Thursday, September 20, 2012

A Cultured Pearl

At Mabon I promised to be a sky arrow. The brightly shining, movement of purpose, golden, shooting across the sky, boldly flying toward the aimed goal—a thought, a word, a sound of meaning shooting across the sky.

Today a thought popped in my head, that I am becoming a cultured pearl. I was a piece of grit in an oyster in the mud. Through the trials, jostling, scrapes, and irritations of change, travel, and life lessons, that little piece of grit started to transform. Year after year, layers of shiny, smooth pearl casings have encapsulated and enhanced that grit. The bit of sand, in the mouth of an oyster becomes a pearl.

Margaret, the name from which my name is a derivative, means pearl. In this case though, the struggle has not been bad karma or even by chance. The struggles and lessons have been a part of the plan for without the irritation acting as the stimulus for the oyster, the pearl cannot be created. In oyster farming, the grit is implanted in the oyster to ensure the production of pearls.

Pearls are associated with Binah, the former of form, the giver of life and death. The pearl and its many layers are shells within shells, like the nesting doll form of an aura, the orbits of planets around suns, layers of atmosphere around planets, or even the electron shells of an atom. Amidst the great black womb of space, the shining, smooth, iridescence of a pearl emerges.

I know the mud
I know the sea
I know the sky
I shoot the bow of rain
I am a star falling, rising
And a cultured Pearl.