July 10, 2019 - The Weaver

I will tell you the story of a young woman who found herself in a dilemma.  Her life was not going as she wanted, and she was determined to change it at all costs.  She did not want her same old drab existence anymore, the predictable life in which she would probably marry her old friend, have children, buy a home, work hard, and die.  She wanted adventure!  She wanted intrigue and mystery!  And she knew she was not going to find that in her present life.

Now there was a man in town, a dangerous man some said with quite a reputation.  He was handsome and strong and adventurous, and he turned the head of every young girl he met.  But he was a scoundrel and everyone knew it—a liar, a cheat, a thief.  She did not care, though.  She decided to set her cap on getting him, and nothing was going to stop her.  She told herself that her love would change him, and she ignored the fact that he already had a wife.  Wives come and go, she often reminded herself.

So she began to obsess over him.  She had to have him.  Night and day she could think of nothing else, and yet no matter what she did or said, no matter how she positioned herself, she could not seem to get his attention or elicit anything more than a friendly nod from him.  She knew she would have to do more.  She would have to find a way to bend him to her will.

And as she thought along these lines, she found herself outside for a walk one day, meandering along an old and rarely used dirt road just outside of town.  There in a field she saw an old dilapidated building.  It looked like some sort of workhouse or barn, and since she had time on her hands in her dreamy state, she decided she would investigate.  No sooner did she think it, when she found herself at the door of the old barn.

It was useless to knock because she knew no one was there, so she pushed the door open and just walked in.  It was only an abandoned old barn as she had supposed.  There were a few old tires lying around, some old hay, musty old animal stalls, a few buckets, and some rusty old tools.  Certainly nothing special.  She was about to leave when she noticed a stairway at the back, and it seemed to her that a light was shining down from an upstairs room.  She went straight to it.  After all, she had already entered private property, what harm could there be in going upstairs?

So up she went, and there in the center of the room was a tremendous old loom with a large tapestry not yet finished caught up tightly in the warp threads with the weft threads still waiting to be woven in.  It was so beautiful, and the scene it portrayed was so striking, so tantalizing.  She just had to go closer to know more.  She did so and sat before it staring at the image on the tapestry, and there, to her surprise, was a scene with her in it.  It was a domestic scene of her holding a child’s hand in the backyard of a small house with a young man just coming out of the door, his face hidden by a hat. 

Oh, how she would have loved to see that face, but no matter how she turned herself and repositioned her eyes and squinted, it was no good.  She could not see the face.  It was veiled.  That was odd, since no one else’s face on the tapestry was hidden.  She recognized friends on different parts of the cloth, family members, old teachers.  It was actually quite odd, she thought, this woven picture of parts of her life interspersed among a larger scene, her part being quite small in comparison.

She was lost in thought and nearly jumped out of the seat when she a voice.  “Oh, the fabrics we weave,” it said.  But when she turned around, she saw nothing, and yet she knew she would see nothing even before she turned around.

“Yes, our lives are woven,” the loom said, “and you already know your fate, I think.”

“No,” she said, and without planning what she would say next, she blurted out, “I have come to weave myself.”

“But you are not The Weaver,” it said.

“Well, I am ‘a’ weaver, and I certainly know how to weave—quite well, in fact!”

“But you are not The Weaver.”

“Look, I do not know how this got here, but I am going to sit here and weave.  And I am going to make my own scene on my own tapestry!”

With that, she set about find the weft threads she would need to make her tapestry.  She was a very good weaver, and in a short time she had changed the scene she saw.  She removed the young man hidden behind the hat and instead wove in a scene of the handsome man from town, the one she was obsessed with, the scoundrel.  He was smiling and greeting her at the gate and offering her his arm.  There was a woman in the distance, his wife, but she was walking away with her head down.  It was the perfect scene—just the man she wanted.

She smiled when she finished her handiwork and sat back a bit to admire it.  Again, the loom spoke.

