Artless Suspension in Darkness

There is ice everywhere at the chill edge of this calendar year, and the puckish lenses of eye and camera linger lovingly on it, whenever and wherever they encounter it. For medical reasons, I am spending most of my time indoors at the moment, but winter's attentive eye is passionate for all that, and it is astonishing what may be seen from one's window on a winter morning near the end of December.

Ice glosses trees, branches and twigs in the village, and it dangles in artless suspension from eaves, roof lines and windbells. Smooth and glossy as hard candy, it sheathes motorways and walkways, and when, once in a long while, the pale winter sun touches it, the ice becomes lacy coverlets draped across the sleeping hills and fields, delicate papery fronds of grass and ferns protruding here and there. Ice is lovely stuff, however it chooses to appear within the confines and enclosures of village streets or the rolling dunes of the snow drowned countryside.

Obviously, all this northern ice is trying to tell me something, and the messages it holds out are simple and eloquent. There is beauty in every seasonal turning if we have the wits and the grace to see it, and we need these liminal intervals and seasonal turnings to learn and grow and exercise the creativity which is our birthright. Winter's darkness is fruitful, and it is the doorway through which we must pass to make ready for an exuberant blooming somewhere up the trail. Beyond these dark turnings at the edge of the calendar year, Light, enlightenment, warmth and wonder await us.

Readings

The Long Journey Home: Revisioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for Our Time, Christine Downing (editor)

Mysteries of the Dark Moon: Healing Power of the Dark Goddess, Demetra George

The Fruitful Darkness: Reconnecting With the Body of the Earth, Joan Halifax Roshi

It Would Be a Pity to Waste a Good Crisis, John Tarrant, Roshi

The Light Inside the Dark, John Tarrant, Roshi

She is Risen: Reclaiming the Myth of Persephone as a Resurrection Narrative For Women, Rev. Victoria Weinstein