resist the temptation to divide, demean, and define people as other and instead see each other as God sees us, as brothers and sisters. Elijah and the widow of Zarephath saw each other as human beings not people of different ethnicity or faith traditions. Each were in need, trusted in God, and supported one another.
Fr. Matt Malone in the October 29, 2018 issue of America Magazine, wrote about an account of his pilgrimage to northern Spain. At one stop, the mountaintop shrine of Our Lady of Arantzazu, he met Brother Antonio a man of quiet faithfulness who is the keeper of the keys. He leads tourists to experience the shrine and has been doing so for 68 years. What impressed Fr. Malone was his humility, faithfulness and wonder. His smile radiated to such an extent that it appeared that he was seeing the Marian statue for the first time.
We can also experience the joy expressed by Br. Antonio when we also resist the urge to curve in upon our self from fear or despondency, and instead reach out of our comfort zones and be willing to risk accompanying others in acts of kindness, love, and service. In this way, we can come to see that we are not alone in our suffering. When we are willing to share our struggles and trials, our agreements and disagreements, our joys and successes we can grow our bonds of relationship such that what we face does not weaken us, but helps us to grow stronger.
We are also able to notice God more and be present to others when we pray. For it is in the silence of our heart that we hear God speak. It is in the silence of our heart that we can feel his gentle leading toward a particular ministry, small group for support, and will be more apt to notice another in need and have the courage to reach out in small acts of kindness and love.
A boy named Mark exemplifies this awareness. He was walking home one day and noticed that a boy had fallen. Books, a bat and glove, a few sweaters, and small tape recorder were scattered about. Mark went to the boy and offered to help. The two middle school students realized they were heading for home in the same direction so Mark offered to help the boy carry some of his things.
As they walked Mark discovered that the boy’s name was Bill. The pair arrived at Bill’s house first and Bill invited Mark in for a Coke and to watch some TV. Mark ended up staying the afternoon, they talked, laughed and enjoyed their time together. Mark and Bill would interact on occasion at school, have lunch once in awhile and then graduated middle school. They would go on to attend the same high school together and would have some brief interactions over their four years together.
Three weeks before graduation Bill reminded Mark of their first encounter and asked if Mark wondered why he was carrying all that stuff home that day? He then went on to tell Mark, “You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn’t want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had stolen some of my mother’s sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that if I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might follow. So you see, Mark, when you picked up my books that day, you did a lot more. You saved my life” (see Schlatter 1993, 35).
How do we address our current challenges, the problem of violence, and the hyper polarization in our country and Church?
One approach is to follow the path that the two widows, Br. Antonio, and Mark took as shared in the accounts above which is to become contemplatives in action. We not only learn about our faith but we are to live our faith, put it into action, trust in and allow ourselves to be transformed by the God of Jesus Christ who is love incarnate. We are to turn to God in prayer and follow his lead to accompany one another, as brothers and sisters, living out our faith in quiet, yet determined ways, by countering darkness with light, hate with love, by being welcoming, offering a smile, holding each other accountable with mercy, step by step and hand in hand on the grand adventure and journey we call life.
Photo credit: Exercise in trust!
Schlatter, John W. A Simple Gesture in Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Stories To Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit. Edited by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1993.
Link for the Mass Readings for Sunday, November 7, 2021.
To what or whom do we place our ultimate trust?
“No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Lk 16:13).
Jesus consistently emphasizes the priority of making God primary in our lives. Anything that moves into the slot of preeminence before God is idolatrous. Anything, even family, as we heard a few days ago. We cannot have two firsts, because either we will “hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” This balancing act is not an easy discipline.
It becomes especially challenging when we look at mammon, money, or material wealth. Many of us seek our security in having a home, insurance policies, savings, retirement plans, market investments. Setting up this security is often considered prudent. The problem is when material security becomes the foundation of our life, our fulfillment, our god.
This has certainly influenced the Church at times with movements governed by a prosperity gospel. The approach to a faith life that is not so much building up a relationship with our loving God and Father, but one of seeking God as a holy investor. There is a perspective offered on verses such as the Parable of the Sower (cf. Mark 4, Matthew 13, and Luke 8) in which the primary intent in giving is to reap a financial return of ten, twenty, or a hundredfold. God certainly wants us to be good stewards, and he will indeed bless us and wants us to be generous and cheerful with our giving, but again, if in our giving the primary intent is to receive more of our treasure, we are serving Mammon and not God.
Following are two scriptural verses and two Church Father quotes that may help us to see that in giving away and not accumulating the material, thus trusting in God for our security is the prudent path:
“If one of your kinsmen in any community is in need in the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand to him in his need. Instead, you shall open your hand to him and freely lend him enough to meet his need” (Deuteronomy 15:7-8).
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25:35).
“When giving to the poor, you are not giving him what is yours; rather, you are paying him back what is his” (St Ambrose of Milan, 340-339).
“If each one of us took only what is necessary for his sustenance, leaving what is superfluous for the indigent, there would be no distinction of rich and poor” (St Basil of Caesarea, 330-379).
Our reactions to the above can be a barometer as to whether we are putting gold first or God first. God is to be our source and our fundamental option. The blessing we receive, the hundredfold we seek, is to be measured in love, mercy, and generosity received and given. Pope Francis, in a 2013 address, expressed his concern “that some homeless people die of cold on the streets [and this] is not news. In contrast, a ten-point drop in the stock markets of some cities is a tragedy. A person dying is not news, but if the stock markets drop ten points it is a tragedy! Thus people are disposed of as if they were trash. Consumerism has led us to become used to an excess and daily waste of food, to which, at times, we are no longer able to give a just value, which goes well beyond mere economic parameters” (Vatican Insider).
Do we place our trust, faith, and security in Mammon, or God? Do we build up treasure for ourselves at the expense of or indifference toward others or build up our treasure in heaven, aware of and reaching out to those who are in need? Were someone to observe us objectively, and closely would they say about us, “There goes someone that lives their life believing: In Gold we Trust.” Or would they say, “There goes someone that lives their life believing: In God we Trust?”
Photo: pexels.com by Quang Nguyen Vinh
Link for the Mass readings for Saturday, November 6, 2021
Spiritual Stepping Stones 