Night of the Snowstorm

Tiny snowflakes drifted down quietly from the sky that evening. The man standing there, watching them, had been warned of blizzards that night, but this gentle snowfall seemed tame compared with what he had been imagining. Sam had just arrived to this land, travelling more than 4,000 miles to the west from his old home on another continent.

On a mountain, in the middle of an island off a Pacific coast that had been drenched in rain that Fall, a farmer and his wife had taken him in. He was given a cabin in exchange for work, and one of his tasks was to clear snow from the rooves of two long tunnel houses, that were used to grow food during the growing season. If the snow built up too much, they would collapse, and since each house was a hundred and fifty feet long, to repair them was a costly affair.

Sam stepped off the porch of his neighbour's house, where he'd just been visiting. He looked up and watched the thousands of specks of white float down from a darkening sky. He'd missed snow in the hot country he'd lived in before coming here. But with the little he'd been able to bring with him, he was sorely under-equipped for -15 degree temperatures and the kind of storms that battered this land.

He wandered over to the tunnel houses. About three inches had built up over the evening. He thought that if he cleared them now, he might be able to sleep till early morning before it got too heavy for the plastic sheets to hold. They could take about 12 to 15 inches he'd been told, and this was very light snow.

He ate something for energy, put on extra socks, waterproof trousers, thick jacket and a head-lamp, and grabbed the ten foot long rake used to pull the snow from the apex of the tunnel-house rooves. Snow had built up to about three feet by the sides of the houses over the last month, from previous times of raking the rooves clear. In places it was compact enough to walk on, but with some foot-falls, he would step straight through soft, un-compacted powder and he'd be up to his hips. It was going to be hard-going, but he began to reach up with the rake and pull the snow down in small, controlled avalanches, until a strip of roof, about a metre wide was clear. He stepped to the right and repeated the process, moving along the length of the house, bit by bit.

A rhythm was attained quite quickly and Sam began to sing. He couldn't remember words of songs very easily, so he would make them up along with the melody, and the singing helped with the work.

Singing can also summon beings to you at times; creatures of nature, will stop and listen - birds, mice, squirrels, and larger four legged beasts even. And, depending upon the cadence and tone of the song, some unseen beings will also be attracted. The words aren't so important, as the feeling behind what is sung. It is the feeling that the unseen ones pick up on. The tone pricks up their ears, but the feeling stirs their soul. It is a resonance that matches a pattern, a unique blueprint, within each being. Different beings have different blueprints, so certain words, spells, songs and tones will activate some blueprints and not others. And here, Sam's song in the snowstorm resonated with many beings, and they flew down the songlines as fast as they could.

Soon, Sam had completed one side of a tunnel. He looked up. All he could see was the glitter of the snow in the head-light, lit up against the black sky. It was thicker and faster now; turning into a blizzard and it was only just past midnight.

"I'm tired already," he thought. "It's going to be a long night."

But as he looked around he saw the orange glow of string lights against the wall of the tool-shop. The edges of everything was softened in the snow and the soft light. Sam actually felt like he was quite privileged to experience this, while most others would be inside in the warm. "Strange paradox," he thought. "I want to be inside like everyone else, but I wouldn't get to see this," gesturing to the snow creating a cone shape in the light of his head-lamp. The only sounds were the wind, the soft patter of snowflakes on his hood and the crunch of his footfalls. It was cold, his fingers were starting to freeze, and his hips and shoulders were aching, but something about this experience of life, at this time of night, felt special to him; a threshold moment - the threshold of a gate or door and something was waiting for him the other side.

He walked to the other side of the tunnel and began the same process of clearing the snow, singing as he went along. By the time he finished this second side, he was really tired. He had fallen through the snow so many times, and climbing out was becoming harder and harder. What's more, as he looked to the first side that he had cleared, he noticed that several inches of snow had already built up again. He didn't think he'd be able to keep up with the storm.

He felt a stirring in his belly...an anxiety that reminded him of many times in his past when he feared the consequences of not being able to do something, or of getting it wrong. He remembered the wooden cane of teachers at school, the whip of his dad, the yelling and angry faces of so many adults when he, as a boy, was doing something that displeased them.

And here, he stopped. A pause in the night. Wind whistling, snow spiralling around him, dark skies, white landscape.

Something inside was asking to be spoken. This young boy had never had a voice in those spaces of angry giants. He'd been too afraid. He had always frozen in such places, even as an adult, and then gone away thinking about all the things he could have said, should have said.

"I wasn't doing anything wrong!" He heard the voice call. "I just did things my way. It didn't hurt anyone, but all those people, they were just angry I didn't do it their way."

Sam had always listened to those people, thinking they must be right. After all, they sounded so sure of themselves, so certain, and Sam had never felt that kind of certainty. So he abdicated his own inner authority to that of an angry other. But after spending time with what each person said, carefully weighing up and considering as many angles as he could, he always came to the same conclusion: "They had a point in what they said, but so did I. And my point didn't get heard."

That would make him angry.

