A
CIRCLE OF SWIFT SONGS
A CANDLE UNDER A JAR
BEFORE ME WAS A CANVAS. New. White. Blank. It was large. The largest
they had. And there being, perhaps, a painting trapped inside me, longing to
emerge, the moment I saw that canvas I knew I needed it. So I bought it and took it home.
It
was too big for my easel, so I stood it on the floor and leaned it up against
the wall in my room. It sat there for a long time. Until I forgot it. Then I
didn’t know anymore why I had bought it.
For too long I had lived in a closed circuit
and I could not change without incurring ridicule: my changes were of heaven;
and so, they were misunderstood of earth. And having no certainty upon which to
stand in order to break out and change, heaven’s new life waiting within me was
sleeping.
Not enough confidence to overcome the fear
of seeming absurd or abnormal in the sight of others, life within was being stifled and needed something to wake it up.
All the light and life in being brave
and different was slowly disappearing. My candle had been too long under a jar.
A year later. One morning, early. I stood
before that thing I had stopped seeing. I was watching how the light from my
window threw patterns upon its dusty surface. I did not try to work out what
they were; my mind was strangely still. But as the dancing shapes began to move
faster, I began to understand what was there---a lacework of slender branches,
filigrees of leaves, moving by the touch of an invisible hand upon my long forgotten
canvas.
As I looked, I saw. I knew the tree outside
was coming in. And it was coming into me moving inside me. The canvas was my
mind. And the light---the light of life.
And the invisible hand that held the brush---the wind of the spirit. Slowly I sank to the floor. There I sat and
watched what the wind would paint upon my canvas. That there was something for
me there I knew it. I knew too, that it
would shake me. I felt the faint scary pressure which was its mark. But maybe,
that was just what was needed to set me free. Change, was ever an uncomfortable
fit, at first.
After awhile, a range of mountains appeared
on the canvas. Then beyond the mountains---sea. And beyond the sea---a land of
great abundance, where the voice of every fiery stone is sealed and not
understood by any earthly ear. But in that land---I saw a valley. And in the
valley were many trees. There, the travelling stopped and I gazed upon the
crowded trees.
They grew and flourished. They spread their
branches wide and high. And where they touched each other there they met the
sky. Of their own selves they met and formed their own alliance; and there of
themselves got, tangled. For the more they touched they hid the sky and the
darker the ground in which they grew and the less they saw, only confusing
themselves all the more.
The trees of the wood were somber. But for
fragments of dappled light their joy was, still. Dampened. They could not move
their arms. At their feet their children stunted or stillborn. For there was not
enough light for them to flourish. Shut in, the gloom had dimmed their eyes. So
close together, the trees could not see beyond themselves. They had made
themselves a roof. But I could feel them yearning for more sky. For, sight. For,
space. For freedom where the sun was whole and where the skylarks rise and the
wind runs free. Oh, there was a loveliness in the wood but it was as though it
could not breathe. Or could not sing. Or, only in a minor key. Too long there
and one could forget.
But not one spoke out, to undo their
ravelled tale; and the valley was all in darkness. None of them could see their
own or each other’s light---the light of trees; for the wood had engulfed them;
and snuffed them out.
By tight alliance, freedom is curbed and
individuality lost. Truth becomes clouded and distorted wherever by our crowded
opinions we hide the sky.
Each ‘tree,’---each
child of light, I saw as a candle. Each one had its own flame of life and light but all needed air and space
overhead. A candle does not burn long in an upside down jar.
Joyful
now, my minding burning with the inward vision, I set up four piles of books on
the floor, near the wall, threw a sheet over them, and carefully placed my
patient canvas on top---and began to paint. And my brushes flew like shooting stars dipped
in the silken oils of the Milky Way. Fleetingly, too, into light's most fiery
paints---chance’s eclectic rainbow reflections on the inner sea of dreams---and
the picture formed, as though by itself---a light beyond light and a joy unto
its own self.
*
- from: A CIRCLE OF SWIFT SONGS; A Circlet of Inner-Life Stories
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