St. Mary Parish ROCKS: Messages of hope and unity

By COLIN MURPHEY
People around St. Mary Parish have, for the last few weeks, been going about their normal morning routines…making breakfast, grabbing a cup of coffee, dropping off the kids at daycare and then making their way to work. As usual.
What’s not usual is what many of them have been finding on the doorstep of the places they work. Many people in St. Mary Parish have been finding gifts consisting of small rocks painted in vivid colors with inspirational messages written on them on the front step of the place they work.
And it’s not just happening at the workplace. People have been finding hundreds of painted rocks and shells all over the parish. Until recently, the origin of the rocks and their purpose was somewhat of a mystery.
But, thanks to social media, questions about where the rocks come from, why they are being placed around the parish and what they are supposed to mean have been answered.
And while the phenomenon did not originate in St. Mary Parish, young people in the area, other community members and one Berwick resident have taken the sensation to a whole new level.
Amy LeBlanc of Berwick said she originally saw people in a small community in Missouri on social media painting rocks in lavish colors adorned with decorations and leaving them around their community as a way of spreading feelings of goodwill and unity.
LeBlanc saw an opportunity to take it one step further. She said what she wanted to do was add a unique, inspirational message to each rock, but she said she couldn’t do it alone. So, she inspired young people and others in St. Mary Parish to take up the challenge to help spread their own messages of joy, compassion, unity and faith to the community via painted rocks.
What she didn’t know at the time was how popular the idea would be with area residents, how many people would get involved and the impact that a simple painted rock with a few words written on it could have on the people of St. Mary Parish.
“We are doing this to put a smile on people’s faces,” LeBlanc said. “We started this a few days before the shooting in Baton Rouge. People embraced it at just the right time and it’s just taken off.”
LeBlanc said the idea started out as a simple gesture of goodwill toward the community, but once people started finding the rocks tucked away in places around the parish, the phenomenon took on a life of its own.
“People were having fun with it and I wanted to bring it here,” LeBlanc said. “People started finding them and the rocks started speaking to them. Then other people started painting rocks to put out and that’s how it took off.”
As of Wednesday, the Facebook page for St. Mary ROCKS had nearly 12,000 members after only two weeks. It’s not just a sensation in the parish. LeBlanc said she has heard of rocks being found all over southern Louisiana. The craze has even attracted international attention as far away as Israel. LeBlanc said she had no idea something as simple as painted rocks would have such an impact on people.
“It wasn’t my intention,” LeBlanc said. “I guess when you do something good and you do something for other people it spreads. As far as the kids and the parents go, they are putting their phones down. They are turning the TV off. We are coming together. People are doing this thing as a family. As a community, we are coming together. It’s caused us to be kind, but it’s not about us. It’s about doing something for someone else.”
LeBlanc said she had one final thing to say about the message she and others hoped to get across with the painted rocks.
“What I would really like people to know is, even though we see a lot of evil in this world, God is not moved by it and this is showing people that he is real and he is here and he hasn’t gone anywhere.”