Storming out of the darkness

When transformation comes, it is sometimes at the pace of a glimmer, a hint, the tiniest and merest minute sign that something is different. But sometimes that spark catches, like an early May day, and the whole of a person’s life can be transfigured. Boom! Just like that. Did you go to the countryside this weekend? Bluebells, birds, cowparsley, hawthorn blossom….it has all stormed out of the darkness, as Mary Oliver puts it in the poem below. In alchemy, this can relate to what is known as mulitplicatio, a state of heart opening through which creation can flourish, and in which the blessings pile up in a person’s life, running the cup over with goodness. Think the parable of the loaves and the fishes here, the beautiful abundance of enoughness.

May.

May, and among the miles of leafing,

blossoms storm out of the darkness – 

wind flowers and moccasin flowers. The bees

dive in to them and I too, to gather

their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs

is the deepest certainty that this existence too – 

this sense of wellbeing, the flourishing

of the physical body – rides

near the hub of the miracle that everything

is a part of, is as good

as a poem or a prayer, can also make

luminous any dark place on earth.

Mary Oliver.