Nightless night at Midsummer

 

The symbol of Midsummer in Finland has always been the birch tree, at least to me. The old tradition is that on Midsummer Eve you go to the woods and take a couple of young birches and fix them standing on both sides of your porch. They look so new and fresh at that time of the year and the scent is absolutely beautiful. 

You also make a bundle of the fresh twigs to use them in the Midsummer night sauna to sofly slap your skin with it in the heat. It revives your circulation and relieves you of all the stress in the muscles. 

If you are not a Finn you might abhor even the idea of this ritual. 

But imagine, a clear light night in the countryside, the sun doesnt't set, at a crystal clear lake. Bathing in the silent sauna, only listening the the hiss of the hot rocks on the stove, the scent of the young birch and the relaxing heat that washes away all the worries from your mind... then dipping into the soft and cool lake water. 

I can assure you, this is the moment on my mind when I see a leaf of a birch tree...

When I first saw these agate leaves in a bead store, this is why I just had to buy them. I knew at the same time that I would use them together with the mountain crystals that I had.

The sand polished crystals were like dew drops and the shining silver chain as bright as the light summer night. Looking at the finished necklace, I can feel the scent and the coolness of the tiny drops in my mind. 

Black isn't all black - for me

I sometimes feel as if everything around me is just blurred,
pure disappointment, no hope for tomorrow.
When that happens it's impossible to believe the people around me
saying how many beautiful things there are to be seen.
Everything just seems out of focus.

Even all the great things that there were, are now in ashes, gone for ever.

No matter if you look forward or back,
 you only see your life  as scattered, black beads on rugged, crevassed stone.
Bigger and smaller failures, all of them.
When you try to catch the beads to put them back in a string,
they keep slipping away.

But if you are willing to take the effort,
you can see something else in the same picture.
Look again and you will see the shapes and hues,
the glitter in the ash.
When you surrender and free your mind
from the chains of sorrow and self-pity you are able to see...

...what is it, that you see now?...

 I saw the shapes and shades that were similar to the burnt waste 

but the message was different. Is it different for you too?

Try to put the black beads of your life on a different background 

and you will see something extraordinary...

even colors may appear!

Then take still another angle and you never know, you could even see a whole new perspective!

Someone once said: "Life is hard and then you die". 

Does it really have to be that way? 

For, someone else said "The happiest people can be found in clay cottages"...

I think we can choose our attitude to the black beads of life. 

I can't change the fact that the wonderful, white pieces of smoking wood are now burnt to ashes but I can choose what I see in the ash. 

What do you choose?