Deep inside Sam, in an internal landscape of mountain and forest, a wrinkled hand reached out to stroke the brow of a young boy who looked worried. The hand belonged to an elderly man, with long silver beard and silver hair under a black wool cap. The elder sat with his back against a large oak tree, the trickle of running water coming from nearby, mountains set against an ashen sky above the canopy. A fire burned in front of him and a raven perched on a branch above his head to his left, and an owl to his right. His body was thin, his face wrinkled, but his eyes were so piercing, they seemed to penetrate you to the core, and yet, there was a softness to them aswell. A gentleness that suggested that no matter what had befallen you, no matter what you had suffered, he not only understood, but could deeply empathize with you. These were eyes that would weep with you, or even for you, if your tears were held by old walls of stone, built to ensure no-one could see your inner states of sorrow. These were eyes that would see beyond such walls.

And surrounding this elder, were all those unseen beings called by Sam's song. They glowed in the forest twilight, the spark of each of their souls merging with each other, until there was a perfect ring of light around the man and the boy. A kind of ethereal halo, that sparkled, warmed and nurtured, and also brought power to a long awaited meeting of two characters in the story of Sam's life: the Sage and the Wounded Child.

In that moment, Sam remembered his yearning for a true elder to acknowledge him. He had longed for someone who could truly see and hear him, without the need to fix him, change him, advise him, admonish him or even tell him who he was. He had longed for it so much that he'd tried desperately to attain the praise of others, searching for their nods of approval, reaching for their blessing.

He looked into the dark again, head lamp lighting up the driving snow. The Sage within looked up into his sky at the same moment, and whispered some words to the breeze. The beings around him glowed brighter and Sam had a thought.

"No-one can really know what is inside another. No-one can know exactly what another soul has been through while in this human form. So, no-one can really give what the child inside me is yearning for."

The old man threw a stick on the fire and bright orange sparks shot up into the sky.

"Except me!" Sam added as an after thought.

"I know everything that he's gone through. After all, I've been through it all with him, every step of the way. I've felt everything he's felt; heard and seen everything he has. Maybe that's why it's special, being out here in the middle of the night, in the snow and the cold and the dark. It's a time of honouring; of acknowledging all the places where the little boy in me stood without the support of an elder or a tribe; stood alone."

The Sage lit a long handled pipe and blue tobacco smoke drifted up in swirls and spirals to dissolve in the evening air. Then he looked deep into the flames, his eyes glinting. The raven cawed.

In his mind's eye, Sam saw the clear image of the Sage. He knew this was his own self as an elder. It wasn't just that the man in the image looked old. It was that he looked both without and within. He looked with the innocent eyes of a child and with the wisdom of time and space...the journey we must all make, lifetime after lifetime. The fool's journey, entering a world with great awe and wonder and utter naivety. And this elder was the one at the end of time; the one who had completed the journey, and was now just waiting a little way back from the gate of light, the final threshold from this worldly matter. Waiting so that he could be available to all those incarnations who still walked their path of hardship; to be available to anyone who called on him; anyone who sung the right song.

"It seems it's also a time for my young one to meet with my old one," said Sam, with a sigh. "Time for me to be the grandfather I always longed for."

The owl, on the branch above the Sage, hooted a long, low hoot, and the old man threw another stick on the fire. He looked to the face of the little boy beside him and smiled kindly, as if inviting the child to speak freely. The child's eyes widened and his mouth opened, as if to say something, but nothing came out. His jaw just hung there, lips parted and seemingly frozen. He was in deep thought.

"What do I want to say, in this place where I'm free to say anything?"

He thought back to all the times he had stitched his own mouth shut in case he said the wrong thing; all the times he'd held his voice in fear of punishment.

He so wanted to speak now, but no words were coming. He felt foolish and looked to the Sage to save him. But it was Sam who came to the rescue.

"Thank you, my son, for all the places where you stood alone, without the support of elder or tribe. Thank you for all the places you stood in the face of adversity, in the face of the anger of others, especially grown-ups, who hadn't grown up enough to deal with their own fears.

Thank you for continuing to rise up when you were knocked down by life...again and again and again.

Thank you for rising even when you carried such despair; when you had lost trust in life; when you had all but given up on joy.

Thank you for hiding that tiny speck of wonder and curiosity, deep inside yourself, when all the rest had been obliterated by the minds of those who had been colonised and molded to favor only order, logic and linearity. May that speck grow now in the fertile fields of your innocent wounds. May it blossom again and join me in this adult world, for it is much needed here. We are in famine; drought. We need the waters of wonder again, that only you can provide."

Sam proceeded to list out loud all the places he could remember, where he had stood alone, yearning for someone to stand by his side and support him. Places where he'd been lonely, beaten down, yelled at, punished, called names, told he was wrong, told he would be no good at anything. All the places that he had demonstrated courage; all the places he had experienced pain.

And the boy listened to this adult speak, and heard praise. He listened and he wept tears that had been frozen for many decades, and the old man sat quietly by his side, nodding, and smiling encouragement.

When, finally, Sam finished speaking, the Elder placed a warm hand on the boy's shoulder, and Sam sent a silent invitation for the boy to speak freely.