“You are not The Weaver,” it said, “But you have woven a pretty cloth.  I wonder if it will fit in with everything . . .” 

It was true that the warp threads just seemed to go on and on, and there was so much more on the rest of the cloth.  It was a very complicated tapestry put together by someone who was tremendously more skilled than she.  Nevertheless, she had been able to add to it a bit.

“You can tell whoever wove this tapestry—this ‘Weaver’ you speak of—that I can weave my own fate and I do not need any help!”  And with that, she got up and left.  She could swear she heard the loom softly laughing as she walked out of the building.  She muttered to herself all the way home about what a strange place the old barn was.  How odd she had never seen it before.

Things seemed to happen pretty quickly from that point onward.  It seemed the dashing and handsome man in town found a new interest in her, following her wherever she went.  Oh, he was charming, he was strong, he was handsome and brave.  He was everything she wanted, and she smiled to herself with secret satisfaction as she remembered the old loom.  It was all working out perfectly!

And quickly, very quickly, frightening fast in fact, he had divorced his wife and proposed marriage to her.  All of her friends warned her against him, but she would hear none of it.  The two were married before the ink had barely dried on his divorce papers.  Within a week, they left her lovely old town to go to a large city where he had grown up.  Adventure!  Finally!

Well, time went by quickly as it always does.  Her new husband was dashingly handsome and caught the eye of every woman in the city, just as he had in her old town, and you can be sure he was winking at them all.  He made a good salary but spent all of it on baubles, and she had to work very hard to support their home.  Day in and day out, she worked and worked.  Day in and day out, he played and played.  His affairs were spoken of all around the city.  The gifts he bought other women were lavish, to say the least.

Some people smirked at her when she went to do her shopping.  Most just smiled feebly and looked down.  Everyone knew.  She felt she would die of embarrassment and shame at what her life had become.  And she was so very tired from constant work and constant worry.

How did this happen? she often wondered.  She thought it was all going to be so perfect, but instead it turned out to be a complete nightmare.  One night, many years in the future while lying in bed alone, she remembered the old loom.  But that was just a fantasy, was it not?  A dream?  She remembered it clearly, though.  The details came rushing back as she thought and thought about it.  Before she fell asleep, she knew what she would do.

The next day she left her husband, never to return, and she went back to her old town.  She walked down the old dirt road, worried that perhaps the old building would not be there anymore, but there it stood in the field.  She ran straight toward it, flung open the door, and ran upstairs.

“So you are back!” the loom said.

“Why did you not tell me?” she demanded.

“Tell you what?  That you are not The Weaver?”

She swallowed hard.

Then she went and sat at the loom and looked at the picture on the tapestry.  There was her nightmarish life before her with her handsome husband in the middle and dozens of women peeking out at him from behind rocks or curtains or doors or tables, each with an adoring look on her face.  Again, she swallowed hard.  This was her dark life.  She had woven it with dark weft threads borne of dark intentions.  The young man in the doorway she had seen all those years ago, his face hidden behind a hat, was gone forever.

“Most people do not come back,” the loom said, but she did not respond because she had decided she would try to take the fabric apart and reweave it.

But as if reading her thoughts, the loom said, “It cannot be undone.  You can try if you wish, but you will not pull out even one thread.”  The woman sighed.  Somehow, she knew it was true.

“What can I do?” she asked.

“You cannot change what has passed,” it said, “But I have a request.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know all about it.  I want to know everything you felt.  I want to hear the whole story,” it said.

“But you already know the story.”

“That is true,” it said, “But I see the picture only.  I want the feeling.”

“Alright then.  I will tell you, but if I do so, you must answer a question that I have,” she said.

“I am not in the business of answering questions.”

“Then I will not tell you anything.”

Eventually, realizing she meant it, the loom agreed and promised to answer her question honestly.  And so she told the loom everything.  She held nothing back, including her tears.  She told of her embarrassment and shame.  She spoke of the lonely days and nights, the endless lies, the constant work.  She even told the loom about the guilt she had for having woven the ex-wife out of the picture all those years ago.

