Scattered thoughts

I'm going through a challenge right now, having been asked to do something that is proving to be one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do. In order to succeed, I'm going to have to dig deep into the wells of faith, stir up the depths of patience, and put my entire belief system to the test. I can do this, and I will do this, simply because I love the person who has asked me to. It's hard when you're tired and emptied to find your strength, but right now I've had to walk up to fear, nod at its ugly face, tell it I see it, and walk right on through it. Fear breaks into pieces that surround me; they ambush me in the middle of a task, or choke me in the middle of the night. But they're small and insignificant when measured against the love, and I've come to see love as the place within which I will find my faith, breathe life into my patience, and come home to the seat of my beliefs.

I've always thought of winter as a fallow time, a time within which roots are sunk more deeply into soil that remains warm and nourishing below the cold, hard surface, a time within which the soil itself replenishes and rests and restores life giving mineral. And so it is with the soil of my soul right now. In the quiet, in the cold, I must believe that something alive and warm is growing stronger, and will soon be ready to show its shoots once more to the sun.

Last week was hard. A good friend died suddenly. As I think of what his family is going through, it casts some light on my own challenge, and lets me know this is only a moment in my life, and I only have to get through it. It is the time "before." I have only to hold a space open for the new and it will come.

This Friday is Candlemas - Imbolc. As usual, I ask for help and it's given. Here's a poem that came my way this morning that speaks directly to the heart of my challenge. I'm not even going to attempt to write my own when I find something so beautiful, so articulate, and ultimately so evocative of my own struggle:

Imbolc

The feeling in this still dark, unstable, muddy time
that the light at the end of the tunnel is my own soul
staring back at me on the inside
and I'm blind as a mole pushing through
some primal unseen path
with my stubby little snout and inexplicable will

If winter is a wide ocean of night
January is the hollow point, the trough
that holds visions too deep to fish up into morning
it is a cave too far down for light or even hunger
life hibernating in me suspended, waiting
and the mind floating free of the body now
like something promising but unborn
I want to lean over my own self to see if I'm breathing
I want to regress into a world of fur and blood
I am as slow as a stone's pulse

Into this no place, no thing
Imbolc comes at the end of forever
and the beginning of all time
Suddenly there is one fiercely yellow crocus open
dreams pierce dense and soggy layers of sleep
right up into the thin clear air of day
just like the red torpedo shoots of peonies
pierce the ground by my back door
carrying all the courage that weeks later they will need
to unfurl those painfully delicate new leaves

I am asking for that courage, Mother
I'm ready as I'm gonna be
nothing more to wait for
just hold my hand while my eyes stumble into light

---Miriam Dyak 1994

So, I know what power holds my hands. I believe in it. I believe in myself, though that is the bigger challenge. I know that the light awaits. If I have learned nothing else over the past 2 and a half years of my life, I have learned the truth of the power of love. I can do this, and I will.