Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 15, Ric Moorehouse, Blacksmith with a Vision

Ric Moorehouse with son Christian and wife Narani. Narani has taught in the Living Wisdom Schools for more than forty years.

In the 1970s, Ric Moorehouse left law school to study blacksmithing at Turley Forge in Sante Fe, New Mexico. He later moved back to the Bayou Country of his native Louisiana where he sought out and began studying with old-time master blacksmiths.

Ric eventually moved to Ananda Village, where he built a small blacksmith shop and developed a successful business doing custom ironwork for California state restoration projects and building fences and hardware for local home builders and renovators.

Q: Blacksmithing is a colorful profession – have there been interesting lessons in it for you?

Ric: A couple of things come to mind. I had an interesting experience on the mundane level when I first opened the shop. I didn’t know what direction the work would go, because I had been doing a very specific kind of smithing in Louisiana, making ante-bellum hardware for restored plantations and the New Orleans French Quarter, and I knew it wouldn’t be terribly applicable in California.

When I moved here, I thought maybe I could ship that kind of hardware to the contractor I had worked for in Louisiana. We had made a gentleman’s agreement, but after I made the move it kind of fell through. So I didn’t have any security, and I didn’t know what to do, but then the auto mechanic at the Village, Grant Hagen, told me that his neighbor in Nevada City wanted an iron fence for his home. He had some antique iron fencing, and he needed some more, as well as gates for that style of ironwork.

That was my first job, and it took me through the fall. In the past, I had only ever made one gate, and making the fencework, posts, and gates was all new for me. After that, it was a little bit of everything – some hardware for the California state parks, ironwork for homes, and some forged knickknacks to sell at craft fairs.

A problem I faced early on in building the business was figuring out how to make contacts. I had met some architects and contractors more or less by chance, and then I met some realtors who were selling restored homes in downtown Sacramento. Whenever there was a lull in the work, I might spend a day making contacts in Sacramento, or talking to architects in San Francisco.

My understanding of the best way to attract business evolved to where I knew that if I “stirred up the ether” the work would follow. It always followed, but oddly it never came through the same channels I’d try to open. None of the people I contacted ever called back and said “Yes, we’ve got a contract for you.” Instead, within a short time something else would come up. And as I began to see the connection, I would go out and stir things up, and then I’d get a phone call, not from the same people but from someone else, and I’d be in business again.

There was a big lesson for me in that experience, about not being passive and waiting for things to happen, but going out and generating energy to help make it happen.

Another thing helped reinforce the lesson. About every four to six months, I would have the same recurring dream. I’ve never been one to have lots of “significant” dreams, but I do believe this one was superconscious, because I would always wake up afterward feeling stirred. I always felt there was an important message in the dream, but I could never quite get what it was.

The dream was about an elderly blacksmith. He was a very friendly man who allowed me to come into his shop. I would walk in, and everything about the shop was an astonishment. Everything was so meticulously laid out, with so many tools and so many projects, and there was a sort of gleam, not visual but more internal, to the energy in the shop. I had a sense of being awestruck by his energy because it was so magnetic. I don’t know how else to put it, I just remember that everything my eyes fell on was a wonderment.

It wasn’t just good work, and it wasn’t just better than anything I had seen. It was a new window. I had studied ironwork, and I knew a lot about the technical aspects, but the challenge for me had always been to pull an idea from the ether that would be a new expression.

I have a pretty good feeling for ironwork, for appreciating and understanding it, because I’ve seen and studied it a long time. But everything the old man in my dream had done was leagues beyond anything I had ever seen. I was in awe. And he was just so casual. He would say, “Ric, you know, if you have any questions, just ask. I’m right here.” And then he would be working away.

I would wake up and think, “My God, I’ve seen some amazing things, and I just know that if I could get a handle on it, it would change my whole outlook. It would change my whole understanding of smithing, if I could just remember one thing that he said, or one thing I saw.” But it would always be a blank. I would wake up in the morning with this stirred feeling, knowing that I’d had this important experience, but I couldn’t quite bring it down to this level.

I began to doubt if there was any real substance to the dream. Maybe it was all just my subconscious imagination. But I thought, if I have this dream again, I’ll try to wake myself up and sketch what I was being shown.

Finally, one night I had the same dream, and once again the old blacksmith was telling me, “There’s nothing to it, Ric. You got any questions, just ask me.”

I said, “This is so beautiful, but how could I possibly do it?” Like, how could I possibly leave this experience and recreate it down here in the material world?

He said, “Oh, it’s simple. It’s just a trick…it’s just a trick.” I said, “What do you mean? Even if I could do this, I couldn’t do it cheap enough for people to buy.”

He said, “Oh, no. That piece, you don’t split it. You make all the individual parts and then assemble them into one piece using the arc welder, and then you conceal the welds with decorative collars that will serve as accents.” He was telling me that a very advanced splitting operation, which would be extremely time-consuming, could be replaced with a much simpler operation that was faster and still elegant.

In blacksmithing, there’s no trick to making a bunch of individual pieces and putting them together with an arc welder, because you can conceal the weld with collars, and then the collars themselves become attractive accent points.

I woke up myself up at 2 or 3 a.m. and thought, “Wow, that’s it! That’s it!” I drew the piece right away, and first thing in the morning, I made it. I hung it on the wall, and over the next several weeks I made many pieces using the same theme.

