December 22nd: Ra Glows , The Morning After the Turning - Berta's Table
December 22nd: Ra's Glow, The Morning After the Turning -
Berta's Table
The morning after the solstice breaks clean and new. Light returns, pale gold across frost-touched fields, turning every breath into a wisp of silver.
Ra rises reborn, the scarab pushing the sun upward, the circle of life renewed. Ra is the light that fights the dark, the warmth that cradles the living, the child who carries ancient memory forward into the day.
At Berta’s Table, the dawn spills softly across the scarred pine. The wood catches the glow, each mark a quiet testament to what was endured and what was loved. Candle stubs still flicker, wine glows faintly red, and broken bread rests beside small bowls of dates and pomegranate seeds offered in silent promise. Roses open toward the light, and the faint scent of hay lingers, a gentle echo of the manger waiting.
The saints keep company with the living. Thérèse scatters roses, Rita holds her thorn now fully flowered into mercy, and Marietta claps her hands in childlike joy at the returning sun. Around the table sit the Grannies: Josephine Lockwood Elliott, Berta Keuchel Woywod, the Mayflower widows, the Prussian farmwives, and the many nameless women whose strength carried generations forward. Their hands link across the wood, forming a circle of light and memory, steady and alive.
Dates are passed from hand to hand, shared sweetness for the labor ahead. Pomegranate seeds glimmer on the table, small bright symbols of blessing and abundant life. They prepare for the birth to come, the child who will carry the first warmth of creation, the same light that has always turned night toward dawn.
These are the days of turning. What is no longer needed: fear, bitterness, regret- is gently folded and set aside. What must endure: mercy, laughter, steadfast love -is held close and warmed by every heart. The children step forward into the glow, reaching for the silver threads the elders have kept alive.
Then a brighter, warmer light fills the windows. It spreads across faces and hands, gentle yet unmistakable, calling everyone home from the long night.
Across the room, hearts lift in recognition. Farther out across the land, at The Exchange, those who have wandered long without that tie feel it too, a sudden warmth stirring in the chest, a memory of belonging returning like the dawn itself.
Kelly the Scotsman looks up from his place by the window and sees Selene the owl rise into the sunlight, her flight smooth and sure toward the rising gold. A quiet, knowing smile crosses his face.
The knowing spreads among them all: the child is coming, the light is calling us home, and the mother-heart remembers every one of us.
Voices rise softly, blending with the morning air. More chairs appear at the table as if drawn by the glow itself. Hands reach across the widening circle, and Mary's labor draws nearer, golden, radiant, and full of promise. In this light, no one is left outside. The door stands open. The table waits. The child is almost here, and every heart turns toward home.
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