Now The Green Blade Rises (+playlist)

The Raven that Refused to Sing by Steven Wilson

This is the story of a man who loses his sister at an early age and becomes embittered and reclusive. He believes that the soul of his sister may have entered into the personage of a raven, which he tries to imprison so that it will sing for him whenever he needs it. The raven refuses to sing and it is only in setting it free at his sister's behest that the darkness is banished.

Mistrust. About trust.

Have we had this one before? It's worth repeating anyway:

Mistrust    Rainer Maria Rilke

We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us. If there are dangers, we must try to love them, and only if we could arrange our lives in accordance with the principle that tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us to be alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

How could we forget those ancient-myths that stand at the beginning of all races—the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you larger than any you've ever seen, if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows moves over your hands and everything that you do. You must realize that something has happened to you. Life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hands and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Veni Veni Emmanuel

First Sunday: Happy Advent!