Name that tune

Just outside the little Breton Town of St Cast Le Guildo there are brown signs to a spot on the riverbank saying “pierres sonnantes” (literally: singing stones) If you pick your way along the shore at low tide, taking care not to slither on the rocks, you can find them. As you can see below, they are pretty unprepossessing. Struck with a pebble at just the right angle, they make a loud ‘clang’ like a metal drum. It’s all a bit disappointing, to be honest. Having passed the sign several times, and made the slithery journey to reach the rocks, I was expecting more of a concert than a clang!

Image: fr.topic-topos.com

In Luke’s account of Palm Sunday we are told that Jesus silences his detractors by saying that if the crowd were quiet ‘the stones would cry out’.  Here’ s the question, though – what would they say; how would they sing;  what kind of music would they make? Once you have dismissed the facetious answers like “we will rock you” or any tracks by the Rolling Stones, the question becomes intriguing. If inanimate creation had a voice, what would it sing, or say, to its creator? We who have voices sometimes make a poor job of our praise – so perhaps theirs would be purer and clearer?

Of course all of creation is humming all the time. Right now the molecules in the chair on which you sit or the screen which you just touched are resonating, vibrating infinitesimally in order to maintain the solid state of that object. Maybe they hum as they go about their work?

Today, many will have the opportunity to sing and praise the creator who made them. Let’s hope we make a better job of it than the pierres sonnantes!