Saraswati's kindness

The Devi who nurtures arts and sciences, radiant in white clothing, adept in music, is also modest and unassuming, choosing a white swan over the peacock as vahana. Praying to her and meditating on her has been lighting sparklers in my imagination, stories and stories that want to be written, from children's picture books to intense stories of people similar to and different from anyone I've known. As the lovely blog The Girl Inside has been inspiring me to consider issues of identity, illusion, and death in angelabocage.com, another facet of that inspiration has been to consider mahamaya differently. There are so many good reasons to tell stories, paint, compose and play music. Many of them have to do with offering others hope, cautioning others, comforting, frightening (like a dystopian-future story may seek to frighten us into saving our environment), or illustrating the common bonds transcending intergroup conflict. The world and time are similarly designed: artworks of brilliance and detail, like a painted scrim, a lighting sequence, a screaming guitar solo, an eerie pennywhistle intro, a horrible special effect wound, the pauses between an actor's words---out of the Devi's care and compassion for us. I have been thinking that each person's experience is so uniquely crafted from the world and time to make us strong, wise, and joyful, and able to have more and more to give.