I am not sure that I have the words to describe the deeply-layered perfection of this Easter morning’s experience… but I will do my best….
At 3 in the morning, under the crisp, full, Easter moon, we crunched our way along the narrow trail through the forest to the stream.

I always forget how illogically natural it feels to me to be in the forest on snowshoes. On either side of the narrow beaten path were deep holes where others, attempting passage with only boots, had broken through the crust and plunged into waist-high snow. Now, though, there was a crystalline skin on the land that supported us as we continued over the just-visible fence, through the clearing and under tree boughs laden with the fluffy whiteness of yesterday’s storm. I had to stop often to stand in silence, trying to absorb into my being every minute particle of the moment’s magic.

The rush of the stream under the melting snows has always been my favourite part of Springtime. It is Faith, vindicated. The tentative renewal of the Winter Solstice – the turning from the depths of the inner world and the voyage out toward the distant Light – is an act of the imagination, opening a tiny window of possibility that Things Will Change: the world will not always be a dark, cold place. By the end of March, the steady pace of this journey from the Deep has often become a desperate scrambling – in some, a weary, disheartened shuffle.

By the Spring Equinox and Passover/Easter, the signs of change speak clearly to those who
watch and listen to the Land. The plumes of steam from the maple stands; the skies alive with birdsong of Crow, Hawk, Canada Goose and LBBs (little brown birds); the surprising warmth of the sun, and especially the heart-lifting sound of the waters under the snow, all assure us that the Earth is indeed awakening from her sleep….

Christopher Fry, a Quaker, wrote this in 1951:

A SLEEP OF PRISONERS (excerpt)

  Dark and cold we may be, but this                                                                                                   Is no winter now. The frozen misery                                                                                              Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;                                                                              The thunder is the thunder of the floes,                                                                                        The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.                                                                                Thank God our time is now when wrong                                                                              Comes up to face us everywhere,                                                                                              Never to leave us till we take                                                                                                         The longest stride of soul we ever took.                                                                                   

Yes, it was all about Water. The extreme dualities of the Solstices call up Fire, but the Spring Equinox invokes the balance and fluidity of Water.

I was once again struck by the omnipresence of the element – noisily roiling as the snows transformed beneath our feet; our bodies themselves created mostly of it; the Earth, a vast storehouse of it; the air itself bathed in an icy shower of a million tons of ice comets each year…. Water is a concrete and symbolic representation of the Earth Family…of the Oneness of Life. “Nibi Waabo…”  http://heartroot.com/chants/

It is said in some esoteric circles that Yeshua undertook the task of clearing the astral
planes in the time between his crucifixion and when the Magdalene found the stone
moved from the entrance to his tomb. It is the appearance of Yeshua to the Magdalene in his risen form that is celebrated when we gather the energized water before dawn on Easter Sunday…and perhaps as well, the completion of his work in alleviating the density of the astral planes.  As this is the realm of those beings enslaved by strong emotions to their previous incarnations, their liberation could well be considered as having “saved humanity”. My understanding is that this honour is now ours to wield – that we have evolved to a place where we are now capable of not only releasing our individual emotional attachments to belief systems, but in so doing, to also separate the astral and mental dimensions of our beings. This means that we no longer have to be trapped in beliefs that belonged to our lineages – our families – but rather, that we can finally begin to have free choice and thought. Emotions are universally symbolized by Water…and governed by the moon.

Standing beneath the bright round moon, snow crystals sparkling everywhere, it occurred to me that while so many think of Winter as bereft of Life and experience only desolation in its presence, it is simply Light and Water interacting in different ways. And such are the times through which we pass….

Each perfect, hexagonal snow crystal reflected the six-sided carbon atoms of which our bodies have been formed (We are “carbon-based lifeforms”….) as well as the crystalline
silicate structures into which we are evolving. I could feel the resonance in my body to the crystal landscape, and as I felt myself dissolve into Oneness and Light, I remembered that this land we call Heartroot has also been named a Crystalline Temple of the Living Grail.

Blessèd Be….