Epiphany

Epiphany…and the lightest sprinkling of snow last night. I heard it. For a moment it felt like someone was in my flat with me. Like something very gentle had suddenly fallen…just one, isolated sound. And then I thought to myself “It’s snow” as I turned over and went back to sleep. And later, on rising, and seeing the sprinkling of white in the park below, I remembered the thought and the feeling in the night. How curious…the sense of knowing that it was snow. And with that memory came another memory, from a few years before. The wordless video. The darkness. The desire to share the feeling of wonder…of walking alone, in the Magical Kingdom, suddenly white.

And then another memory came quickly on its heels, from many, many years before. The silent waking in the night. The quiet stealing out of bed and that fairytale feeling of “the whole house…No…the Whole World is alseep!…And I have the run of it!”. No-one else to give mind to. No-one demanding my attention or requiring my obedience. No-one. Just the silence. The silence so profound and deep. So full of something. Not a muffled something. But a deeper, fuller something…more than normal silence. A comforting, enveloping, all-blanketing silence.

And then the dawning of awareness that there was also light. Although it was still dark and the whole house was held in darkness, there was also a strange light. A strong, illuminating, multi-coloured, intriguingly-melded blue and green and faint purple and turquoise, bejewelled light. Filling the house and coming in through the windows and, with it, came the silent call of it. And the pure fascination of wanting to see and understand what it was and where it came from, and how it could fill the whole house with its presence in the middle of the night…in the middle of the darkness…drew me to it.

And, venturing cautiously, quietly downstairs with my tiny feet, it called me to the window…and there…laid out before me, in sparkling splendour…a carpet, a blanket, a complete covering of snow. Transformative. Magical. In just a few, dark, sleeping hours, a wonder from the sky had fallen silently while we all slept, and covered everything. The coming together of so many tiny flakes. Each one with its own configuration. Each one with its own personal composition and so many tiny arms, all different. All somehow able to fall silently, playfully, purposefully and yet effortlessly together.

Heaven-sent emissaries of collective peace and calm and cooling, refreshing, invigorating, playful, silent, swirling Life…and still, capable of binding together, bonding together, in all their difference…so naturally. No rational reasoning or wilfull design of any individual self involved. But binding and bonding nonetheless, and forming a visual and enlightening miracle of natural, silent wonder…in the dark hours…as the distant, busy, demanding world still slumbered on.

And most wonderful of all…the Moonlight. High above. Bringing each tiny flake alive to shimmer and shine, and to glisten and gleam, and to be crowned with that glorious, multi-coloured sparkle that spoke volumes of wisdom and comfort and creation and Love…without the use of a single, spoken word.

And the synergy of the coming-together in that moment…The Moon, so hidden in the vastness of the daylight-filled sky, doing just what it was naturally born to do in the darkest hours…to shine and to reflect the source of the Light closest to itself…the Sun…and to be that source of light for each and every tiny flake. Allowing each one to sparkle in its own uniquely-crafted way. And to call to us silently “Awaken from your sleep”…for this is Epiphany.