Greetings Sapience!

Over the past months I have heard many dear friends and many passersby
make comments on the coming changes to the class system. It is not my
intention to make light of anyone's anxiety, or to diminish the pain
people are feeling. Such reactions to sudden change are natural and most
understandable. Many of us have invested years in learning the ropes (or
trying hard to anyway) within this world and within our guilds. Now much
of that seems to be changing.

I am writing to offer a thought about change. As some of you may know, I
am a servant of the Lady Ourania. Though I do not pretend to be an
expert on Her ways, I can say that She has taught me a great deal about
life and death and much in between. Among Her many nuggets of wisdom is
Her approach to the subject of change. In fact, change is at the heart
of Her way. For those of us who follow the moonlit path, we see change
as part and parcel of life. Just as it is natural for us to fear change
and worry over what may come next, it is natural that our lives do in
fact ebb and flow. Just as my Mistress shows Herself as a sliver of
light that then grows to a full silvery orb only to seemingly diminish
to darkness, so it is with us. We begin new ventures, we learn from
them, and then inevitably, we move onto to other tasks or discover new
ways to come at tasks we have worked on for years. Such is the way of
all things that are truly alive. They come for a time, they gain
experience, and then they end so that they may begin anew.

The change in the class system is one such ending for all of us in the
realm. Despite the feelings of pain and discomfort and disquiet such
endings may bring, the endings themselves can be seen as signs of hope.
I have come to realize and believe that when the Lady Ourania appears
dark and aloof, She is still a part of my life. Her ways and Her wisdom
remain, even at times when She is not present in the room with me.
What's more, I know that in good time, She will in fact return and once
again show Her light on my path where She may have new adventures for me
and new teachings to share. So it can be for all of us. We can take what
we have learned from our world the way it was, and at the same time have
hope that such changes are harbingers of new beginnings, new
opportunities, new ways of living that may in fact prove even more rich,
more fun, more exciting, more fruitful than what we have known in the
past. This change may in fact lead guilds to discover new and even
better ways to be who and what they wish to be, ways that might never
have appeared if the change hadn't come in the first place.

None of this, of course, changes the feelings people have during ending
times. Yet perhaps this wisdom of the Lady Ourania offers some of us
pause to reflect and reason to hope. While we reasonably may shed a tear
at the loss of yesterday, tomorrow is indeed a new day. Change always
comes bearing gifts!

In love for this realm, for my many friends here, and for the Lady
Ourania,

Birch, the Eye of the Lady


Penned by my hand on the 4th of Valnuary, in the year 391 AF.