And as she spoke, the loom purred and giggled and sighed and reveled in her sorrow.  Then her speech was over.

“Now it is your turn,” she said.

“What??”

“Now you must answer my question.”

“Oh, I had quite forgotten,” it said, “What is it?”

“What are you and what am I in this whole ordeal?” she asked.

There was silence in the room.  She asked the question again, and still the loom was silent.

“Quid pro quo, loom!  I told you, now you must tell me!”

The loom sighed.  “Very well,” it said, rather peeved at being cleverly cornered.

“I am a mechanism,” it began, “And that is all I am.  I am a machine that The Weaver uses to weave the tapestry of the universe.  I am like a screen that a movie is projected upon.  I reflect.  I can produce nothing of my own accord.  It is The Weaver who does the work.”

“And me?” she asked.  “What am I?  How do I fit in all of this?”

“You are a channel from which the Unconditioned Awareness flows.  You are conditioned consciousness.  You are an outlet as is every being.  But I do not expect you will understand this,” the loom said haughtily.  And with that, the questioning was over.

She sat silently and thought for a long time, and then she smiled.  It was a weak but happy smile because she did understand.  She knew exactly what was going on now.  She knew her part intimately in the elaborate play of her life, and she had played it perfectly.  She got up and left without saying another word.

“You will be back!” the loom yelled after her, but she knew that was not true.  The loom knew it, too.

She went home to her old house, which was still there.  Her mother had passed it on to her when she died, but it had stood vacant for years.  Now she would live in it.  She sat down and thought about her life, about life in general.  Somehow, she felt better after her confession to the loom and after the information she had pried out of it.

She would be okay now, she knew that for sure.  She smiled at how life works.  She would make plans again and work hard and formulate dreams.  Each dream, each desire would be a weft thread she would focus on and fantasize about and offer up to the Great Alchemist at night before she slept.

She did not allow herself to think about how her dreams would become reality, the method that would be employed to bring them about, because she was not The Weaver.  It was not for her to make tremendously complicated decisions about how all the threads would fit together on the tapestry of the universe.  Her job was just to provide as pretty and happy and kind a thread as she could with each true desire she had.  And to believe—to know that her weft threads were the manifestation of The Weaver through his channel, his vessel, and her dreams would all come true according to His already completed plan and not hers.  It was all so simple; a child could do it.  In fact, I am told that children often do. 

July 7, 2019 - The Shadows

THE SHADOWS

The Sun comes and searches

looking for His creatures.

It is time for sleep

and hiding from dreams.

Quickly now!  Make haste!

The Shadows steal across the landscape

blackened fingers reaching out

a quest for rebellious wisps of Light

the arrogant pride of the Golden Ones.

Smashed in the forest at night

the Dark grasp

squeezing, siphoning, devouring

then wailing in surprised dismay.

Gleaming in the black mirror

in the still and lifeless pond

corrupted by Light.

July 3, 2019 - The Stone Bench

A stone bench waits in the sunlight along the river.  It has time, and there is no hurry.  The grass grows around it, and the river flows gently by.  The fish stay silent in the hotter part of the day, but later as the sun slants low, they will jump and search for insects on the water’s surface.  A breeze blows now and then, the insects hum continually, and the birds of the surrounding woods sing their songs of procreation.  Everywhere around the stone bench, the world is vibrant and alive.

Time.

The sun warms the stone, and the bench beckons passersby, but no one stops to visit.  There is too much to do in the bustling world and never enough time to sit and watch the river.  The summer will continue on with the stone becoming very hot in the blazing sun and radiating its warmth to the secret night creatures when the King has turned his head, only to continue the cycle the following day.  It is the stone bench alone that witnesses the sacred coming of both the day and the night.  The surrounding creatures are relegated to one or the other.

