Exposed

Cabbage Roses

Who is this old woman following me around and why?   I don't recognize her yet she seems oddly familiar.  She's tiny and wrinkled with dark gray hair neatly wrapped in a bun.  She is wearing an old  green shawl over a faded dark dress.  She stoops over as she walks and has to use a cane.  She has a curious smile like one in possession of a secret and dark blue eyes that penetrate you to the core.  She tells me she lives in a small cottage with a thatched roof and dark red shutters and behind her cottage is a small pond.  In the fall geese land on it and in the spring it throbs with the throaty sound of bull frogs.  In the front yard is a towering oak tree whom she calls "Wyllie."  She points and I look to see wood smoke rising from the  kitchen chimney, curling up into the still air.  The smell of oak logs burning has always made me feel warm and contented.    There's a little flower garden in the front yard filled with Cabbage Roses, Hollyhocks, Rosemary, Monkshood and Lady's Mantle, flowers that I would have planted in my own garden.  An old stone walkway leads up to the house.  She turns me around and suddenly I find myself at the front door, gently pushing it open.  A large and spacious room greets me and immediately I sense the happiness here.  Toward the back of the room is the kitchen, heavy with smells of pungent herbs.  There is venison stew cooking in a black cauldron in the fireplace and bunches of herbs are hanging as they dry on a heavy oak beam.  There is a very settled feeling here, like this place has been around for a very long time.  The birds are happily  twittering nearby.  In the distance are rolling hills with cows grazing and on one hill, the remains of a castle.  I can see and hear shrieking sounds of laughter and delight as children run in and out of its archways, down its long corridors playing hide and seek, tug of war and leapfrog.  Girls lay out their cups and saucers on slabs of stone and drink tea with their siblings and play with their poppets.   This is a scene I remember from long ago and realize the old woman talking to me was me, hundreds of years ago.  "Time is an illusion," she says.  There is no Time.  All are part of a thread that weaves its way in and out of the universe, stitching us together.  No matter when we were born, no matter where we were born, all are part of the Whole.  A Divine blueprint nudging us forward in awareness and understanding.  The universe is like the rose, unfolding to reveal her beauty, exposing the Divine Feminine lying within."