“Ah, yes. This one,” I said as I bent over the wide rim of my cauldron, bubbling in cool, thick liquid.
For months, I’d been charging myself with intention,
reaching into the goop, and pulling out instruments of power,
with voices of the age, crying, “Find your power!” at my back.
I took a good look at the fiery sword of righteous anger,
remembering the times we’d spent together.
My stomach felt dead. I couldn’t even pick it up.
For a few days, I held a sacred feather. It smelled of elder wisdom but eventually, I let it slip back under the surface. It wasn’t meant to invoke power. Wisdom doesn’t work that way.
I pulled out a full loom, so familiar! I gazed at the threads of community which stretched across the beams– but there was something missing in it. And then I saw something I had been entangled in, so I let the loom go too, and watched it dissolve into a primordial state.
The sword of charismatic ego rose out of the liquid,
hilt towering over the bubbling surface.
It was infused with a power of societal expectation.
It was sparkling and it hummed.
But I wasn’t moved.
Time stood between us, me and charisma – a desert of isolation and contemplation.
I told it, “I am no longer tempted or even angry with your presence, you old saber.”
I was safe. I have ridden the storms that raged inside me. I have turned my back on battles and building, to cultivate the precious seeds of goodness.
How will I be called to serve next?
What will it be?
What kind of power is my song calling for?
Finding the answer elusive, I passed my hand into the cool and felt something brush against it, falling towards the bottom of the cauldron. Instinctively, I reached and caught a strong humming thing, a rod, a staff, a wand covered in pearl sheen.
Yes, of course it would be pearl.
Kindness.
Subtle, permeated with a gentle power,
quick to shift if I grasped too hard,
or slip if I held too loose,
this benign quiet force.
My heart ached with need-fire.
How can I feel passion for a power that will not be mastered?
Because there is no other power, no other path.
I can learn to hold my spirit just so,
not let kindness fall through a grip too tight or too loose.
To Enter the Power of Kindness.
There are many teachers,
mountains to listen to.
We span these distances together.
Tasara Jen Stone https://littlelight.info
