Spiritual Gifts | Mark-Making | Heart-Space
Touchstones
A Slate-of-the-Heart for Assaying Precious Alloys
Touchstone: a small tablet of dark stone such as slate or lydite, used for assaying precious metal alloys. It has a finely grained surface on which soft metals leave a visible trace.¹
This is a series I hope will help us search our hearts together… to find the precious bits hidden there. Things that are holy, not because they are pure, but because they are useful… the alloys… the complex combinations of character that embody purity with strength… beauty with functionality. Alloys that are both pliable and resilient… given to us as gifts, not because we earned them, but because we are loved.
Since this is a work of the heart, I don’t know… can’t know really where it will go. All I can do is follow intuitions and invite you to follow along as well.
The assayer’s touchstone is a tool of vulnerability… it is open, receptive, and finely-grained, so it is ready to receive a mark from those who need to leave one. So I invite you to have your say… to leave your mark… to scratch the surface with your thoughts and engage with others who will do the same. Maybe, to find yourself marked as well.
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A few thoughts that might not help.
- This is a spiritual work, so I’m going to take God as a given; as one who has revealed enough to make us wonder and, for some, enough to set our hearts on fire. And because I am more steeped in Christian tradition than others, I will use that language from time to time.
- I know right away that this will keep away many… Christianity carries baggage; it’s ok… the Spirit will send the ones she thinks need to be here. My aperture is pretty wide; more practice than belief, more mystery than reason.
- My branch of the Christian tradition tries to be open and generous, believing that whatever God is, it is more love than judgment, more gift giver than sacrifice taker, one who scans the horizon eagerly for our return each day and then comes running while we are still far off… one who pours wine and oil on our wounds, wraps them in bandages, and carries us to place of healing and respite. One who walks with us in the cool of the evening breeze.
- My sense is that God has revealed itself to us globally and across time, and so it is no surprise that faiths in all times and in all places share common themes. There is a deep mystery here that invites us to enter together.
- None of us probably has faith quite right, and can any of us really declare that another’s is wrong? Plenty try, and as the Genesis storyteller saw it, humans seem to put our knowledge of Good and Evil well ahead of our knowledge of God.² Maybe this is a place to reorder those ways of knowing as we can so that “the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea”.³
So, let’s use these touchstones to do some spiritual assaying… to find those useful alloys because you are the precious one.
¹ “Touchstone”. Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 10 March 2013, via Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, July 15). Touchstone (assaying tool). Wikipedia. Retrieved November 21, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone_(assaying_tool)
² Genesis 3
³ Isaiah 11.9 & similarly, Habakkuk 2:14
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The Rev. Ron Steed is an Episcopal Deacon in Southeast Connecticut and has served the New London Homeless Hospitality Center in a variety of ways. He writes haiku and lyrical prose that he hopes will help others put the head and heart in right-relation.
Top writer in: Art, Watercolor, Haiku, Sermons, Refresh the Soul Weekly, and Episcopal Church.
