1 Peter 2 - The Living Stone and a Chosen People
Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner.” Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Luke 19 - Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
With hammer and chisel, this mystery artist makes the rocks talk
Former truck driver always saw faces in stones. Now he's filling Nova Scotia town with his art
By Jon Tattrie for CBC News
Sometimes he'll sit in stony silence for hours, staring at the boulder. It can take weeks. But eventually, the stone talks.
"The rock says what it is," Brent Reeve says.
That's when he gets out his chisel, hammer and grinder, and gets to work turning a little Nova Scotia town into an open-air art gallery.
The stone carver toiled alone and anonymously for years, descending from his home on the South Mountain in the Annapolis Valley, N.S., to carve an erratic rock, those boulders dropped by glaciers as they left the land.
Reeve never trained as an artist, or even as a carver. He drove trucks. He also worked in quarries. When he looked at those rocks, they looked back at him. He saw faces. Or flowers. Or suns. Or sailing boats. But he left them hidden in stone.
The Ontario man worked across Canada and settled in Nova Scotia when his parents retired to the province.
Life had slung enough stones at him that he understood why some people get petrified and hide in bed all day. Eight years ago, he decided to act.
"I decided, I've got to get out of the house. I can't keep on watching Oprah," he says, before quickly adding, "Sorry Oprah."
Reeve chiselled out the hidden beauty he saw all around him. "Just to straighten my head out a little bit," he says. The less you move out of the rock, the better.
At first, he carved alone off remote ATV trails. His ATV buddies are used to him detouring to see one of his old friends. "They think I'm nuts. They really do. And they really appreciate it."
But this year, he came down off the mountain and asked the town of Berwick if they'd like a few carved stones. Well, he asked a couple other towns first, but they shot him down.
Berwick embraced the idea and now supplies him with the raw materials and helps him place the stones about town. A new map guides visitors to the carvings and urges them to share a stone-faced selfie.
Ty Walsh, a town councillor, loves to take his kids out for a walk to see if they can find a new carving, or one they hadn't noticed before. "As a town, it's awesome to have bragging rights to Brent's pieces of public art," he says.
When the stones first started to appear, even Walsh didn't know the true identity of the carver. "Many people work very hard to leave a lasting impression on their community. Very few are able to set it in stone," he says.
'The heart's a little distressed'
Reeve doesn't use computers, or social media. He didn't talk to anyone about it until a local writer tracked him down.
Reeve reckons he's carved more than 100 boulders, and he's still at work. He doesn't earn a cent, but it brings him peace.
"I saw this one and I knew it'd be a head," he says, wiping sweat from his brow on a sultry July day.
He moves his hand over the stone, tracing a face only he can see. "I don't really know what it is. I just follow the rock and it says what it is. Then, hopefully, you realize you're done."
He studies the cracks and crevices of another stone, seeing what's soft, what's hard. "That'd be really good for an owl. I think I might have to do that
Today, he's finishing the heart rock. "The heart's a little distressed, because you know everybody's had a broken heart, but this one's a heart of stone."
He admits the faces are self-portraits. Some are peaceful, while others are terrifying. "It's a reflection of me for that day," he says. "That carving is me. It just happens to look like a sun.
"My faces aren't stone faces. They're faces of emotion."
He likes that his stone art will outlive him. In a thousand years, a hiker may stumble across Reeve's face, hidden in a sleeping sun, and wonder how it came to be. Reeve wonders that himself.
"It's not like you have a vision of what the completion is. You have a vision of what your start is. If you can start, then bleed away your start, you'll end up finished eventually."
He falls into a stony silence. The rock starts to talk. Reeve picks up his chisel and gets back to work.