Be Brave

 

Shores of Avalon

By Tina Malia

Be brave my love

The time has come

To cross the Tintagel Sea

The fragrant air, the apple blossoms

Have all been beckoning

And there we'll stand

Looking out upon the world that we've known

All fear will be gone

When we reach the shores of Avalon.

 

You'll be greeted there

By maidens fair

With eyes of the royal sea

In the garden they will braid your hair

With violets and rosemary

And there we'll stand

Looking out upon the world that we've known

All fear will be gone

When we reach the shores of Avalon

 

Feel the wind on your face

As we cross the stormy sea

Close your eyes, don't look back

There's nothing left to see

 

The other night you came to me

Like an angel you appeared

And we climbed the endless sky

And held each other near

And there we'll stand

Looking out upon the world that we've known

All fear will be gone

When we reach the shores of Avalon

 

Be brave my love...

 

There are wars and the utter silences after.  We know instinctively when things are at an end.  This is the moment, the reckoning.  These moments cleave the present and the future:  it is and then it becomes something more and life moves on.

 

So all fear goes.  We take comfort in how many moments there have been as Earth loops endlessly around the sun.

 

Keep looking on.  What's done is done and gone.  Let it go; it was never ours to hold anyway.  We are but travelers in this land, ghosts that pass through and beyond.

 

Mythology teaches us the mysteries of this life.  These are the fundamental stories.  What do we learn?  Violence is our nature, and we must resist it; wars are inevitable; they are costly, and they rob us of our sons and daughters, and in the end, our humanity.  Yet, without wars, we would have no heroes.  We would lose our shot at taking up the flag of decency, of humanitas, which in the end, is the only flag that reigns supreme.  To carry that flag out into the world is the only heroic act.

 

Somewhere in this world, people are being slaughtered.  People are oppressed, brutalized, destroyed.  For them, we stand.  For them, we must be brave and confront the darkness.

 

In our dreams, we rise.  We live our stories.  We must be brave to sing the journey through and give full throat to our valiant spirits.  We sing of the mystical island of Avalon and the Wise King as we wait for the return.  We stand, waiting, for the Kingdom of Humanitas to come.