About six months later, a guy came into the shop and said, “I need this kind of job. Can you do it?” I said, “Yeah, I’d be interested.” I showed him some of the pieces on the wall and in the scrapbook, and he said, “I like that piece on the wall.” And it was the piece from the dream.

That job lasted well over a year. It was my last job before I stopped smithing full time, and it was especially significant, because it enabled me to pay off all my debts. So, in my mind, it was God‑sent.

Who was that little old man? I don’t know if it was God, or the guru, but it was definitely significant and transforming, and I’ve used that technique countless times since.

The grandfather of one of our Ananda members visited the community at about that time. He was from Mexico, and he was visiting in the company of his daughter Ofelia (mother of an Ananda member, Irene Schulman) and their parish priest from Sacramento. They were walking through the community one day, and when they stopped by the shop I told them about my dream and the little old blacksmith. The grandfather was quite beautiful. He was maybe in his eighties, and he didn’t speak a word of English. He said, in a very matter‑of‑fact way, “Oh, well, that was God.” I might not have taken it up to that notch, but when he said it, I thought, “Yeah, he knows.”

Ric in his blacksmith shop at Ananda Village, late 1980s.

Q: You’ve met some interesting people in your line of work. Have any of your contacts come through your being on a spiritual path?

Ric: I think the spiritual path has sweetened every aspect of my life. I’m kind of the way I’ve always been, for good or ill, but, yes, it sweetens it. You have more of a sense of compassion for other people, more understanding.

I remember a Christian Science lady who told me that she would be willing to pay me a fairly princely sum for the work I was doing for her, because she had read in the Bible where it says something about the worker being worth his wages. Which I just love to hear, of course. [Laughs.] But maybe I’ve developed more willingness and will power because of the spiritual path, and maybe more trust that things will work out. But, to tell you the truth, I had elements of those qualities all along. So there was no new awakening, and no new understanding that wasn’t already there. It’s just sort of been building on what was there already.

Q: Why did you get out of blacksmithing?

Ric: I’m still doing some, but I’m no longer doing it full‑time. I had a nagging suspicion that I was supposed to look into the water management job here at Ananda Village when the opportunity came along, but I frankly had a lot of reluctance. Still, there was a strong intuition that I was supposed to go talk about it. So I talked with Jaya, the village manager, and I said, “I really don’t have any interest in waterworks, but I think I’m supposed to talk to you about the job opening.” And he said, “Well, gee, Ric, I was really hoping for somebody who would take the job with a little more enthusiasm.” [Laughs.]

I said, “I’ll tell you what, I’m not sure this is meant for me, but let’s make a deal with Divine Mother. If no one else signs up after a couple of weeks, I’ll take the job with as much enthusiasm as I can bring to it.”

So that’s how it started, and I felt some foreboding about leaving something that had been such a great romance for me. But the weird thing was, there was no sense of loss. I do think it speaks to how a spiritual flow works, that if something is truly right for you, it really isn’t going to be a chore, because once you have the courage to enter into it, there’s a certain grace that comes with it.

Q: You discovered that you enjoyed digging up people’s sewer pipes?

Ric: Every aspect – digging up pipes, learning about plumbing, putting up with people who were upset about not having water. All the things I thought would be terrible ended up being fun…with a few exceptions. [Laughs.] I don’t think any one of those things has any special merit by itself, except as there’s a grace behind it. If you’re tapped on the shoulder to do something that’s spiritually right for you, and you cooperate, there’s an “inner something” that supersedes the mundane event, and you feel kind of joyful. You feel okay.

I was afraid of surrendering my own will, especially to do something that didn’t seem like it would be much fun. But it showed me that change isn’t the big monster you think it will be, and that if you cooperate with the guru, it works out all right. It’s been five years, and I’d say it ranks right up there with any other period of my life. I’ve enjoyed it.

It was the same when I started smithing. I had flunked out of law school, which was pretty harrowing, because my parents weren’t doling out the cash any longer. They basically said, “If you’re not in law school, you’re not on the bread wagon anymore either. Good luck, buddy.” But see what happened. At age twenty-four I learned smithing and came onto the spiritual path in earnest.

It would be fun to think that I could keep a hand in smithing. There’s a certain dignity about the craft, and it helps you reach back to earlier times, with a sense of lineage. The sound of the anvil was heard in every town. I think sentimentally I would feel at a loss if it wasn’t something I could continue to do.

 

2 thoughts on “Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 15, Ric Moorehouse, Blacksmith with a Vision”

  1. Wonderful to hear your story, Ric. We still treasure our wedding gift from you, the iron AUM symbol that you made for us. Thank you again for it. Your writing is so pure and true, full of spiritual example and lessons. Do you remember Lahiri Mahasaya’s grandson who visited Ananda? You gave him one of your AUM symbols, too. Well, I immediately recognized your work when I saw it hanging on the wall of Lahiri’s temple inside his home in Kashi a few years back (maybe in 2010). Joy, joy! Kalyani

    Reply
    • Hi Kalyani,

      So nice to hear from you and thanks for your kind words! Yes, I remember both Aum symbol gifts, and it’s really been my pleasure in making them for special occasions like your wedding and Lahiri’s grandson. I don’t think I knew about the Aum symbol ending up in Lahiri’s temple though. That’s a nice surprise! I think Master let me play out some dormant desire from the past in being a blacksmith this time around, and I’ve enjoyed it greatly!

      w/ love & blessings,
      Ric

      Reply

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