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A happy spring to each one of you! Where many of you live, spring may not be showing her face just yet, but here in the desert, she is her usual glorious self. March is the month of wildflowers here, and gold/orange poppies, blue lupine, yellow desert marigolds, tiny violet blossoms and myriad other flowers are rejoicing in the sun.
 
All of which, for some reason, has me remembering the very first time I visited the Glen. I didn’t know much about it then, and didn’t know I would become apprentice to Owl, but I did love the beauty and the depth of what I’d already experienced with the Tales from the Glen.
 
What struck me most forcibly on that first visit was simply observing the way the animals live with each other. I’m not going to detail what I saw, because now The Awakening Tales are available and you will be making your own discoveries. So I encourage you just to observe the animals. We have much to learn from what they don’t say or don’t do, as well as their more obvious teachings. Paying attention to that unspoken level of the Tales is rewarding indeed.
 
It was on a subsequent visit to the Glen that I met Owl for the first time. He was so dignified that at first I wasn’t sure how to approach him. But in his kindness he welcomed me and inquired if he could help me. I had many questions, mostly specific about how the Glen came into being, how the animals had gathered there, and who was about what, and exactly what everything meant. Owl listened patiently, but he didn’t answer my questions.
 
Instead, he led me to the Crystal Pool and invited me to look deep into the water. He said it would help me find the Glen in my own heart and then I wouldn’t need answers to those kinds of questions. And the point of it all, Owl said gently, was that I could only live my way into understanding the Glen, not “figure it out,” as I wanted to do.
 
So I spent quite a while at the edge of the Crystal Pool, gazing and looking, looking and gazing. It was so peaceful. Soon I felt a great gratitude and it was more than enough.
 
When I returned home, I found a quotation on my desk that hadn’t been there before. Here it is: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.” (It’s from Rilke.)
 
And, gradually, I have found it to be true. Perhaps you’ll join me sometimes in this way of being with the Tales.