When the ground shakes…
Often times, when we are caught up in the midst of drama or crisis, or when we are sinking or stuck in a deep rut, our deepest and oldest hurts have a chance to break through to the surface affording us an opportunity for growth. Very much like the free flowing lava that lives beneath the earth’s crust, flowing and swirling and churning unbeknownst to us. After all, sometimes what we can’t see, we occasionally forget exists, right?
Until this moment did you give a second thought to the fact that the molten rock is there? We learn about it in school as we study the physiographic features of tectonic plates and earth formations, it’s always there. It’s presence is a component of the earth’s core and it doesn’t ‘go away’ anywhere just because we don’t happen to remember to think about it.
Unless the lava is brought into your conscious thought, or unless it seeps along until it finds an unsuspecting crack generated by an earthquake, it may continue about it’s lava-like business without a second thought by us! And consider this – from the perspective of the lava, the crack is essentially an opportunity. (I hesitate to label it a fault line here because the crack just IS, it’s not right or wrong as fault may imply) All of a sudden, the lava may have options that it did not have before. With enough pressure from below, it rushes up and bursts out in the form of a volcano.
Ah, and what if that volcano just happens to be far below the surface of the ocean - perhaps the crack finds it’s way to the surface miles and miles below sea level…what then? Sure. The exposed lava cools and forms rigid walls that grow in height and thickness with each subsequent rupture -all below the ocean’s surface. So we may still in fact be unaware of the lava even though the lava is closer to our awareness than it previously was!
That is of course, until it has ruptured enough times to have channeled it’s way to the ocean’s surface where a final shift, far within the earth, enables the free flow of lava to explode right up through the self constructed, inverted funnel with a boiling fury. Bam! In full view now isn’t it!
Beautiful, natural creations exist as a result of this process. Every day I get to see some of these creations in the people I meet with. Their curiosity and (sometimes hesitant) willingness to explore a newly discovered path or to be at cause for a tectonic shift is an inspiring and breathtaking display of human nature. I have such gratitude for the smallest of opportunities that we can all choose to explore.
