Imbolc 2012 - a reading
Every year is full of endings and beginnings. Birthdays, anniversaries,
holidays, memorials. Days, months and years marking events of real or imagined
importance. Earth Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Year of the Woman, the
Third Millennium, the Age of Aquarius. Like a long spiral staircase ascending
and descending or an intricate double helix twisting and untwisting, the pattern
of our lives repeats.
Nine days ago, we entered the Chinese Year of the
Dragon, the Black Water Dragon to be precise. The Chinese consider the Dragon an
auspicious year. For some, perhaps it will be. Certainly not for all. For a few,
it may seem that they’re accursed.
I was born in the Year of the Green
Wood Dragon. For many years, I used that sobriquet as a pseudonym on a Daoist
discussion board. I loved the juxtaposition contained within that name. I mean,
who would carve a fearsome dragon out of green wood? These days, that’s what I
feel like, an unseasoned beast ready to crack and split as I age and continue to
be tested.
I’ve always been fascinated by dragons. Dungeons and, Uther
and Arthur Pen-, the red of Wales. Chinese dragons are powerful and noble. By
contrast, European ones are greedy and fierce. The last battle of Beowulf.
Fafnir of Der Ring des Nibelungen. The Legend of St. George. These are the
dragons of my people.
Five years ago, I stood rearguard as my wife slew
such a dragon. The landscape of that quest resembled Cymru, a native land of
dragons, cloudy and craggy, shrouded in mist and mystery. The road through those
mountains was hard, the siege against her fortress treacherous, the final battle
in its lair fierce. Fortunately, she was victorious at every stage and that
particular wyrm breathes no more. Though some nights, its long shadow haunts our
dreams still. So, at Candlemas, we light votives to aid in our forgetting. Day
by day, those memories are dispelled like ripples fading from the surface of a
pond.
Since then, for me, each passing year has become a goal to attain,
a quest to fulfill, a series of obstacles to overcome on the path to a
glittering treasure I likely will never possess. As humans, we long to take
comfort in the future. In auguries and names, we search for stability, an
understanding of this life. Eons ago, someone categorized and compiled the names
of these years based on a perceived pattern of events. Good years or bad, like a
face on the surface of a distant planet, we are predisposed to see patterns even
where none exist. But their beauty or ugliness is firmly rooted in the eye of
the beholder, not the beheld.
Like a lamb stirring in its mother’s womb
at Imbolc, the life of this black water dragon has only just begun. Whether it
grows in the Chinese or European tradition has yet to be woven by the Norns. I
suspect it will bring a bit of both: joy and sadness, wealth and poverty, misery
and health. Ours is but to receive its gifts with patience and with grace,
knowing that next year it will not visit us again, at least wearing the same
scaly guise.
© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III