In that moment, it was as though energetic boundaries were opened in the Elder's dimension. In fact, there was an opening that rippled through all dimensions and times, ushering in light of a thousand colors, a kaleidescope of energies that burst through shadow, warming frozen rivers of time within Sam's very own material body. Like icicles melting in the spring sunshine, the frozen waters begin to flow again and life returns to places that had festered and died long ago.

"Why did that woman speak to us in such a nasty way?" The boy suddenly piped up.

Sam already knew what he was referring to. A few days earlier, someone he'd known had yelled at him, when he thought he was doing exactly what she'd wanted. It hurt him; made him feel like he had done something wrong.

He'd had a lifetime of carrying this belief of wrongness; that there was something fundamentally wrong with him as a human being. And there were dozens of experiences like this one, where someone had thrown the emotion from their past experiences onto him; the source of all oppression, marginalization and exile.

Sam noticed there was an angry voice here. If attended to, it might have said that the woman was a coward and had no honor; that she didn't care how her words and actions affected others, she only wanted to vent her anger and vomit her judgements onto those she saw as easy targets.

At the same time, in the Elder's domain, a wind stirred in the trees. It began to swirl and spiral, creating a vortex and then a tornado. The elder looked over his shoulder at it, turned back to the child, and smiled with a knowing nod. He opened his mouth to speak, and the words came out of Sam's mouth at the same instant.

"We don't know what was happening for that woman at that time. It may have been that her mother had been irritable at her husband for not doing as she'd asked. Then he had shouted at their son that day, and blamed him for something he didn't do. Then her son had been nasty to her in reaction. Now she feels hurt and irritable and you were there, just at the right time for her irritability to emerge and blame you for how she was feeling. And you could continue the cycle and be angry at her, but in her absence, get angry with someone else - the anger can always find a reason to be angry.

Or you could break the cycle now, and allow yourself to not know why she treated you the way she did. You could allow yourself to know that anyone who treats another being like that, is deeply hurt, and they don't know how to heal. The hurt creates friction deep inside, and this friction can irritate, sometimes so subtly it is barely noticeable; but it builds and builds until it blows, up and out, expressed through voice, body movements, breath and emotion.

So what would you choose? To carry the anger at her, or to carry compassion and the knowing that she is hurt somehow?"

The boy looked up and an ease settled into his features.

"I'll carry the compassion."

Sam smiled at this conversation between the boy and the Sage. It was like a grandson feeling so at ease with his grandfather that he felt he could say anything. So, the boy did. It all spilled out that snowy night. All these frustrations from the past, unanswered questions, unfair events, hurts, misunderstandings, judgements, punishments and places where the boy had been put upon.

Sam allowed the elder to speak through him and not once did the elder offer an opinion, a fix, or even pretend to know the answer. In the boy's past, every adult had always tried to have the answer, or suggest that he was doing something wrong and needed to change.

But in this moment, an adult was facing him and gently inviting a dialogue that he felt an equal part of. The Sage offered possibilities, and sometimes curiosity in the form of questions that he genuinely wanted to know the answer to, like:

"What was that like for you?

How did that feel?

That must have been terrible! What did you do then?"

And the boy felt validated for the first time in his life. He came alive and told the stories of his greatest trials and most painful experiences.

After hearing one story, the Sage said: "You have some courage in you, lad! Thank you for stepping into that situation in the way you did! I am the way I am because of you."

After another, he offered: "To do that all by yourself!" Shaking his head in grief. "I am sorry no-one was there by your side."

And another: "That must have hurt greatly. And you carried those wounds all this time!"

The boy eventually exhausted all the places that needed to be met by this kind, loving and wise man, who looked again, directly into his eyes. The boy stood there, unflinching, with steady gaze and some pride. The Sage's eyes glinted with his own pride in the boy, who felt heard, and now seen. The elder had seen into his soul, seen who he truly was, and acknowledged it with his blessing.

Sam's eyes welled up. He had just passed through an initiation; he had bridged worlds and dimensions that night, by inviting these two archetypes to talk. The images of them were now burned in his mind and alive in his heart for ever. And powerful images they were - the joy of an innocent child; the wisdom and compassion of an elder; and all revealed in the eyes, those windows to the soul.

Sam looked at where he was. He had finished the four sides and was half way down the first side he had worked on, which needed clearing again. The blizzard had blown itself out and there was just a gentle fall of light snow. He began to sing again...another made up song. There was not only joy in his voice, but reverence too; and gratitude. He felt a new sense of self, and this radiated out into the world, into the night. As he sang, if you listened carefully, you could hear a faint drumming; the drums of a thousand ancestors were being played and echoed in the still night air.

When Sam had finished, the snow had stopped, and the faint light of dawn was just beginning to appear over the trees to the East. He felt tired; weary; but it was a good tired. Come on son, he said to his boy. He began walking back to his little cabin, and the sounds of three pairs of feet could be heard, crunching through the snow, one much smaller than the other two.

Sam took off his clothes once inside, crawled into bed, and fell asleep.

The Sage meanwhile, sat by his fire, stirring embers with a stick, as he looked out into the morning light with those patient, kind eyes, that had seen so much. The edges of his mouth curled up into a smile, and then sighed a long sigh. "Thank you!" Was all he said. "Thank you!"