The Philosopher's Stone in Ireland's Mourne Country

There’s a big stone in a wood in the heart of Mourne country close to the old Ice House. I call it the Philosopher’s stone and I used to tell my kids that if I ever vanish off the face of the earth, that’s where they’ll find me.

It’s surrounded by tall pines standing as sentinels with the roar and splash of the Glen river just barely discernible above the whisper of the wind through their branches. The Mournes repose sedate and silent in the background as they preside majestically over all they survey. Sometimes as I reflect on my many moods through the years while sitting on my philosopher’s stone, my mind turns to King David as he cried out, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills....”

There have been times when I’ve been afraid, angry, heartbroken, confused, and sometimes euphoric, but the mountains and the trees never change. Their permanence has always been able to infuse my troubled spirit with their unique serenity. Good times and bad come and go, but it seems to me that there’s something of God in them thar hills, something that never changes. They tell us that however people may disappoint us, however the great institutions that we rely on may crumble and fail us, God remains unchanged in His faithfulness. The word is “immutable.”

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