Softening Hardness

From the Dark Goddess Tarot, the Siren of Earth (Knight of Pentacles); from the Tattwa Cards: Water > Seed of Fire:

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. –Mark Twain

          Baubo, the Greek goddess of bawdy belly laughs, shows how to move forward without aggression. Her sexual levity (never used at another's expense) took the unyielding rigidity out of those she entertained. The tattwa card, with the key phrase of 'creative tension,' parallels this rigidity. Such tension is a result of the gap between our vision and reality. It reminds me of a water drop: water molecules on the surface contract and the drop behaves as if its surface were covered with a stretched elastic membrane. Likewise, we can contract and cut ourselves off when our creative ideas don't flow with the rest of the world. Yet as Baubo encourages, we can build a bridge between reality and our vision if we'll let humor and playfulness release our tension and soften our fixed demands.