Heart for a Stone

The young girl falls back, her torso nearly horizontal to the ground as if on an operating table. The stone being removed will be replaced by a heart of flesh.

Much necessary good has come from Feminism but there is an increasingly well-accepted version that teaches the mythology of the oppressive patriarchy. By its tenets, all faith is suspect and irrational; its primary purpose: to control, especially control women. For its adherents, Christianity is on the list of topics not to be discussed. Religion has become a concept never to be entertained or given a moment’s regard, except as part of the story of oppression.

This ideology is not irrationally based. Women are on the list of those who have not been treated by faith communities and their leaders as Jesus treated them. The LBGT community has a similar closed mindset supported by painful experiences of exclusion and oppression.

While I respect the reasons for this intolerance of faith, the loss for those individuals who have erected an ideological wall between themselves and God is profound. I remember when my mind would not permit the possibility of God’s existence because of an Atheism which I picked up from my culture without much question or discernment. Those days were hard. This sculpture is a prayer for those earnest young minds quick set in concrete.

My first Heart for a Stone was inspired by an older man who had been deeply involved with crime and substance abuse. He was transformed when he met God. His earnestness, gentleness, kindness and concern for others seems a true wonder compared to tales of his predatory past. But even the very young can acquire the heart of stone, not from heroin and poverty but from a closed mind—set too early—that rules the heart rigidly. We all risk such ossification when we neglect Paul’s admonition that without love, our ideological constructions and actions flowing from them are a clanging cymbal. When we forget Jesus’ love for these people groups, noise may be all they can hear.