Tuesday, March 01, 2005

the parable of the lost ring

This is a ring i bought when i was home in Australia almost a year and a half ago. I bought it at my favorite market in my favorite city. It was very cheap. It was a symbol of home that i would carry with me and somehow it carried me when i was homesick. not magic, just meaning-full. so last week i was working with TP in the bitter cold shadow of a storage unit. we were unpacking and sorting donations for the refugee settlement agency in our city. my hands were hurting with the cold and then, after a little while, i didn't really feel them. sometime after the feeling went, so did my ring. slipped....away.....into knickknacks and kitchenware. refugees have lost homes, families, national identity. i lost my ring. the day before i had visited the immigration office and been treated very unkindly. i was freshly aware how lost one must feel in the militaristic environment of the USCIS without english as a first language. So, i wish i had a solution to this parable. just lots of lost people and things...and my ring from melbourne somewhere in central kentucky.

2 comments:

james said...

we will gather together, nine of us, I will call it a fellowship. We hunt down the lost ring and destroy it. . . oh, wait wrong parable.
I do hope your ring turns up in the pile that is the storage unit, Geoff.

geoff and sherry said...

thanks lads. big kev (my dad) also offered to go and get a new one from the market in melbourne but i think i will wait and make it a part of my next journey 'home'. i'm unsure as to when that will be...not in the next year or so. for now i will take comfort in your encouragement and in the hopeful anticipation of a visit to the vic. market.