Saturday, September 28, 2013

Reflections upon a Shaft of Sunlight

I took a walk this evening at the setting of the sun. As I neared the park, I saw it.

I saw the shaft of sunlight hitting the yellowing leaves and my heart leaped for joy and in that instant of beauty and perfection I knew...I knew I would not stay away forever. One day the goddess would beckon me and whisper, "Come home, my daughter, it is time for you to come home."

Yet my wings have been itching and my flights are set. I cannot stay here, not now, not with my wings beating furiously every time I think of travel, and my heart set upon seeing those I know and treasured as friends. Not when I yearned above all else in the universe to revisit the Place Which Was, and which can never be again.

So I asked a simple plea of the goddess in that moment of stillness and perfection.

I asked for one last chance. My wings were shot and crumpled with pain after the First Disaster and I crashed bleeding to the ground, wounded and dazed for a month, before I could rise and walk away. And now my wings have mended and are thrashing madly, desperate to fly once again, but I have been patient. I have waited.

Patience, after all, is one of the keystones of the Druid way. The year's wheel turns season by season, moontime by moontime, and we can only live within that circle, we cannot change it to go faster or slower at our whims. I will take advantage of the flocks of migrating birds, like the little prince did, and I will make my escape.

Even he went home again, for he missed his rose. And he took with him his sheep, and the words of a fox.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."