elen in the snow

     Keep on the path-stones, the crunchy ice is more treacherous than it looks!  There you go, you’re safely through, come on in!

     Yes, help yourself to cookies.  And milk, but watch that cat, she will drink it!

     Not so shy anymore, our little cat Violets, is she?  Up on the table, meowing for pats and butt-rubs.  But she’s a good kitty.

     There, settled, first day after the storm.  Just lovely snow now, falling softly.

     Yes, April.  That’s fine.  Wait until I tell you what happened to me today!

     I was sitting on my break, writing a conversation with a dear guide of mine, when all of a sudden, there was Elen of the Ways, beckoning to me from the sidewalk outside, in the gently falling snow.

     I am so happy to have made connection with Elen in this past year, although from what she said in our first conversations, she’d been with me all along.  Knowing that let a lot of spare puzzle pieces fall into place for me, my deep connection to dreams and the dream-realms, for example, and a relation to deer – reindeer especially - that was peripheral for years, but that a few others had spotted before I did.  In recent years however, that had been ranging into the forefront, to the point where friends have even mentioned they could see my antlers, when I have them. 

     Since connecting with Elen, I find myself wondering often how I went so long without consciously knowing her.  She is such a fitting goddess for me, and I am reminded of this every time we converse.

     So when I saw her beckoning today, though I physically stayed sitting inside, I went to her, and she had me stand beside her on the sidewalk, and feel the snow falling silently around me, and after a moment she asked:

     “Feel that?”

     I nodded, “An ending.  The season of snow, ending.  This last bit.”

     She smiled.  “Real endings are never very neat.  Lots of loose ends, but this is to keep the weave solid.  Do you see?”

     I did – I wish I could show you the way it felt, that vivid way I could see it then, like a fabric, a blending of colours, flowing one into the next, never a sharp line to divide them.  Long fingers of colour, threads, some reaching forward from before, farther than expected, some reaching back from up ahead, but it was this overlap that bound it all together, so that it flowed.

     She went on, “Even a break that seems sudden, isn’t.  There is so much that lingers on for a long time.  And so much that had been coming in for a long time too, of the eventual new.  Do you see that?”

     I did, I really did.  It reminded me of what my dear Anubis had said to me, years ago, when a friend had asked me to ask him about that age-old human fear of leaving loose ends, at the ending of a life:

     “There are always loose ends.  It’s how it maintains continuity, life after life.  It is a necessity.  So don’t worry about it.  No one cleans up, and it’s not messy after all – it is a fading chord, that blends into the others, becoming part of the grand song.  You would have it otherwise?  No one just leaves, like that, cut off snap and nothing left.  No one slips out unnoticed.  There are ripples, the dragging of threads.  Corners pulled, lives affected.  And yet all lives are complete lives.”

     It’s like that with everything really.  And it made me think of situations in my life right now that I have been enduring, too, and yet even there, when I looked, I could see the melodic themes of a better future sneaking in, shining new threads from up ahead, already a part of my life, even as the old threads dragged on their way out.

     It’s like scoring clay to make it stick together.  It’s like roots, and digging deep foundations.  If it wasn’t for loose ends and dragging threads, nothing would hold together.

     So think of that when you feel a season may be lingering too long – whatever kind of ‘season’ you’re worrying about that seems to be overstaying.  Think of that when a sudden melody from the next season flows into the song unexpectedly, before you feel ready, before it feels ‘right’.  For the Earth-seasons, it’s going to be part of learning the new dance, like Ratatosk said – and maybe we need this as we move forward – a kind of grounding amidst what might feel like chaos, in which we can hear the voices of the seasons mingle more than before.

     Later on, arriving near home, I took a short walk down a nearby path.  It was quiet on the walk for a little way, the silence of snowfall, but then suddenly I heard it: birdsong, and lots of it, as vibrant and busy as though the leaves were already budding.  Two threads, overlapping, snowfall and Spring birdsong, both beautiful on their own, but together, something even more numinous – a great magic. 

     Real endings are never very neat.  Lots of loose ends, but this is to keep the weave solid.

     Ah, the time – well, safe trip home.  Good having you as always.  My best to those you love, and all – you can bring them cookies too, if you like!

     Goodnight, goodnight!