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Letter from Cressida Pryor
March 19, 2018
Spring Equinox Letter 2018
Dear Friends,
As in many parts of the UK today where I am, it is freezing with snow still thick on the verges. After just a short walk outside my glasses have fogged up and as the sun begins to dip temperatures plummet. And yet the promise of spring; the early daffodils seem resilient beneath their white blanket...in country lore it is the ‘white shepherd’ who has come again.
Traditionally the equinox is a time to bring balance into our life as the earth too balances day with night...for us that means balancing what with what? Whilst musing about this my finger rested on the keyboard as I stared into space...looking down I see the key I caught inadvertently was zzzzzzzzzzzzz! So maybe the first most obvious balance is indeed that of rest and activity. A ‘snow day’ may well mean the daily rush around is cancelled and there is the blessing of enforced quiet and a punctuation in the usual hectic flow.
Another balance is perhaps on the focus of our ‘efforts’...Mary Oliver writes of the work of love, in her beautiful poem ‘the Messenger’ and to keep her mind on what really matters: ‘which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished’.
That every snow flake is unique; that the smallest birds somehow feed enough to sing despite the inhospitable conditions... (Reminder to self...to re-fill the bird feeders)
So even amidst yet more snow and on a wider level where countries seem to become coldly estranged and state’s communications are even more polarised; we can bring the balance of human warmth and connection in our own lives. To see beyond the surface frosty crackle, to scrape through to the clarity beneath which is a heartbeat and everything that is vulnerable. Joanna Macy reminds us that this life that pours through us, pumping our heart and renewing cells, did not just begin at our conception. Like every particle in every atom and molecule of our bodies, it goes back through time to the first splitting and spinning of the stars. The individual reflects the cosmos and the cosmos reflects the individual.
Mother Isis, gather us within your wings of compassion,
allow us wisdom to fathom our daily confusions,
bring us the light of the stars into our hearts
and may we foster balance in our communities.
So may it be,
Cressida
FOI Steward
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