A quiet voice like water

Thinking about my last post, I begin to notice how often I write about what is calling me (in this case, I am back in dance class after a long time away).

This is the word spell we wrap around ourselves, all unaware.

Do you do the same?



Outside, it is raining, a soft and secretive pattering of drops on the roof overhead.

The house is quiet, the cats asleep, the candle lit.

The wildflowers I planted in a seed starting tray begin their lives beneath the soil.

A day to turn inward...a watery, daydreaming sort of day.





I see how I evoke that which I want to be more present in my life...or I evoke a direction I feel pulled to follow, in order to call the path to me. Sometimes without even knowing that is what I am doing.

I perform that ritual here. Where else is there a space for dreams, magic and mystery, but in our creations?

A web post (or a person) may on the surface appear simple, but is many-layered with wish, meaning and emotion, like a deep network of roots beneath the prairie soil that anchor the sunlit growth unfolding above the surface.

Putting forth a thought...a wish...a state of being, is a kind of spell casting. This is one of the types of magic we practice, whether or not we consider ourselves witch, shaman, healer or artist.

We define and shape our reality, and ourselves, by how we think about and express them: An evocation.

We call something by naming it...then putting intention behind it then releasing it, within and without.

But the things we struggle to express — the most deep and powerful and shape-shifting things — they seem to resist being named and encapsulated.

This may be a vast longing that we can't translate into words...

Or it may be a suggestion of a thing entwined around something else, in such a tangle that we can't tease it apart and examine it properly...

It may be something of which we see only the barest outline, out of the corner of our eyes.

This unnamed something floats in on the pale silk of a milkweed, and plants itself in the tangle of thorns, thistles, whispering grasses, the under-the-surface beings of our inner landscapes.

Such callings are elusive and wild. What wants to be known sends out tendrils, or rivulets. It surfaces from some nameless place within.

We can listen for its whispers as it flows through our lives. With our attention, we nurture and give home to its voice. Trying to pin down and examine it may wither it to silence.

It is like water, this voice. Its source is sacred, a spring deep underground in darkness. Speaking through the language of image and dream, metaphor and archetype, it finds its way to us by secret channels, nurtures life unseen, ebbs, flows and shapeshifts.




It is Mélusine, a freshwater spirit.

It is a Mystery unleashed in spring.

Like spirit whispers, water rarely follows a direct path...it meanders. So the paths to these callings and destinations are intuitive and winding.

We do not know where we want to end up, or even exactly from where we are beginning...we hear only a whisper on the wind. This way.

We have only this signpost.

If we wish to stay connected with our sacred source, I believe we must follow the whisper, the signpost, over and over again throughout our lives.