Letter from Cressida Pryor
December 18, 2021
Winter Solstice 2021 FOI Letter
Dear Friends,
Another strange year is now finishing with the new Omicron Variant muscling its way into our lives...
Our local green grocer admitted to me this morning that another lock down would probably do her business good as she came into her own last year with everyone wanting her home deliveries...for others in the hospitality business it would spell disaster as we huddle home bound and anxious not venturing out...
The light and the dark go hand in hand now as we dip into grey dusky afternoons and dark mornings the prospect of growing day length is heartening. I know the earth needs quiet times to recuperate and gather energy, as do we, but the prospect of spring ahead does gives hope.
So it would seem that we are all within a relationship of interconnection...the whole of nature reacting and being part of our shared journey through space as our beautiful blue planet spins in an even bigger system through the cosmos...this relatedness some would call the Divine, a propensity towards connection to enjoy interdependent coexistence...
As we again face possible lockdowns, ‘circuit breakers’ and quarantines or other euphemisms for separation and isolation...We can perhaps cope with just about anything if we know ultimately that we're not alone, if we know deep in our hearts that we're part of something, a community and fellowship. The deepest community for many is the Divine, the Goddess…for we are all ‘from her’…as the 1960’s chant goes: ‘We all come from the Goddess, and to her we shall return…’
She is a community to which all belong - everyone, indeed all beings and things everywhere. Some saints lived their lives with this knowledge too, perhaps the best known is St Francis who called everything his brother or sister - sister moon, brother sun, and so forth.
And in the words of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego in 1513 that remind us again:
‘Put it into your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that frightened you, the thing that afflicted you is nothing: Do not let it disturb you. . . . Am I not here, I, who am your mother?’
So may we now hold tight onto hope…hope fostered in the ultimate good and love of the Divine…despite her mysterious dance through the Quantum Realms which can be hard to understand with our restricted minds…may we find heart and inner peace through our fellowship and interconnection…
In Her peace and love always,
Cressida, FOI Steward
