The Mills of the Gods

A friend recently wrote a letter in which she referenced a favorite quote from her mother:

“The mills of the Gods grind slowly.”

This is a helpful reminder. If you have faith, as I do, that there are forces in other worlds that are trying to keep balance in the human drama and nudge us toward our better possibilities, if you believe that truth, beauty and justice still matter, it has certainly been trying times to sustain such faith. Other wheels run by lies, greed, denial, mean-spiritedness, ignorance and purposeful feeding of ignorance, intentional brainwashing, out and out hatred, have been churning, churning and sweeping up far too many citizens with the power to vote to keep it all going. When they win, everyone—and everything— loses.

And then the midterm elections came like a welcome rain after a devastating fire. There’s a shift in the wind and we can hear again the churning of the other wheels, the ones that the mills of the Gods are using to give us our daily bread in all its whole grain splendor (with gluten-free alternatives, of course). It is such an uplift to breathe fresh air after all the smoke of deception, to renew one’s faith that we collectively can be better than we have been and that the gods have not abandoned us. A time to relax for a few breaths and then keep the pressure on, co-participate in the god’s mills to keep advocating, keep vigilant, keep educating, throw the Tea Party into the harbor and do our part to assist the gods. There is an old Irish saying that what is broken in this world can only be fixed by those in the other world and what is broken in the other world—all those restless souls and wandering ghosts who have never been properly mourned or had their story told—can only be fixed by those in this world. The baking of the bread that sustains both worlds is a collective enterprise.

So the mills of the Gods may grind slowly, but thank goodness, they are grinding still and that’s what counts. Pass the butter, please.