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by Moonrite
Once upon a rare evening…
A tender moon caressed the Earth with such intense love that the paleness of moonlight became as white light and blessed the darkness of night with the brightness of day. It was a night for enchantment…
It is not unusual for me to find myself awakened by the moon in the middle of the night.
So without thought or hesitation I slipped out of my bed taking nothing but my small woolen blanket to find rest in the arms of a dear old friend. I let my silent bare feet slip past the old dog asleep in the hall, tiptoed across the snoring house, and then stepped out onto the patio. With their gentle touch the smooth stones led my feet into the night filling the fields beyond the house.
My sleepy eyes beheld the shape of my friend just ahead of me; a tall oak tree bathed in moonlight standing apart as if waiting for my return. On the grass laid the shadow of the tree and I slipped inside its darkened embrace into the welcome of a forest home. Like a dear friend comforting me the arms of the tree wrapped around me like a cloak as I rested on the grass in the spirit of this enchanted space. To the heart of the oak I journey when I am too restless to sleep, too grieved and alone to even dream anymore; I come to heal and rest. Here my heart stills, my eyes dry and my mind finds rest and my body peace.
But on this magical white night my mind seemed to take flight, soaring, leaving the fields and the sleeping houses behind me. I came to be my grounded self again in a cavern and knew in an instant this was a mystical place where the brightness of the moonlight pierced right through the stones above me….I could have been anywhere or nowhere but lying in the grass behind the house.
I was not afraid, nor did I understand where I was or what I was to do there. But it did not seem a bad place to rest and wait. After a time, who knows how long a time, I began to lose my pretentious self and let go of what I thought I should see, what my apprehensions desired to see, and my mind expected to find. Who I thought I should be was the same, nothing physically about me seemed to have changed and slowly I began to realized that I was alone, the only life to be found in the cave and I began to breathe deeply and relax into the spirit of the space.
My breath seemed to push back the dark and I found myself peering into a great dark and empty cavern. Immediately I began again to feel ill at ease. My desire to find a way out, to leave, intensified quickly as I realized that the great cavern was not totally empty, but contained nothing physical, only the pain of loss that quietly hides behind the mask I wear as my face. I found that when illuminated in the white moonlight my pretense became guilty of the sin of omission, as denial was the nature of the golden dust on the cavern floor.
In the dust my eyes beheld sparkling gleams of great beauty and my spirit felt the pull of such honesty that I could not tear myself away from gazing at them. Puzzled, I moved closer, bending for a closer look at the beauty in the dust around my feet. Slowly I cried out to myself and quickly stood to back away in anguish. I had found half buried in the dust the crystal sparkle of each of my unshed tears gleaming like opalescent shells, the gilded houses of my unspoken fears and the golden links to each truth I had refused to acknowledge in life.
Thrown away, littered in the dust on the floor, was a lifetime of what could have been. Each sparkling crystal tear, each beautiful shell, each golden link representing a feeling I denied, a moment I let go by, a truth I refused to hold on to, a love I left dying in my heart. All of these denials lay shattered, cracked and tangled across the floor lost forever in the dust of time. I had come on my journey prepared only with bare feet and little warmth to comfort me. I could not return with anything more. I could only stare at what should have been counted among the treasures in my life as I slowly felt myself lifted from this place just as I had come. I watched as the beauty of each unshed tear lay glistening in the moonlight reflecting the worth of my loss and awoke to find myself laying in the sparkling sunlight beneath a tall Oak with its arms out stretched above me as if in joy over my awakening.
September 18, 2007
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