Dawning New 3

Dawning New 3

Featured in Beauty in Nature group Nov 2009

Featured in Healing thru Art group Nov 2009

Nikon D90, 35 mm, ISO 100, 1/160 sec @ f 8, Gitzo tripod, bogen pistol grip head, Blue Ridge Parkway west of Asheville, NC.

(Continued from Dawning New 2) The following is a direct translation of the architects’ actual account of the architect’s encounter with the third stonemason as detailed in the memoir:

“After a lengthy period of searching, I happened upon a third stonemason. I asked him about the nature of his business. He paused to set his chisel aside and looked up at me thru eyes filled with a quality hard for me to describe; was it wonder looking back at me? At any rate, the mason replied saying, ‘As you can see, I’m seated here before my block of stone which measures a meter by half a meter by half a meter. Come,’ he said to me. ‘Put your left hand upon the chiseled surface of the stone, and feel the fine dust still clinging here. Take notice of its subtle grating between your fingertips? Sniff gently of the dust. Just like that you have taken a bit of the stone in with your breath. The stone is a part of you now. Allow the shutters of your eyes to close a moment and sense if you will the origins of this stone. As the dust slides beneath your fingers on the smooth surface of the stone, so do layers of rocky surface of the earth move against themselves. There is collision and upward thrusting as the rock strata reaches ever higher, flinging up as the steep sides of a birthing mountain. Eons of time pass. Rains fall. The sun shines. Great evergreen trees thrust their roots deep into the fissure that has formed between our stone and the face of the mountainside. Snows gather about the feet of the trees and ice fills in the crevasse. The fissure expands as ice thaws only to freeze once again. Time marches onward until that moment when the mother-side of the mountain gives birth to our stone. It tumbles free; it slides away as the heart of the planet itself calls it forth to meet with its greater purpose. The quarrymen find it there on the hillside overlooking the valley and load it into a sturdy wagon pulled by a team of draft horses who plod a great distance over the surface of the earth. Stone lies beneath the passing wheels. Stone witnesses the journey. Our stone arrives here to meet with its destiny, to be shaped, to be caressed by my steel, until such time as it is ready.’

“He paused but a moment,” wrote the architect, “to sweep his hand about him to indicate the team of men working at his side. ‘You see, my friend,’ the stonemason said, ‘We prepare the stones that will form the front entryway to the cathedral. This very stone here before me shall be the keystone that locks the arch in place.’

“I closed my eyes and he took my hand,” continued the builder, “as he said to me, ‘Now place your right hand here. Can you feel the life of the mountain coursing thru this stone between your hands? The feel is very subtle. You must be patient and allow its voice to emerge. Can you see the stone as it once lay there high up on the mountainside, basking in the sunlight, resting in the shade of the great evergreens? They sway this way and that in the wind as day falls away into night. Dawn erupts; the sun peers over the horizon in radiant splendor. Smatterings of clouds ride the sunrise in hues of orange and pink and purple. The brilliance of the sun coalesces into a pinpoint as you gaze about you at a vista highlighted in gold. Shadows lift as warm light sweeps down the mountainside and into the valley as the sun nestles for a moment in the crook of a distant range, deepening the color. On your right hand in the distance, a waterfall plummets hundreds of feet, its waters never reaching the valley below, but caught up as midst in the wind and swept away into the waxing light of the sun. It is the magic hour when the sun’s light so caresses the earth that new sight becomes possible to those who will permit it. Green never looked quite as green – red never quite so red as it does in this first light of day; the blue of the sky seems alive in the dance of color there as well. Look into the eye of the sun in the first of its glimmering and sense if you will the destiny that this stone has come to fulfill.’

“The blank screen of my mind opens,” the architect recounts. “I see a grand cathedral with its doors wide to my approach. The beat of my heart quickens as I draw near. The polished grain and glistening bronze fixtures of massive doors beckon with their beauty. It is the stone overhead that holds my eye. I sense something grandly intangible increasing within me as I stride beneath the archway. I’m thru the entryway and a vista opens up in the center of my chest; I settle into it and feel the mountainside bathed in sunlight. I feel the peace of the trees moaning in the wind. The mist of the waterfall refreshes my face. There is the fullness of beauty now within me. I feel the nature of the source of all things. I feel the beauty instilled within all creation. I know in that moment that what I feel is a part of me and I’m a part of it. I want more. I want it to deepen. I’ll do anything to have it…

“My eyes open and I gaze in awe upon the aged and grizzled face of the master stonemason. My voice is barely a whisper as I feel the question coming up in me. Everything depends upon an answer, so much so that I’m afraid to ask. But ask it, I shall, and I do….

“‘Please, I beg you, sir, teach me to build as you build.’

The memoir’s final words are these: “His smile is the radiance of a sunrise in answer to my call, and I settle down by his side to learn.”

And so it was that I began to learn how resentment must give way to acceptance if I am to find joy in being more of the truth of who we are.
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©Miles A Moody LivingEarth-Hearthealing.com. Written and photographic works are the sole property of copyright holder; reproduction in part or in full only with expressed permission or purchase.

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