January 25, 2010 - The Three of Cups

This past week I've learned the many sides of gray, the many rhythms and rhymes of rain. Today the sky is light enough you think the sun is coming through but the gray stretches tight over the face of it and you know deep in the heart of you there will be no blue sky, no weak winter sun, just above washed the color of dirty concrete. The rain comes mostly in fits, quiet steady sobs mixed with full-on tantrums. I suspect the sky may be as tired of weeping and seeping as I have been some days these last few years.

I will add that it has been a week of growing isolation. I must make efforts to connect with people beyond my immediate sphere. So what's up with the Three of Cups, the three Graces, a card of friendship and revelry? Is my tarot deck being ironic?

I'm a bookish, introverted woman. I cherish my deep connections but they're hard to initiate. Still, I have come to understand that I must do my bit to meet people in the middle, as hard as it sometimes can be. I've dreamed of a close friendship, of three friends who dance as one, but I've never quite mastered it. So, I say again, what's up with the Three of Cups?

Here's what Joan Bunning writes at learntarot.com: "The Three of Cups can signify a friend or the feelings associated with friendship. This card can represent community - the network of support created when we interact with others. It can be any group in which the members feel a bond. When you see the Three of Cups, examine your attachments to the groups in your life from an emotional point of view. Consider reaching out to give or receive help. This card stands for all forms of support, including formal aid such as counseling and other social services."

Okay, so I have to reach out, again. It is an act, I guess, that never ends, a destination you never reach beyond a moment of "ah" and "yes" before again moving on, reaching out, trying to make connections, trying to keep them. Maybe it was always this way. Maybe this time in particular, with great distances and technology to bridge it, shows how close we can be and yet ephemeral that closeness can be. And here's another thought. If we believe we are good friends with someone, are we? Doesn't the body and soul of friendship require nurturing, feeding, sustenance to survive? Is there a point we give up and say there's no use searching through the rubble, there's nothing living left?

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Three of Cups is depicted by three women of Mansfield Park - Maria Bertram, Julia Bertram, and Mary Crawford. They make a pretty picture, those three Graces, and they seem, on the surface, affable, connected, friends. But beneath the veneer each is interested only in her concerns. They sing together prettily when it suits but when the song is done, so is the friendship. This card holds then the energy of the friends you think you have and don't, and the friends you never you knew you had until you need them and you realize that particular grace is yours. I am at this point, looking at my life, at the friends I thought I had and realizing they are mere acquaintances and wondering who the acquaintances might be who are better friends than I ever imagined. Everything is new. Everything is uncertain. The wheel goes round and round and all we can do is turn with it.

Maybe it's the gray day, more rain in a week and more of it that never seems to end, but this bright card has its shadow and I cannot find it in me to rejoice in receiving it. I have a friend who looks at cards still as "good" and "bad." My lesson seems, at least at this time in life, to be that every card is what we make of it.