Twelfth Night - A Winter’s Tale
On the eve of January 5th, forty years ago, I was sitting on the front porch of my family’s old log cabin in Alabama. It was nearing midnight, and the air was frigidly cold – only 10 degrees F. Unable to sleep, I had wrapped myself in warm blankets and come out into the night, seeking a peace I had not found the entire Christmas season. I was rocking back and forth on our wooden swing, but stopped, afraid that the creaking of the chains would wake my sleeping family. In the ensuing silence, I fell into a “Sanctuary of Stillness,” so deep and transformative, I have never been the same since.
The forest around me was utterly still. No wind stirred the bare winter branches or rustled the fallen leaves. No bird called; no animal crept through the shadows. I gazed out into the woods surrounding the cabin and was startled to see that the forest was beginning to glow with an unearthly light. I searched for the moon above the treetops, as the logical source of the sylvan glow, but then remembered that the moon was new and dark. I could see a myriad of stars through the trees – sparkling like diamonds in the crystal-clear sky, but their radiance could not account for the growing light around me.
I got up and walked with wonder into the forest, my boots crunching on the frozen ground. I didn’t go far, longing for the deep stillness once again, feeling I was trespassing on something sacred and holy by moving and making noise. Pausing, I stood with my feet planted among the moss and stones, so I could enter a “Sanctuary of Stillness” once again. To my amazement, I realized the luminous glow I was experiencing was not coming from the skies above, but seeping out of the earth beneath me, swelling up from the dark damp ground, and flowing in filaments of shining light through every living thing around me.
I was not seeing with my physical eyes so much, but from a deep inner felt sense that my whole body and soul recognized. I knew, without knowing how, that I was witnessing the “Return of the Light” to the land. I was “seeing” Gaia’s Breath as light and life force – that which had been held in a liminal pause of deepest inhalation at Winter Solstice time – rising up now as a shining promise of new life to come, even though the ground was hard as iron, and it was the depths of winter. I did not think these thoughts then. I simply basked in the beauty and joy of being part of something so much bigger than my winter woes. It was only later that I was able to more fully understand the magic and mystery of my experience.
A few weeks passed, and I was back in England, where I was living at the time. I found a small leather book in an antique shop and was drawn to open its pages. The words I read created another “Sanctuary of Stillness” moment, taking me back immediately to the one I was blessed to have on my land in Alabama, far away. I read of the ancient legend of a sacred hawthorn tree planted by Joseph of Arimathea on Wearyall Hill in Glastonbury, when he went there after Christ’s crucifixion. This sacred thorn tree (and its descendants) blooms every year at midnight on the eve of January 5th – old Christmas or Twelfth Night, heralding the birth of the Divine Child in the dark womb of Gaia’s year. According to the legend, on that holy night, light and life pour up and out of the land, and “the stars and the elements all tremble with glee” (to quote the ancient Cherry Tree Carol). New birth wakening in a dark and sleeping land. Just like my time of stillness with Gaia long ago.