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Rocks and Stones

Excavations In Memory

by Ken Rummer

I noticed that my last post got a little deep in the rocks  (https://www.presbyterianmission.org/today/2018/02/02/sightings-11/). And I started wondering why.

It might go back to my early years.

At some point in childhood, I got into rocks. I think it was fossils that did it. One of my souvenirs from a family vacation to New York state was a dark gray stone featuring an ancient plant. I’m sure it had a scientific name, but the name that stuck with me was “fossil cabbage.”

I added to my collection with a few crinoid stem fragments (think tiny stacks of Lifesavers) and a nearly complete shell the size of a nickel that I chipped out of the limestone in the backyard. We had built a retaining wall using rocks salvaged from building sites in the neighborhood. Layers of stone were near the surface and every new basement yielded a pile.

As I understand it, the material for those rocks was deposited when Kansas was under water, 300 million years ago more or less. To this day, when I see layered, ochre-colored stone peaking out of cuts along the highway, I feel like I’m coming home.

Or, the rock thing might have some connection to past struggles around a possible job change.

Over a period of several years I considered a call into service as an executive/general presbyter. For non-Presbyterian readers, the office is similar to that of bishop, but without the title, the powers or the chess piece hat. Early on I was wrestling with the fear that in order to do that job I was going to have to change my stripes and become the sort of person I imagined a good administrator had to be.

Then I attended a seminar for those who were exploring such a call. The group included currently serving presbyters as practitioners and mentors. One of the exercises involved moving to different parts of the room based on our answers to a series of questions. The discovery: the current executives ended up in different places from each other on different questions. The lesson: Different kinds of people are called to this job. The realization: I didn’t need to change my nature; I just needed to find the place that needed the kind of person I already was.

To help me remember, I kept the small gray stone that was given to me in the closing worship. It was stone and only stone all the way through. It reminded me that I needed to be like that—myself—all the way through. The presbyter call didn’t come through, but that stone was still in my desk drawer when I retired.

Or, my eye for rocks might have some connection to my worst day leading worship.

I was in church, in the pulpit, when I experienced what the doctor later deduced was a panic attack. At the time I thought I might be dying. My head wasn’t working right. Getting words to go together into sentences was a struggle. There was pain in my chest and weakness in my knees.

They checked it out at the hospital and eventually sent me home. I was able to return to work, but the fear and embarrassment of that episode haunted me. What if it happened again?

I signed up for counseling, and a visualization exercise from those sessions seemed to help. I would see myself standing on a rock. “Who is a rock besides our God?” (Psalm 18:31 NRSV) “On Christ, the solid rock, I stand.” (hymn text by Edward Mote, c.1834)

When the first hints of symptoms would tug on my sleeve, when fears of a recurrence started circling, I would take a slow breath and see myself standing on a rock. Some Sundays the top of the rock wasn’t much bigger than a stepping stone. Other mornings, it was as big as the whole chancel. But, standing on the rock, I was able to make it through.

I think of that now, as I consider my new situation. In this place, in retirement, facing new fears, I still have a rock on which to stand.

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Ken Rummer, a retired Presbyterian pastor, writes about life and faith from the middle of Iowa by the High Trestle Trail.