Eventually, the leaves will fall, as they always have, and the world around the stone bench will burst into dramatic colors of goodbye and celebrations of death.  The river will grow stormy and turbulent, thrashing about with its axe.  The bench will grow cooler and then cold and then very cold as the snow flies and the ice—the ever increasing ice—builds again, threatening to swallow the entire world as it smashes along the land.  Yet still the bench beckons.  The passersby, but few in number now, will tighten their collars and hurry by, poignantly aware of the death around them.

And then spring will come again, as it always has, with life returning and the stone bench still there, jutting out from the receding ice.  Waiting and inanimate, watching the movement all around it as the Earth hurries to continue her cycles of life and death, of being and unbeing.  The bench is lonely although not bereft because it has the one thing none of the others possess but for which they continually search in vain:  It has time.  It has always had time.  Perhaps next year will be different.  Perhaps not.

June 11, 2019 - Structure

Man is the only creature who has to structure his days, who has to wake up and think about what he has to get done on any particular day.  Maybe it is a “work” day, and he has to go to work.  Maybe it is a weekend, and there is time for work and play.  Maybe it is a holiday or a special day or a vacation, and he wakes and thinks of all the fun he will have that day, all the things he will do.  But work or play, fun or not, he still structures his day.

He has to find something to do with the hours that occur between sleeping.  Sleep—blessed sleep—is already spoken for.  He does not have to wonder what he will do when he sleeps because . . . he sleeps, and that is enough.  But it is not enough for the daytime hours.  Something must be “done” in those hours or he will find his sanity slipping away.

So he structures his days.  He rises at a certain time.  He works, he eats, he plays, he cares for himself, he interacts with others.  And if he has “done well” on any particular day, he has “earned” a good night’s sleep, at which time he can once again forget about the structure of it all.  Until the next day.  Even if his days were filled with one fun event after the next, eventually he would grow bored of the “fun” events and wonder how he should structure his days.

He has to fill his hours with something so that he does not have to think about who he is or where he comes from or where he is going.  He has to stay busy, stay occupied, stay entertained.  He must do something—anything—to keep his mind from dwelling on its own existence.

Because if he were to do that, the whole façade of the world would instantly melt away like cotton candy when touched by water.  The sweetness would immediately shrink to nothing more than a few grains of sugar, and all of that “something” would end up being the “nothing” it always was.  And then he would have to live—to truly live—and that would be frightening, indeed.

The birds and the animals and the insects of the forest, after working for their food for the day, find themselves in blinding joy for the remainder of their waking hours, filling the time with existence.  How they can bear such terrifying circumstances is a mystery man ponders as he climbs into bed.  “I will think about it tomorrow,” he says to himself.

June 5, 2019 - Ritual

The world is rife with continual ritual, and I posit that ritual is the glue which binds the entire world together.  It is the constant ceremonial repetition of actions on a daily basis that takes us from one day to the next.  The sun always rises in the east and settles in the west (or we could say the Earth turns and makes it appear that way).  Cloudy or clear, the sun rises and sets.  You can depend on it—always.

Each day has a ritual that begins with the sun rising and ends with the sun setting.  The night has its own ritual of the moon.  These rituals are solemn and always occur.  There is never a day they do not perform their duties, and man draws great comfort from this whether he realizes it or not.  It is a rock on which he can depend and rely.  Unimportant irritations may come and go randomly and brazenly in his life, but the sun and moon will always be there, performing their ritual at the exact moment ordained.  When all seems to fail in life, when the best of plans lie in sorrow and ruin, there is the sun and moon waiting for us as they have always waited for us.

Always.

And the year does the same thing.  Day by day it goes from January to December.  The ritual of the seasons in conjunction with the sun and moon goes on unimpeded as always.  The snow gives way to the rain and mud, which gives way to the rebirth of greenery and animals, which gives way to the scorching sun and then the ripening of everything and then the harvest, and finally this gives way to the rut and the dead of winter with its ice and snow.  It is the same ritual day after day, year after year, altered only by the climate in which one lives.  But it is always there.  Always reliable.

