I find myself in a delightful weave of stories, it would seem.
This day celebrates a long journey, a birth, a number of symbolic gestures of the divine. I am woven into this story somehow, these nearly six decades. I will sing in the Fairmont Church choir tonight, hymns complete with descants, service complete with preaching and candle-lit rituals of Christmas Eve. Brian and I will return home for a bit o’ egg nog, music, resting after our offerings/receivings in community.
My imagination and emotion breathe alive today in stories of Claire and Jamie, Brianna and Roger, Murtagh Fitzgibbons, (young) Ian Murray and more. There’s a lot in Outlander I dinna recommend (its seven seasons, with the eighth to drop in late 2025), but it is certainly scratching some story itch I have deep within my own ancestral lineages and/or spiritual curiosities of the moment. [I’ve not looked too closely to make sense of it yet…just enjoying the hours of rest and pleasure the NetFlix/Starz series and written volumes are bringing.]
It probably begs noticing how difficult it is for me to not craft some metaphysical, spiritual meaning with a fascination that has landed so fully these last several weeks. A round of self-applause, then!
The ‘forced pause’ of my back injury and requisite weeks-of-healing have certainly held a container for some unexpected gifts, receivings. While I had anxiety about any permanent damage I might have done to my back (seemingly none, blessedly), it was apparently the only thing able to keep me still for weeks on end. Immobile, or at least mostly immobile. Receptive. Unmooring me somehow…
Unmoored from my drive, a sense of cosmic urgency to just do something already, to make a difference. Unmoored from some larger purpose, pulling me forward with choiceless choices and subsequent acts of will, to be faithful. Unmoored from a calendar of obligations, even.
Floating amiably enough then into an epic storyline of Claire Beachamp Randall, a British combat army nurse, 1940’s, returning to her pre-war marriage in 1945, holidaying in Scotland close to a circle of stones called Craigh Na Dun outside of Inverness. She approaches the stones in search of an herb/flower she’d seen, then finds herself traveling into the past 200 years before. Highlander Scots, time travel, epic love storying with Jamie Fraser… Twin flame, some would say...
I know the energy within which Diana Gabaldon writes her characters, after all. Devotion. Connection. Mysteries of the universe in created and uncreated time(s). Fragility and deep shadows within the human condition. Gabaldon uses the tropes of her/our time–marriage, partnership, romance, timeless belonging–but I know these forces within and beyond the specifics of just one relationship, no matter how fundamental or epic. Gabaldon eases this energy into families, interconnected across time and bloodline, to travel ‘between times.’
Not a bad way to celebrate this Christmas Eve, I figure. No grand metaphysical meaning necessary for me, but a wonderful story that is holding my heart and mind right now.
Rest.
Gratitude.
Remembering.
Belonging…across expectation, years, past and future.
Ultimately, blessing.
Hozzászólások