The first unfoldings of a story

A little while ago I received a beautiful message, a message asking me to create a wonder-filled story, a message of deep appreciation and generous trust in my artistry and my listening relationship with the magical beings.

This message came from a dear mother, who had been looking through the pictures of the years of my work and had fallen in love with a previous cyclical tale of a story teller who listens to what the children tell her of their joys in nature and weaves them back into the world, for children to find anew.

The original story can be found here.
https://magicfairylady.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-story-tellers-dwelling.html

I was at first a little nervous at being asked to create from a similar place, but with the assurance that the atmosphere and frame of that previous story could be used as a ground of inspiration with no expectation of duplication, I felt deeply warmed by this request and found myself breathing deeply with enchantment, my heart full, as I began.

And this beginning, which I share with you now, came of itself so bountifully after I had let it sit with me… germinating ….rising …..becoming what it would.

One afternoon the words and images began to want to spill themselves so I opened an old sketch pad that my mother had given me because it had a few empty pages left in it.

But instead of an empty page I opened onto a rosy warmth, left by my mother, and this felt like the most perfect place to lay some of the first words of the Summer part of the story.

As I wrote in messy curves the archetypal female form in nature welcomed my sense of lap and gathering, of sun in stone, of reverence and reverie. And then, when the words were as much there as they wanted to be, the opposite page with its smudge of pastel pinks and yellows beckoned and there this story-teller showed her face, and in her expression was everything that I had felt of her.

 And then from the curl of the movement of the her hair came the puppet play of a child, the dance, in time, of tiny friends and insects with their gifts.

When I looked at these pages I felt a expansive gratitude to the magical beings who were willing to come into this creation and also a small trepidation and concern for whether I would be able to do justice to this story teller in cloth. Then I breathed deeply with her and was reminded that her essence was with me and that would shine through however she grew into cloth and stitches.

But before I had time to sit with her and sew, a feeling of Spring’s story came to me, and there three pages from the summer warmth was a pastel page of spring green. And here into spring came courage and rhythm, and water and movement bursting forth. And then came the frame, just the sense of the winter before the spring and lastly autumn’s nourishing gratitude.

 I still haven’t told my mother about this serendipitous coming across and use of her left-over seasonal beginnings, I know that she will be so happy, but I couldn’t show anyone any of it until the story teller was more strongly here.

And amazingly, after another time of dreaming sleep, she is coming, she has shown herself and my fingers and seeing have found her and heard her and love her. And we have played in the garden weaving summer into her hair.

So today as I share this beginning with you, with joy, I  trust that you will have a sense of the magic of all this happening, and I am full of thankfulness for the possibility offered by such a kindred request and by the holding which all of you have given over all these years, that I might be here, doing what I love, in conversations with the magical ones.