What a gift that is.  The continuity, the purpose, the solemn and confident marching forward, sure in step and destination.  The knowing of one’s place and function.  What a perfect example life gives us if only we will listen.  I know in my own day-to-day living, things go best and smoothest and most peaceful when I follow my ritualistic day.  Awake at a certain hour, coffee and breakfast, the chores of the day inside and outside, the cooking of meals, the washing up, and finally reading in bed and then sleep.

Day in and day out year after year, some might say this is boring.  But it is not.  It is comforting and provides peace and strength, purpose and history and ancestry.  There is room for small surprises and fun, and even these are often holiday rituals performed yearly.  Life is a fabric, an enormous weaving, and you and I are threads woven into the vast cloth.  We are a part of the ritual, and when we recognize this and we play our part, our lives run like clockwork.  Sometimes there is joy and sometimes there is hard work and pain, but this is all part of the elaborate tapestry into which we are woven into a picture with the warp and weft, the day and night, the sun and moon.

April 28, 2019 - The Wearing o' the Green

Is this what they call the “Wearing o’ the Green”?  Perhaps in a way, but I thought it fitting today as everything is beginning to swell.  You can hear it more than see it at this point, actually.  Early in the morning, if you wake up and keep your eyes closed, you can hear a whirring sound.  It is the sound you might hear if a thick weighted rope were being swung quickly in a circle above your head.  As the rope comes closer to your head, you would hear the whirring, whipping sound.  As it flew by and continued on, the sound would dissipate to a whisper.

This is the time.  I can hear it.  Everything is swelling and whispering like the spinning rope, back and forth, back and forth . . . threatening to become.  Green tendrils are pushing up here and there, silently spreading on the ground or anywhere they can get a hold.  The grass is back, but that is to be expected.  It is not the same.  It is the growing of the other green I am interested in.

Life grows wherever it is.  Furrows and rows and carefully tended yards are the green in captivity.  They could not grow anywhere else in such a way because it is the only life

they know.  But it is the secret green, the life growing wherever it is, wherever it finds even the slightest opportunity—that is the magic.  That is the “Wearing o’ the Green” in the woods in spring.  Permission is neither sought nor granted.  Life appropriates.

 

“You may take the shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod,

but ‘twill take root and flourish there

though underfoot ‘tis trod.”   --  Irish street ballad, circa 1798

March 20, 2019 - Spring

SPRING

You thought I would leave you

that I would go away forever

that I would leave your heart in an icy prison

that you would have to travel the road alone

and you forgot me.

But I told you . . .

. . . I told you . . .

I will always come back

I will always search for you

and I will always find you.

And if you were lying on the forest floor in fear

or the ocean’s shore in ruin

or an empty field in sorrow and pain and defeat

because you thought that death had won

I would find you.

I would take you into my hand

and bring you back to the light

as I told you . . .

. . . I told you . . .

I will never leave you

and I will always come for you

because you are mine.

 

March 6, 2019 - Armored

The pines, so bristly and sharp and pointy in the summer, are suddenly smooth and plump and full of life in the winter.  We so easily pass them by in the warmer weather as our eyes search for the green bounty, but in the cold weather, our eyes linger.  The needles reflect the winter sun, growing stronger now every day.  Together they create a shimmering green carpet in the trees.

Armored.

How is it that they alone among the trees can show such signs of life while everything around them is silent and grey?  How is it that they can laugh at the treacherous ice and the mountains of snow while their brethren have been beaten and laid low?  How do they stay alive in the unforgiving season of death, and what can they teach us?

Shining, shimmering green tresses waving gently as palm trees on a tropical beach, but submerged instead in a frozen and icy gale.  The Queen of Winter, fearless as the tiny porcupine who walks slowly by the starving lion, undaunted and unconcerned and unafraid.  Armored to the teeth, a snail’s pace is a luxury they can afford.