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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi Paul - just wanting to let you know
how much your story moved me. Are you the same Paul Levy who has
written books on deep psychology/spirituality? Sara<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAAnJsbCWbZjT_Jqt89Dpvdp4idsMCZq2DLe=+naox0myzVJmOQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Dear all
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Wishing you a happy winter season, Christmas (if you
celebrate it) and fulfilling New Year.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Below is a little winter tale for Christmas. I wrote it
last year - it is essentially about self-organisation in
Nature, particularly enjoying the essential notion of "self".</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I hope you enjoy it.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>warm wishes</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Paul Levy</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>The Tale of the Squirrel</b></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>In the heart of the Ashdown Forest stands one of the
oldest Oak Trees in England. Here, Winter settles with its
full force, a moon-white frost lying at dawn until the
November sun is high over the Kent horizon, teasing its way
through the thick canopy of trees, bereft of leaves in the
late Autumn cold.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The Oak tree is home to several families of grey
squirrels who burrow through crackling leaves and cold, damp
moss hillocks, and mazes of overgrown roots.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Here, a squirrel of some six summers was foraging for
acorns, building his store for the coming winter, which
would bring no snow but much icy rain and chilling winds
which would whip through the forest, creating fern-swirls,
and a furious circle-dance of brown leaves. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The Squirrel already had a place to shelter through the
winter though, since the warming of the land around, his
hibernation would be in fits and starts. Nevertheless, it is
secret place of cosy, warmth. Squirrels, more than any other
animal in the forest, can feel cosiness.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>On this day, the 30th of November, Winter’s approach is
keenly felt by the animals inhabiting the ancient forest,
and the Old Oak knows it in its root and sap.</div>
<div><i><br>
</i></div>
<div><i>But something terrible has happened.</i></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The Squirrel of Six Summers who, if he had a name, would
be called Mr Curious, for that would best enfold his
particular nature and behaviour, is in trouble. Whilst
foraging among the roots at the foot of the Great Oak, a
branch has fallen, weakened the night before by a pair of
barn owls, resting on their flight back to the farm
buildings near Hoathly Hill.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The squirrel’s back leg is trapped – not broken –
but Mr Curious cannot move. For many hours, since the
earliest moment of dawn, Mr Curious has lain, wrapped in a
clammy coat of fear, unable to move, now feeling the chill
in his tiny bones. All about him rove fellow squirrels; they
look at him, noses twitching in the icy air, indifferent to
his anguish. In a few days, if the little creature cannot
free himself, he’ll be finished, and there’ll be more
acorns for his fellows to store for the coming Winter
season.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Mr Curious pulls and pulls, trying to free his leg, but
it is no use. His companions would try to free him, but it
is not in their nature to serve each other so. Their love is
in their fur, not their hearts, and they cannot direct it,
except in the early days of bringing forth their kith and
kin in the dream of golden Spring.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Now, it has begun to rain, and grey Mr Curious is hungry
and shivering with the growing chill. Night is approaching
and there will be other fears to be curious about.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Now listen, and you might hear it!. (Though you’ll hear
only its effects, in the subtle change in the wind’s cry,
or the quickening of the rustle of oaken branches).
Something is flying through the air, trunk-height, fast as a
forest fairy, though not a fairy. Usually they do not fly so
low; they drop, like falling stars, tearing past the sunlit
side of the moon, arcing earthwards. They find their mark
like a homing bird, or Cupid’s arrow. Their light can be
seen, if you still all of your concerns, a flash of yellow
gold in the corner of your eye. They are like wisps, though
they fly with more purpose, there is no hint of drifting
about them.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><i>For this is the soul of a young girl, a babe not yet
born, finding its way from the fixed stars, looping around
the near planets, past the milky moon, then plunging to
earth, before speeding through the clear night air to the
union of its mother- and father-to-be, the moment where
spirit spark ignites passion, and the universe is realised
once again, through the alchemy of the One in All.</i></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Through Ashdown Forest, you’d see the beam of golden
light, flashing through the trees and skimming below the
branches, just above the line of ferns and gorse bushes. The
shimmering sprite-form travels quicker than sound, though
slower than light, and would dance past the great Oak Tree,
oblivious to the plight of poor Mr Curious, his bushy grey
tail now sodden and bedraggled in the driving rain of
November.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Dance past it would, but it halts in its flight of
purpose; for a fleeting moment it stays its course. For each
soul, coming to conception is unique, bearing with it its
own unfolding story. And this soul bears, amid its
bright-golden sheen, a hint of violet, the hue of
compassion.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>As the spirit-child stops, mid-air, the rain ceases its
fall, droplets hanging like jewels on a chandelier. The air
itself comes to peace, and a golden light spreads over the
Old Oak, across the leafy mulch, over the little grey
squirrel in pain, and through the hearts of a host of
squirrels nearby. In the time it takes for two lovers to
kiss, and to share their love into the creation of another
universe, compassion enters the glade of Ashdown forest, and
Christmas comes early.</div>
<div>Then the rain splashes down once more and the light is
gone, on its way to his goal, the wind angrily reclaims its
rightful place on the air, and whipping up a storm about the
Old Oak.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>But if you were a wood-elf, you’d be in your bower, and
spy something very strange and wonderful. As the golden soul
flies towards a warm bed of two lovers, three grey squirrels
are kicking with their back legs at the fallen branch,
riding its circularity, like beavers on a log, floating on a
river, and the heavy wood is rolling away from Mr Curious,
freeing his bruised but otherwise unharmed little back left
leg, and he is able to scramble free.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In those few moments, four squirrels are aware of their
true compassion, awake now, in heart and tiny head, they are
nuzzling around each other and making tiny noises that would
sound to a storyteller like laughter and chatter.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Then their noses twitch in the wind, ears turn in heads
keen and alert for nearby forest noises heard on the breeze,
and they gather up acorns in their mouth-pouches, and
scamper their separate ways, in search of their cosy leaf
and fern beds, warm and safe in the approaching winter’s
night.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The End</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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