esson 15: The Lady of the Lake

   
fter my experience with the Moon, I am a bit dazed. All is suspended for a time as I (lose, then) gather my wits. Finally, I follow the stream--meandering, directionless, going with the flow. I see two cranes flying overhead, also following the stream. There is wisdom in nature and if the only living creatures I see are going downstream, I'm going too.

   After seeming *weeks* of trudging through these marshes, I see even more water ahead, in the form of a lake. But before I reach the lake proper, I encounter a Mystery Woman. My heart rushes out to her in love and awe, yet I still feel a bit of trepidation. (loving fear? we're not worthy?) I notice an odd arc in the sky--a line of demarcation between the overhead blue and the darker west. I get a rush from a sudden vision of the entire sky as a rainbow from east to west, spanning 12 times zones. All the colors of sunrise to midday to sunset bending over the curve of the world. I wonder if the Earth, when seen from space, ever flashes colors like a diamond.

   I look at the Lady and smile and say, "Blessings." A statement of fact, a wish and a greeting combined.
   "Yes, blessings, Moonchild!" she responds. Her smile is a bit wry. She asks what wisdom I am currently fostering, but I think I am all unwisdom. I don't practice what I preach. I don't even try. I espouse lofty ideas and ideals, but in the end I continue to act selfishly. I get pulled into sin by my own desires, and let it happen, and even encourage it. One example: I smoke. The only wisdom I can claim is that everything is true and nothing is true, and I don't know the difference. I'm wise in seeing that I know nothing. I know that "should" is easy until "want" appears. As wise Solomon said, "All is vanity."

   "Ah, the Moonchild," she says, "constantly changing from dark to light to dark again. So many costumes for a child. But it is your nature--your strength and your weakness."

   Nature, hmm? I take some mud and fashion a doll-child. Placing it in the basket by her side, I ask her to rear the child, to help it grow in wisdom, and to let "little Moses" come back with Ten Commandments.

   "Of course I will foster this child, and bring it to maturity." She reaches into the folds of her robe, and offers an object to me. It's a trinket of purest silver in the shape of an "X".

   "Ten is the number of completeness," she says, "and X marks the spot."

   The moonlight glances off the center, and I see the flash of a rainbow . . .