A Story of Successional Growth

 

This is the story of a garden:  the same garden that existed in the days when humans ate at the same table with their animal cousins, when myriad plants bore gifts of the Earth Mother, and received in free exchange the abundant blessings of the sacred child.

In those days, no one asked what time it was. In the garden, it was always time to dream, dance, love, share, celebrate, touch, grow, imagine and play.

 

This story begins in midwinter. Raven sits on a quartz rock. His trickster memory vivdly recalls the time of the Great Forgetting. This rock was once a lighthouse, guiding the weary traveller along the path with heart, to the center of the soul of the land, where dreams and imagination flowed like water.

 

On this winter’s day, Raven’s trickster mind notices the sun filtering through the dark green leaves of the oak tree. He begins his meditation as usual: What do I want? What am I afraid of? What’s my next step? For the past thirty three years, these questions have kept Raven awake; awake to the dream of an island of sacred beauty amidst a deep ocean of forgetting. Atop the lighthouse, these questions have guided many travellers safely home to the Light Morning, a place of gathering around the turning wheel of the seasons; where the center of the sacred is known by its fertile edges; here the hearty of heart, a family of pioneers, grew together and apart: births, deaths, tears of joy, tears of sadness – three questions, a setting sun.

 

Then comes a fourth question: What time is it?

 

Raven tries to remember the future. Being a frugal bird, he takes a small sip from his water bottle. “Maybe this will help me remember the meaning of this fourth question.” But meaning, like water, is draining all around. The climate is changing. Raven’s water bottle is nearly empty. Again the question: What time it it? Parts of the Garden are dying.

 

He cries aloud: “CAW CAW!”

 

Pouring his last drops onto the waning embers of the lighthouse flame, Raven begins to dream …

 

In his dream, he sees steam rising to a cloud. Dancing with the wind, forming and reforming shapes: structures, patterns – a new language. Spreading his heavy black wings, Raven soars to the place of leadership, deciding this time to follow the heart path of a humble raindrop.

 

On this rainy night, a  raindrop falls to the earth, and transforms into a spacially shape-shifting, future-friendly, water fairy. She falls, as if by design, at the gateway entrance to a transformative, and transformed, Light Morning visitor campground. The campground is a welcoming sight. The water fairy tumbles and twirls over carefully placed rocks, humming in harmony with her elemental friends, balancing on the growing edge of a fern leaf. Visitors from the four corners of the earth pass through a welcoming gateway, and into the soft, warm welcoming embrace of a Heart House. With the aid of a simple map, they emerge as a new society, arranging themselves in transient tents.

 

Morning comes, and the water fairy is now a sleepy dew drop, resting on a succulant herbaceous friend, plucked by a traveller whose journey began when she stopped asking permission. She does not eat the fern, but uses it to wipe her weary eyes. The dew drop mingles with a tear drop. It’s newness is renewing: cleansing, clarifying, countering fear with a vision of abundance.

 

Passing down a gentle slope, entering now the throat of the earth body, the water fairy draws circles in the soil. In this microclimate, friends and family are one. Every boundary is a semi-permeable cell wall, where pioneers with the memory of travellers, and travellers with the memoy of pioneers, exchange stories and collect experiences, so as to grow, as if by design, in common patterns of exchange: close to the earth,  in relationship with the earth, sharing in abundance, being frugal by being efficient, drawing circles in the soil.

 

Water fairy knows she can stay awhile as long as she keeps shape-shifting. Playfully, she dances along the fertile edges of the garden: from wash water to compost, to earthworm, to ripening tomato, to berry and butterfly, mushroom and moss, tincture and terry cloth … flowing, cooling, soothing … being the very life blood of garden and gardener alike. The more she dances, the more she remembers her ancient wisdom. She dances in the language of patterns, answering questions on the tips of many tongues; pulsating with the presence of a future once lost, and now remembered.

 

After resting awhile in a cistern, water fairy joins with millions of her water friends, forming a soaking pool where humans can play and renew, and learning the skills of the spatial shape-shifter.

 

Raven watches in amazement as water fairy and her friends draw bigger and bigger circles. Time begins to slow down, and Raven now hears a faint sound, an echo across time: 

 

“Caw caw caw caw caw caw caw …”

 

Seven times he hears the sound -- the answer to his call.

 

Standing on the edge between soil and soul, Raven spies a feast of carrion. Stretching his wings, he rises above the winding wind, high up where the air is clear and the weather merry. Dark feathers are humming. A new moon eclipses the setting sun. A luminous shadow reflects the comforting strands of an ancient web, invisible but for its reflection in the knowing eye of the trickster. Raven turns toward Earth Mother and dives into the womb of the wound.

 

In an instant, Raven awakes. He is no longer alone.