It seems appropriate that we are sitting beneath a dark night, at the threshold of the cultural new year, just after a powerful solar flare has touched the earth, casting luminescent reflections over us. An unseen, unstoppable force, difficult to comprehend, yet unable to be ignored – the fear of it cast away beneath a thousand colors.
I’ve been reflecting a lot on this year. Plucking the threads and watching where they reverberate, what resonance sings forth in its own dazzling display. This year has been fraught with unseen, unstoppable forces – knowable through the display they leave behind.
For years now, we’ve been in what Byron Ballard calls Tower Time. But my entire life, I have known and feared the Something. That something that is great change. That something that is going to require sacrifice, from me, from all of us.
But this year has been the first year I have felt a truly deep sense of potential. I don’t use the word hope – it is too sweet, too forgiving, too blind. But potential – there is power there, and it requires us to claim our power and participate in its realization.
Have you felt it too? The power throbbing just below the surface? In my more whimsical moments, I see it like a lava lamp, a single smooth bubble separating from the mass, rising to the surface. In the ocean of our consciousness, the fluidity of our Universe, the power rests, warmed by the light of our will and awareness, it rises. But what we see is only a small part, a tiny bubble, rising from the darkness where the mass of power and potential rests.
In my darker, deeper moments, it is a force behind heavy gates, rattling, screaming, crying, to be released. It is a stream beneath the concrete, humming softly, desperate to be heard. It is roots reaching into dry soil, with the sound of cracking earth. It is a cacophony of voices and beings, living and dead, human and divine, demanding that I pay attention, stand witness, fling open the gates.
It is here, in the dark silence between Winter Solstice and the ringing of the cultural new year, that I am most able to turn within, to reflect. The demands have grown quieter, the work finally turns more inward. For me, it is as if all have taken a step back behind the tattered veil, allowed Winter to envelope us, offering a moment shrouded in silence to refract back into myself.
This silence is precious. I hold dearly to it. It is within the silence that the potential reaches to me, where I can feel its heartbeat – the heartbeat that began all heartbeats.
Anyone that knows me, probably would not say that I am a big talker. They may say I am ‘mysterious’ or ‘hold my cards close to my chest’ or ‘shy’, it has even been said that I am ‘stand offish’. All of those things are true, at some time.
I am also someone who gives often too much of herself. Who, in striving to do my Work and make a difference in the world, forgets herself. This can be a positive state to be in for a time, but I have yet to learn how to maintain it without detriment. It is in the silence, held by my boundaries, that I remember myself.
I’ve been keeping silence about a lot of things over the last few weeks. I’ve held space for friends and loved ones, listened as there were new-but-the-same causes for grief in our communities, held a watchful eye on some of the more problematic members of our communities. But I have said little, I have shown my cards narely at all, I have held a boundary. And in this container, I have allowed the sediment to drop, the the waters to clear, and remembering to bubble up.
Writing this is allowing a single bubble to pop, allowing it release into the world. I seldom publish writings like this – writing that has simply flowed from my fingers, without second consideration or thought (or editing!). Typically, this would be tucked into the journal file. But it wanted to be released into the world. (And, though They are allowing me a little more space at this time of year, there are still requests for me to do things. So I do the things. 🙂 )
By the way, If you want to read more about the importance of holding silence, and the power of that container, I really encourage you to read Karina B. Heart’s book A Witch’s Book of Silence. It is without a doubt one of the best Craft books I have read in YEARS.
Call of the Syren 