February 2nd traditionally signals Imbolc,
the return of the Light. As a harbinger of Spring, it's one of the most powerful portals on
the Wheel of the Year: the exact midpoint between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. A time to
honor and go deep with the natural world.
Stephen Buhner's Plant
Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm is a Mystery School disguised as a
book; a work that opens the doors of perception with wisdom and humor. On p.
301, this piece by William Stafford sang to my Spirit as an ideal invocation for
the Return of the Light in your soul:
If you don't know
what kind if person I am
and I don't know
what kind of person you are
a pattern that
others made may prevail in the world
and following the
wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many
a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets
the fragile sequence break
sending with
shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to
play through the broken dike.
And as elephants
parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one
wanders, the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel
and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what
occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to
a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important
region in all who talk:
though we could
fool each other, we should consider —
lest the parade of
our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is
important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line
may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we
give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear; the
darkness around us is deep.
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