The Longing and the Mountain

There are mountains; green and lush in the spring and summer, imposing and white in the winter.

These very real, physical giants can be impassable and daunting - truly the person who climbs then is rich in courage and possesses a spirit of adventure.

Most often in our day and age, the physical climb is a choice and not a necessity....

not so with spiritual mountains:

we are traveling on our internal road and suddenly where we saw fields and flowers not seconds ago there is a huge rise of earth, falling rocks and dark clouds covering the blue above.

We lose a spouse. A parent. A home. Our job. Health. Wealth. Stature. Solidity. Balance.

And so unexpectedly we are commanded to climb - there are no roads around this place, nothing we can use to barter our way past it.

As surely as our heart is still beating we must put one foot in front of the other and arm ourselves with the only thing that can carry our hearts: longing.

We long for the past, we long for peace, for a return to normalcy....

soon this strange unsettled pace and place becomes a home of sorts and longing shifts 

to the present

and the future

from our lips to Gods ears.

We pray and grieve and our one good day in two weeks becomes one bad day in two weeks of good and we're progressing into new, uncharted territory until one day, by the miracle of change and hard work we reach the summit.

Turning back to see where we have been it dawns as clear as morning:

our souls are bigger....

our compassion doubled....

our life completely changed by the suffering that time and movement have turned into something so real.

This idea for this ring was built by memories using an incredible open-centered agate and a colorful conglomerate boulder opal from Australia.

The inside of the band reads, "Primal", for what else can we be when our world shifts?

This was made with a tremendous amount of love and wonder that I brought home with me after my trip across the desert.

Size 6.5, in the Metal Shop this evening.