I sprawl on the harvested corn field, the ground underneath my back rocky and unforgiving, waiting for the Northern Lights to rain radiance down onto the Earth. Those iridescent, prismatic ghosts arrayed in emeralds and sapphires, rubies and amethysts are, to me, the essence of the marvel and amazement of the universe. Still, this evening, the soil’s rich fragrance also reminds me that deep below the Earth’s surface the bones of human ancestors, of mighty herds, of tribes of birds as well as decaying blossoms and leaves, fungi and lichen, are all making fertile humus for next spring’s regeneration. They, too, lived beneath the Lights’ glow once. Did anyone from their time also stare skyward and wonder how to meet the moment in their own era of turmoil and challenge, as I do today? Will future generations be able to find their way to this remote place to do the same?
For a moment, a mighty cloud of green and purple dazzles in shimmering leaps, then vanishes. When my eyes adjust again to the sky’s inky blackness, I spy a tiny cottage with a small candle in the window. Though I don’t know who dwells within, I feel as if the shelter holds a dear member of my family and I enter in.
As I cross the threshold, I am thrust into a maelstrom of everything that has ever happened on the field, all occurring at once. Microbes simmer in a pool of water. An ocean covers the land and in it swim fish the like of which have not been seen on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years. A forest rises hosting animals of all kinds and sizes. Humans live in harmony with each other, non-humans, and the land, giving and receiving with love and gratitude (is this past or future?). Other humans break their sacred trusts and each war, each plague, each desecration of the land and its living beings, each crushing grief, betrayal, and act of treachery plays out in front of my eyes (is this past or future?). Layer upon layer of historical eras intertwine and overlay each other. The cacophony is overwhelming. I rush out and slam the door.
A moment later, a woman opens the door. She is of indeterminate age with long hair, tattoos, jewelry made from natural materials, and a woven skirt, shirt, and shawl that could have been worn in many centuries. “I’m so sorry,” She says. “I forgot that you humans may not fully be able to exist comfortably outside of time. My mistake.”
She opens the door wider and I see that the inside is now a typical cottage of a couple of centuries ago with a rudely made wood floor strewn with herbs giving off a delightful fragrance as I walked across them, a small table with two chairs, a cot for a bed, a large cupboard, a spinning wheel that seems to oddly glow, and a cauldron in the fireplace. The woman takes one of the chairs and motions me to sit in the other. She smiles and says “I’ve been waiting for you. But, of course, you already know that.” And, somehow, I do.
“Let’s try to explain this another way,” She says, and beside her a colossal rectangular cake appears. She cuts out the tiniest possible little piece, leaving a gap, and places it on a plate in front of me. “Happy Birthday!” she said. “
“Actually, it’s not my birthday, but thank you anyway,” I say. The minuscule piece grows to humungous size and I take a bite and moan with pleasure.
“You’re welcome. Actually, every day is your birthday. Birthdays as you think of them depend on defining yourself only as an inhabitant of one day in linear time, but in this place you are of all eras, outside of time. So every day is your birthday.”
“I see,” I reply, though I was still a little confused. “Who are you exactly?” I tried to ask in a pleasant and not contentious or judgmental tone.
“I am the Keeper of No Time and I arrived here on the sweep of the Northern Lights you just saw,” She replies. We stare at each other in silence for a moment because, well, what could one say after hearing that? Finally, she explains. “You were just wondering what you should do to respond appropriately to your moment in history. I know a lot of people think that the answer to this question is only revealed to a somehow more enlightened elite after several lifetimes of seeking. But, really, everything you need to know is all around you, right now. There is, in fact, nothing else that you know better.”
I was puzzled.
“Remember that maelstrom you just saw? I showed you that to remind you that your lifetime is just a tiny instant in the existence of even just this field. If you step outside of it and see all eras all at once, you notice that there have been a million both joyful and challenging times. You and humanity do not stand alone at this moment. You are joined by generations of humans and non-humans over the hundreds of millennia who have faced what seem like insurmountable disasters and still survived and thrived,” She says.
“But that doesn’t mean you can just give up and assume all will end up well, so I made you this cake that is the maelstrom, but shown in your more familiar linear time. Your particular piece of cake is your life. It is meant to be sweet, to be nourishing, to help you enjoy your life on Earth but also make it possible to fulfill your mission. The short span of your life and your influence on the world may seem tiny to you, but to the matrix of all life, you are vital and profound. Your life holds together the entire universe. Without you, there would be no connection between past, present, and future, creating an uncrossable gap in the great cake of life on the planet, as it were.
“It’s up to you to do your part to make sure that humanity makes it past that gap, and that is an awe-inspiring responsibility. But, think about all the beauty, care and compassion, courage, wisdom, creativity, sacrifice and toil that humans have brought to the world over the millennia no matter how bad the circumstances. All that is what you are capable of and have for the asking inside of you to address the trials of your time.” I smile at the reassurance of human relevance and resilience, hoping, but still somewhat doubting, that She is correct.
“But how will we know what to do to make sure that our planet continues for the next generation? What if I m never able to fill my gap in the cake with what the world needs?” I ask.
“Oh, I have absolute faith that you will figure it out,” She replies.
“Are you showing me all this because I have some special talent? Some special destiny?”
“Oh my heavens, no. You are just as delightfully ordinary as everyone else. It is because you simply asked,” She said. “Well, it is time you were on your way. My ride home is coming,” She said, stepping out of the cottage that vanished as she closed the door behind her.. She held onto one of the Northern Lights and rose into the sky as both dissipated into the night.
The taste of the cake is still in my mouth. Life is indeed sweet but now I understand that this delight is a gift, and one that reciprocity requires that I must repay in the years, months, or days that I have left. But I am still baffled as to how. What exactly am I to do? Why didn’t She just simply say “do this, then do that, and top it all off with this”? How much easier for both of us if She had?
A hare runs past, brushing my leg. She runs into the underbrush, doing exactly what she needs to do to support the overall balance of the ecosystem. She has an intuitive expertise in fulfilling her mission just by being completely who she is.
I turn my eyes to the display of cosmic majesty over my head, knowing that across the world people have forgotten their daily chores, put away their worries, and gone outside to look up. I consider that the Northern Lights come from solar storms, of course, and so have their cause and purpose in the working of our planet and atmosphere. But do they have to be so breathtaking, so massively colorful that we humans marvel in wonder, so perfectly within our visual range that we can see every illuminated glorious hue and feel a renewed sense of love for the Earth? And did they have to emerge so strongly just when we, as a species, need inspiration? Like the hare, the Northern Lights know what to do just by being exactly what they were created to be.
I wait for more Lights, but it seems as if they have finished their work and disappeared for the night. I still do not know exactly what my orders are, but I realize that the Keeper, like all the best spirit guides, will not tell me what to do. But She will always remind me of who I am, of who we all are, and that if we will just look to our special gifts, we will know how to proceed. And that must be enough.