The Other Side

Spring                                                              Planting Moon

The rest of the night went well.  I dreamt of Gods and movement among the gods, adventures on strange landscapes.  There was, too, a series of dreams that saw fruit as the clear solution to most problems.  Sounds hokey I know, but it was more a healthful living trumps disease sort of thing.  And last a way to attain enough resources to always be ready.  For anything.

(Edward Robert Hughes, On the Wings of Morning)

As I write this list, I can see that my mind moved from the pit to the heavens, from the thin dressing of soil over the chthonic to life on the plains of this earth, our place, our true heaven, not far away and out there, but here among the fruits and resources and gods we already have.

It’s not, you see, that those first dreams had it wrong.  Death is a trapdoor that opens beneath each one of us, dropping us either out of existence altogether or into the next realm.  And the unknowable aspect of death bares the teeth of an unseen beast, whether friendly or not, we do not know.

It is not death itself that is the source of the fear, though it seems so.  Rather, it is the fear of what death brings in its wake.  And that fear is ours.  Not essential.  And since it is ours we can head into it, face it, embrace it and be lifted up.  If we dare.