This month marks the fifth full year I have been working on 'this jewelry thing' as I call it. It is more than that, of course, it is my effort to create a life that grows in ways that hold me here.
Each day the roots have grown deeper, and that is just something I need in this life—deep roots that gnarl down into the earth holding up a tree that grows into the sky. It has always been and continues to be my hope that this will one day support me enough to build a small earthen home in a place that I feel free, where I can do all of the work that calls during my time here.
The world, with all of its holy beauty, is also a heavy place to walk within, and we each deal with it in our own ways. I have been reading a book on the history of beads and well, my mind has been opened many times over. I may expand on it more later, but the lesson that is running through my head right now is that beads were the first way, after creating fire and hunting for food, that humans learned as a way to survive and cope with the world. They are the first output of the development of abstract thought, coinciding with our first use of ritual and acknowledgement of an afterlife. Isn't that fascinating? Their history is unimaginably rich. And I can't help but smile because they are still the way some of us cope with the world! Myself included. Absolutely. I have felt like such a weirdo about it for years now, but I don't really anymore. It feels more like an honor to carry on this oldest of traditions and create jewels for others to wear.
This is but one piece, one bead, of the many layers of intention that go into every single thing that I make, always. None of that is imbued into mass produced, factory made, wasteful things that are the way of so many cultures nowadays. It is wild the way we have grossly commodified our oldest of sacred arts!
Regarding all forms of making the things we need and love: Let's get back to the old ways of supporting our communities and the makers within them, and open ourselves to the very old, wise, learned, magical, spiritual, natural, beautiful, connected ways found there.
Blessings.