RAISING THE BLINDS

Words aren’t enough when the Other breaks through and there are times when I wish I’d taken art instead of more math and science than I had to. Or, I might have ended up driving myself crazy trying to put on canvas what I see in my head. Perhaps that is the only home such visions can have.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling winds tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

This is a fragment of larger piece known as Saint Patricks’s Breastplate. Probably written long after Patrick’s time and it's a verse that seems to be left out or treated as optional. Call her the Great Mother, the Divine Feminine, bless me if I know. But, I was granted a vision for each line. Whatever barrier there is between us and…..what we can’t see with human eyes opened a window for a moment. Just a glimpse. It’s probably for the best. I don’t think we’re meant to see more than a flash and it’s already fading.

Are they sisters? Wild, glorious, shimmering and free. Burning with sun fire, filling the sky with moonlight, shimmering with star diamonds, flashing with lightning, windswept, dancing,dancing, dancing. Old as the great black cliffs on the Oregon coast. I can see them, could see them. But, it fades already. I don’t think they’re meant to be captured. Barely meant to be described.

Note: These appear on their timetable not mine. I've read the verse before. It's in Tom Cowan's Yearning for the Wind. Today....I got sideswiped. And I have the headache to prove it.