Reflections on Saint Mersenen
By Bishop Iotha of Tawn
“When a raindrop falls the world is brought into sudden realization, a horizon crystallizing into reality. Regardless of where the drop strikes the inexorable downward pull calls it into streaming motion. Joining with others rivulets, collective drops now form a single thread as they race to their destination. For some this journey may be down a rock to a forest puddle, while many will join greater and greater threads until the individual is a mote in the roaring river. Though these paths may vary, eventually all drops will reach their sea.
Our Lady calls each of us down from the skies above, her heart yearning to love each of us. She is the river which bears us, and the calm seas to embrace us. Each drop has a destiny, a moment upon which the inevitable rest greets them. We only know the valley unto which we are called, though even the whole shape of just the valley can never be grasped.
Fear must not consume the heart, trust in our Lady for the journey she has set you upon. Take comfort that in the end we will all know Her and greet Her, and She will deliver us unto the quiet halls and eternal rewards.”
Excerpt from The Frost Sermons, Saint Mersenen
Saint Mersenen the confessor humbles each of us on our path through the world, reminding us of the journey we must each undertake upon the river that our Monarch has placed us upon. It is he who places us each upon our course, and through the love of the Mother Current we are born aloft her back. Mersenen reminds us that the gods are with us always, for The Seer looks ahead to guide us on our course, while Our Lady awaits us with open arms upon our arrival at her sea to return us to the arms of her family.
The saint is perhaps most well known through her oratory work, The Frost Sermons, though her life is well documented within the Green Song [1]. For many her role and teachings are heard through Miserations, which relegate her role to a simple attendant to the passing Echalia. How little we see the depths of her acceptance and absolute forgiveness, the charity of her love even to the one who executed the Winter Sister.
It is said that Saint Mersenen spent seven years with the dwindling Echalia, giving her comfort and council as the goddess passed beyond the veil. The Winter Sister held dearly to life as all living things do, grieving for her sister and followers that she would leave behind. Mersenen councils acceptance of this loss; that of material will not pass into spirit.
“Frost was born unto this world as a tear, shimmering and singing ice that bore a requiem of preservation. Would the world stop for her a moment she would hold eternity in her grasp and within it all she held dear. Yet her companion Mersenen spoke, reminding her that even the blooming rose shall wither, even the finest sculpture is worn down and chip.”
Frost Sermons 3:21
Saint Mersenen reminds us that a fear of death is a natural reaction, to stare into the absolute fact of our oblivion unscathed is beyond all but the most strongly willed. Yet our time on this river is but a brief moment of our eternity, for it is behind this final curtain that our true existence awaits us in the arms of our just fate. Nothing that passes beyond is out of reach forever, for even in death our love is not diminished and in time we will too shall pass to see them once more, born aloft by the currents of love by those we leave behind.
[1] For those studying St Mersenen the holy text of Arthea give the most detailed accounting of this period, particularly the works of Hernen The Lesser.
