Hi Paul - just wanting to let you know how much your story moved me.
Are you the same Paul Levy who has written books on deep
psychology/spirituality? Sara
Dear all
Wishing you a happy winter season, Christmas (if you celebrate it) and
fulfilling New Year.
Below is a little winter tale for Christmas. I wrote it last year - it
is essentially about self-organisation in Nature, particularly
enjoying the essential notion of "self".
I hope you enjoy it.
warm wishes
Paul Levy
*The Tale of the Squirrel*
In the heart of the Ashdown Forest stands one of the oldest Oak Trees
in England. Here, Winter settles with its full force, a moon-white
frost lying at dawn until the November sun is high over the Kent
horizon, teasing its way through the thick canopy of trees, bereft of
leaves in the late Autumn cold.
The Oak tree is home to several families of grey squirrels who burrow
through crackling leaves and cold, damp moss hillocks, and mazes of
overgrown roots.
Here, a squirrel of some six summers was foraging for acorns, building
his store for the coming winter, which would bring no snow but much
icy rain and chilling winds which would whip through the forest,
creating fern-swirls, and a furious circle-dance of brown leaves.Â
The Squirrel already had a place to shelter through the winter though,
since the warming of the land around, his hibernation would be in fits
and starts. Nevertheless, it is secret place of cosy, warmth.
Squirrels, more than any other animal in the forest, can feel cosiness.
On this day, the 30th of November, Winter’s approach is keenly felt
by the animals inhabiting the ancient forest, and the Old Oak knows it
in its root and sap.
/
/
/But something terrible has happened./
The Squirrel of Six Summers who, if he had a name, would be called Mr
Curious, for that would best enfold his particular nature and
behaviour, is in trouble. Whilst foraging among the roots at the foot
of the Great Oak, a branch has fallen, weakened the night before by a
pair of barn owls, resting on their flight back to the farm buildings
near Hoathly Hill.
The squirrel’s back leg is trapped – not broken – but Mr Curious
cannot move. For many hours, since the earliest moment of dawn, Mr
Curious has lain, wrapped in a clammy coat of fear, unable to move,
now feeling the chill in his tiny bones. All about him rove fellow
squirrels; they look at him, noses twitching in the icy air,
indifferent to his anguish. In a few days, if the little creature
cannot free himself, he’ll be finished, and there’ll be more
acorns for his fellows to store for the coming Winter season.
Mr Curious pulls and pulls, trying to free his leg, but it is no use.
His companions would try to free him, but it is not in their nature to
serve each other so. Their love is in their fur, not their hearts, and
they cannot direct it, except in the early days of bringing forth
their kith and kin in the dream of golden Spring.
Now, it has begun to rain, and grey Mr Curious is hungry and shivering
with the growing chill. Night is approaching and there will be other
fears to be curious about.
Now listen, and you might hear it!. (Though you’ll hear only its
effects, in the subtle change in the wind’s cry, or the quickening
of the rustle of oaken branches). Something is flying through the air,
trunk-height, fast as a forest fairy, though not a fairy. Usually they
do not fly so low; they drop, like falling stars, tearing past the
sunlit side of the moon, arcing earthwards. They find their mark like
a homing bird, or Cupid’s arrow. Their light can be seen, if you
still all of your concerns, a flash of yellow gold in the corner of
your eye. They are like wisps, though they fly with more purpose,
there is no hint of drifting about them.
/For this is the soul of a young girl, a babe not yet born, finding
its way from the fixed stars, looping around the near planets, past
the milky moon, then plunging to earth, before speeding through the
clear night air to the union of its mother- and father-to-be, the
moment where spirit spark ignites passion, and the universe is
realised once again, through the alchemy of the One in All./
Through Ashdown Forest, you’d see the beam of golden light, flashing
through the trees and skimming below the branches, just above the line
of ferns and gorse bushes. The shimmering sprite-form travels quicker
than sound, though slower than light, and would dance past the great
Oak Tree, oblivious to the plight of poor Mr Curious, his bushy grey
tail now sodden and bedraggled in the driving rain of November.
Dance past it would, but it halts in its flight of purpose; for a
fleeting moment it stays its course. For each soul, coming to
conception is unique, bearing with it its own unfolding story. And
this soul bears, amid its bright-golden sheen, a hint of violet, the
hue of compassion.
As the spirit-child stops, mid-air, the rain ceases its fall, droplets
hanging like jewels on a chandelier. The air itself comes to peace,
and a golden light spreads over the Old Oak, across the leafy mulch,
over the little grey squirrel in pain, and through the hearts of a
host of squirrels nearby. In the time it takes for two lovers to kiss,
and to share their love into the creation of another universe,
compassion enters the glade of Ashdown forest, and Christmas comes early.
Then the rain splashes down once more and the light is gone, on its
way to his goal, the wind angrily reclaims its rightful place on the
air, and whipping up a storm about the Old Oak.
But if you were a wood-elf, you’d be in your bower, and spy
something very strange and wonderful. As the golden soul flies towards
a warm bed of two lovers, three grey squirrels are kicking with their
back legs at the fallen branch, riding its circularity, like beavers
on a log, floating on a river, and the heavy wood is rolling away from
Mr Curious, freeing his bruised but otherwise unharmed little back
left leg, and he is able to scramble free.
In those few moments, four squirrels are aware of their true
compassion, awake now, in heart and tiny head, they are nuzzling
around each other and making tiny noises that would sound to a
storyteller like laughter and chatter.
Then their noses twitch in the wind, ears turn in heads keen and alert
for nearby forest noises heard on the breeze, and they gather up
acorns in their mouth-pouches, and scamper their separate ways, in
search of their cosy leaf and fern beds, warm and safe in the
approaching winter’s night.
The End
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