In an age where most of us have lost touch with the life and rhythm of magic, the cycle of the year is a sure way back into the Center of Life.
This tale has been told since generations. Its that time where out of the greatest darkness, the light of the world is reborn. Here forth, the light grows and the hours of darkness will begin to slowly lessen.
Marking open fire to this darkness, even though the days were smaller, there was hope and joy lighting up the house. Gathering around for that story, the fairy tale, I'd glow up in the light of the stars. As I grow older, I take my mother's place as the storyteller, and it's my turn to tell you the tale of generations.
It's a story about the inevitable cycle, the journey of birth, growth, fulfillment, decline, death turning back to birth. Darkness has forever remained a puzzle, a riddle calling out for an answer by itself. An impression on sight, a slight tickle to awareness as it fled by, darkness came along with premonitions of its own. I never feared it, I'd always say instantly. Somehow, it made me appreciate the daylight so much more. Someway, it made light breaking through cracks seem so magical and beautiful. But people didn't see it, they grew accustomed, they came on accord with this change. So they missed the darkness taking over.
Darkness deepened. Chaos and mayhem drowned the town. Stumbling around the dark, people began to lose sight of just about everything.
A woman, neither old nor young, longing the shimmer of the light in her eyes, in memory of the lights, saw what no one in the land saw. Her children, neither bairn nor big, had that light in them, that light which imbibed her own soul. But it was growing tougher by the day to fight the dusk. So, to return that light in their soul to her children, she committed herself to set out on a journey. A journey to travel in search of the light amiss and implore it to return to the land it once inhabited. With no conception of how long it may take, she wanted the children to take care of each other, to love each other, and remember her love for them each day.
Despite the agony of leaving the two behind, she set out into the cold lonely winter night. Walking past the dreary dew dipped grass, she sang to the light she remembered. Dimmed by the richness of the night, the stars and the moon in the heaven above sang in her glory, her journey. Rejoicing in the thought of finally seeing the light again, she finally reached the outskirts of the land.
But what welcomed her was more of an appalling image of bedlam. Dug up fields, lost animals, uprooted trees, she saw houses being dismantled and everyone in a rush, in desperate hunt for something. That was the land of lost gold. But there it was, right in the middle of everything, the patch of green, a single bare-branched tree. And midst below the tree was the summer sunrise to the world, unnoticed, unseen by the peers in the dark. This wasn't hers to keep. Before moving on with her quest, she spotted someone out there. With the eyes of a dreamer, he seemed to be building a house, a home. She defined the hazy ray of glimmer to him, making him promise to do up the entire land as his home.
Asleep beneath a tree in the woods, she dreamed of the moon descend down from the heaven and bury itself deep below a tree. She awakened to dig up the ground to have found a crystal pear, at which point the villagers raided in and shattered every last bit of it.
Finally awake, out of her dream, in hope for an answer, she found herself step into the underworld of dreams and imaginations. It was different here, even the darkness felt warm, nothing like the world above. She walked in deeper, she saw flower buds snug in, just as she tucked her children in. The rivers and streams so pure, flowed through crystal rocks. The stones, so gorgeous rivaled the most beautiful of sunsets and gemstones. Past all this, she walked till the center of the earth. In that dark cavern, in the purest of watery depths, she saw the luminous light. Gazing, in the heart of the shining halo, she saw, a child, the most wondrous and innocent one. Just as mothers do, she smiled at the sight of the child enveloped in the light. The child smiled back and she heard as though a child's voice whisper, "I have waited for you so long! How glad I am you have finally come."
~It's a story about Grace. Grace, it's a gift the Spirits bestow on all of us, whether deserving, or not. It is that unexpected, unmeasured gift of Love.
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