The Rosy Cross

 By Anna Von Reitz

When I was a little girl, about four years old, a French Rosicrucian priest came several thousand miles to meet me.  He was amused to find that I wasn't even in school yet.  He had had a vision of me as an adult and came expecting to meet a mature woman.  

Imagine his wry smile and twinkling eyes when he realized that he had been wandering around in a future time and that the woman he wanted to talk to didn't actually exist yet?  

LOL. Such are the perils and vicissitudes of those who walk the time grid.  

He was a delightful small personage in his distinctive white cassock and robes, with the much more appealing (to my thinking) simple gold cross with a tiny rose-gold colored sculpture of a rose centered where the arms of the cross met, instead of the gruesome Catholic crucifix.  

I was already wrinkling up my nose about the crucifix.  Why, I demanded of my Grandmother, was Jesus left hanging there like a piece of dead meat --- and then hung around our necks like a millstone?  She shrugged and told me to ask the Pope.  

But I liked the Rosicrucian priest.  He was great fun.  Although he must have been at least retirement age, and may have been considerably older, he was spry and light on his feet, delighted with the simple farm fare that was our daily bread, and constantly observing the world with apparent pleasure. 

It was all beautiful in his eyes and he repeatedly told my Grandmother and parents how peaceful and delightful our home was, that he could not imagine a better place for me to grow up, how pleased he was that he had had a chance to meet me, even if I was only four years old. 

For my part, I was pleased to meet him.  There was something gentle and hopeful about him. His close-cropped curly white hair was shiny and had a tendency to get mussed up by the wind, just like mine. His sparkling brown eyes were friendly and perpetually smiling --- unlike the vast majority of grown ups I met on my daily rounds. 

I got the impression that, having been disappointed in his original mission, he decided to stop a few days with us and simply take a mini-vacation, driving around the surrounding countryside, petting the animals, admiring the gigantic blue and white trumpets of the Heavenly Blue Morning Glories my Mother always grew on the trellis beside the front porch.  

He even enjoyed going out to the old-fashioned iron water pump and see-sawing the handle back and forth until the ice cold water came splashing out into our tin cups, one for him, one for me. 

Late afternoons found him writing letters and early mornings found him going to the post office to mail them.  He found a couple favorite shady spots, one on a hand-hewn bench in the shade of our massive pear tree, and one in my Grandmother's Summer Kitchen, a screened-in porch that boasted a massive old leather recliner tucked into one corner, where he could catch an afternoon nap with the family cat. 

The night before he left, and before I as a child realized that he was leaving, he took my hand, looked me right in the eye, and said, "I am leaving you my blessing."  This was very solemn and sincere.  So, of course, I accepted with the same solemn gaze and sincerity, without knowing--- really--- what a blessing was, just taking it on faith that it was something good and important. 

He smiled merrily and placed both hands on my unruly mop of red hair; his lips moved, but I didn't hear any words, and then, we were off to "supper" -- that Midwestern tradition everyone else calls "dinner".  

In the morning, he was gone, and we all felt the loss, and for some time afterward, things felt vaguely sad, like a beach on a cloudy day. Even then I realized that he had traveled all the way from France, and couldn't be counted on to travel all that way back again, especially since the woman he wanted to talk to wouldn't be around for another fifty or sixty years. 

On my sixteenth birthday a small parcel came in the mail, wrapped in brown paper and string.  It contained a gold cross with a rose-gold rose in the center, and a fine gold chain.  On a small embossed card were written the words, "Be beloved. Fr. R" 

It must have come from him. It was postmarked in Rouen, France, but no return address. I had to smile, despite the little stab of pain.  I knew I would never see him in this life again. 

Be beloved.  Let your thoughts and your hearts dwell in love, and in this present moment. Seize your life with gratitude.  Relish each small blessing of every passing day, so that you eventually grow to realize the overwhelming blessing of your own life and the life of this planet, and are never deceived by the Deceivers who cast their nets among us. 

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