Gateway

 Each day I draw rune, a small stone engraved with an oracular symbol, from a grey velvet pouch filled with twenty such stones - not as a fortune-telling device, but as a way to focus my meditation. Last year, I kept a record in my journal, labeling that journal as My Life in Runes. Yes, that was a play on the word "ruins." I was somewhat lost in sad past events, and needed to get a little perspective. The runes helped me do that. 

Today, I started a new journal and drew one rune: Dagaz, the Gateway. This symbol asks one to imagine standing on a hill, looking down and back at all that has gone before to bring you to this point: the joys and lessons, the victories and sorrows. Once they are all brought to mind, bless and release them. Only then can one pass through the gate leading from earth to heaven. So, today I bless all of my earth-bound mistakes, life lessons, fears, injuries, grand adventures, and infinite joys and I set them free. For two years, I have ruminated on these things. Now it is time to open the gate and step through. It is time to reclaim my power. I'm put in mind of the Flammarion wood engraving or a William Blake etching - lifting the veil of one universe (the veil of perception,) and peeking through at another. Ah.... what next? A quiet rumbling of excitement stirs in my marrow. A New Era begins.  
~ cfd