Raven Blessing

This morning an old friend croaks at me from the imaginal realm: Raven, brushing my hair with blue-black wings. She comes from The Void, and I feel the tendrils of that cold, dark country around her. She gazes at me; her eyes are a windless midnight surrounded by yellow rings. I gaze back, waiting.

She shows me first a dawn sky, a brush-full of light staining the horizon. I watch as individual things take form out of the darkness -- a process as sure and unchangeable as the turning of the globe itself.

She shows me next the carcass of an elk half buried in snow -- a creature who didn't make it through the winter night. It is half frozen, and vacant as an empty room. Raven will eat the meat. Where, I wonder, did the spirit go?

Third she leads me high into the heavens and shows me the line of daylight as it creeps across continents. City lights wink out one by one. It is a glorious, breath-taking sight. Daylight touches all of us impartially, every single day, with the miracle of its return.

Have I made it through the winter night? There are some things, vacant as an empty carcass, that will be left behind. They will be food for Raven. "My sister," I implore, "any hints about what is taking shape inside me? I am a planner; I would like to know."

She croaks a throaty call perfectly pitched to shatter my thinking. In the instant following I realize she has already given me my answer. What grows like daylight needs no help from me. Carcass and new life alike, it will be revealed and become manifest. Nobody stops the sunlight, and it falls on everyone alike.

As sure as darkness is, daylight is the gift of a turning world.