How has January been for you? A wet, and sometimes wildly windy month here in the Azores – though avoiding the extreme storms assaulting mainland Portugal, and my native Britain – I’ve been glad to stay home and enjoy some virtual contact, beginning with my online writing group.

This has not been escapism. Hosted by a writer-teacher in Minnesota, care and concern has flowed from us group members this month to our convenor.

And looking east across the Atlantic to the UK, my disbelief and ire were aroused at an individual level by a friend experiencing a kind of abuse of power in a job recruitment process, in – of all incongruous places – a church-related organisation to which we both belong. The world presenting as outrageous, I measured my scope for impact – puny?

Meanwhile, our writing group had its own, gentle shake-up – more of a dial-up, as we voted to increase the frequency of meetings and our creative output. One move open to us, at least, within our circles of influence and control.

Being the first workshop of 2026, we checked in with each other, sharing our mood levels and writing goals for the year. Then some writing prompts to stimulate a flow of words. For these, our tutor had brought along an ‘oracle’ deck, not tarot, but cards with animal and plant imagery, to suggest scenarios. Laughter ran lightly round the group as she dealt a random card for each participant. Then we set to work, with fifteen minutes on mute, to massage our imaginations.

I was disappointed in my card. I had been handed an eel. Neither cute nor cuddly! To be fair, paired with a faintly redeeming iris that reminded me of a collection of poems I love – The Wild Iris by the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Louise Gluck – written from the perspectives of the flowers. But what was I to make of this ugly worm-like thing, object of terror? No spoilsport, I managed a tongue-in-cheek four-line poem asking to be loved like the iris, not feared like the eel.

Then our leader read the interpretation offered on the back of our cards. Meaningless, was my first thought … To sum mine up: a transgression or betrayal had taken place – what the eel represented – requiring me to stand tall in my power like the iris, and extend safety to others. None of this resonated with anything that had happened to me – though I was thankful I wasn’t, after all, identified with the slippery fellow! I listened through my colleagues’ analyses, which meant some more, some less, to them, and we talked about the method of such cards being to sift from them what we need and know to be true within ourselves, discarding the dross.

It was only after we’d all said our warm goodbyes and left the Zoom that a loud clunk in the back of my brain signalled the realisation – this was a story I was moving in, albeit tangentially! It was not I, but my friend in England, who had suffered the treacherous reversal. And my part now, as a fellow member of the organisation where she had been mistreated, was to write in protest, to complain in the appropriate quarter; to be both loyal, and vocal. Which I duly did.

Which I might not have done, because not felt the urgency, without the external nudge from the ‘oracle’ card. That’s the point of curiosity, and what I’m still evaluating.

As you know, I believe we’ve not been left alone in this universe, and that, beyond all expression and explanation, Love watches and responds to us. I’m sure at times I seem rather dense to Her/Him/Them. I’m humbled – and sorry – if it’s this difficult to get my attention; and grateful to be given marching orders by what, for me, was an unusual means. That awareness meant I could strike a tiny blow for good where it mattered.

Why I won’t make a habit of consulting cards, though, is because the ‘magic’ doesn’t lie within them. In this instance, perhaps Love took the initiative, and ‘spoke’ to me through my circumstances, jolting me out of a merely passive fury to use my faculties for constructive action.

But inside us, beneath surface eddies, don’t we know what to do?

I once read a theory that people are divided into those who believe the locus of control lies outside of them, others, within. Now, I reckon both are true, and the two can – must – work together.

The irony of this ‘oracle’ is that I’m reminded to strengthen my own personal agency.

And spring will come.