 If you’ve been a Cygnus reader for a number of years, you’ll remember an elderly chap called Harold Jones who used to be a member of our team.
In fact, it was Harold who helped us start Cygnus Books back in 1991 – Ann did the magazine, Geoff did the database and publicity, and Harold did pretty much everything else. Harold even moved with us from Surrey to Wales when our home became too small for our ever-burgeoning book-stock. Anyway, Harold passed away in 1998 and, apart from the odd dream, we haven’t heard a lot from him since..... until now, that is. A couple of weeks ago, we had an extraordinary letter from a lovely lady called Babs, who was a very dear friend of Harold’s. She wrote that her daughter Gillian had been having visits from Harold recently – he kept on appearing beside her as she was driving along in her car, and insisting that she and her mother send Cygnus a cheque for £200. This would help, he said with something called ‘distribution’. In the end, Gillian realised that if she didn’t give in and do what Harold asked, he would just keep on appearing – he always was a persistent sort of bloke! So she and her mother duly sent the cheque, and now, they say, ‘It’s over to Harold. Let’s hope he can work some miracles with it’.
Well, we tuned in to see if we could discover what kind of miracle Harold would like to see happening, and the first thing that came into our minds was the image of a pearl. As you know, pearls grow when a tiny irritant such as a grain of sand is introduced into the shell of an oyster. This seemed a rather appropriate symbol, somehow, because the truth is, we didn’t part with Harold on the best of terms. Though we always loved each other, we wouldn’t be telling the truth if we said we always liked each other. In fact, rather often, we tended to experience each other as something of an irritant! And, like an oyster, our shell had remained tightly shut to him since he had passed on. So, it seemed clear that Harold wanted his gift to be used as a the beginning of a pearl – a small grain of sand, an irritant, even! – that would grow into something beautiful. We laughed and we cried, and we felt deep forgiveness and reconciliation, too. How wonderful that Harold should be so persistent (especially after, as I have to confess, I had actually told him to clear off on more than one occasion when he visited me in dreams!), and also that his message should be so economical – conveying not only something to help Cygnus, but also something to heal the rift that had grown between us. He may have shed his physical body, but he certainly hadn’t shed his sense of humour!
Now Harold was devoted to Cygnus and was always very concerned that The Cygnus Review should be distributed to as large a number of people as possible, whether or not they were able to buy books from us. He believed that the guidance and inspiration we do our best to offer in The Cygnus Review is worth sharing with as many people as possible, so we’re pretty certain that’s what he meant by ‘distribution’.
This brings us to the next thread in our story: since the economic difficulties we experienced last year, that we told you about in our December 2005 issue, we’ve had a terrific amount of help from you. In fact, your help was enough to repay about half the money we had to borrow last year! An incredible feat, and you already know how enormously grateful we are for that. However, in order to be able to recover completely, we are still having to watch our costs very carefully indeed, and were, until we received the recent nudge from Harold, actually considering whether we should send out less than our usual 50,000 or so magazines per month, as we’d already cut every other cost to the bone.
But then Geoff had a chat with the other members of the Cygnus Book Circle in Lampeter. How can we help you? they asked. Tell us what you want. If you want more Cygnus Supporters, for instance, tell us how many, and what that would enable you to do. And that’s when we realised what pearl Harold’s gift was meant to seed.....
You see, if we could increase the number of Cygnus Supporters from the present 5,000 to 20,000, then their contributions of £10 per year, plus their increased commitment to Cygnus, would ensure that we could increase the number of magazines we send out (we actually have over 80,000 people on our mailing list) and repay the remainder of last year’s debts. And, after that, we would also have sufficient funds to ensure the stability and safety of Cygnus in the long term.
So we’d like to use the generous gift sent by Harold, and manifested so kindly by Babs and Gillian, to seed this pearl. If more of you are able to become Cygnus Supporters, we promise to turn your generosity and commitment into a pearl that will help a wide community of people to walk in beauty and inner freedom.
As you know, Cygnus Supporters who live in the UK receive all orders to their home address post free, so becoming a Supporter is a good idea not just for us, but for you as well. Some of you have queried why we give you so much back. Surely we spend more than we receive, when we give you all free postage and packing? Well, the reason why we do this, is that your commitment to Cygnus is worth just as much to us as the £10 contribution you give. And if you order from us more often, as Cygnus Supporters tend to do, that generosity is more than repaid.
In any case, we believe that Cygnus grows and thrives as much because of your enthusiasm and love for it, as because of physical things like orders and profit. In fact, we would go as far as to say that for financial health to be achieved in any spiritual concern, enthusiasm and love have to be there first. Spirit and matter go hand in hand. You can’t separate one from the other. And if, spiritually, things are right, matter must follow. It’s a universal law. Without love – ours and yours – Cygnus would just be a shell, with nothing inside it, still less a pearl.
Which is why we know that, whether you choose to become a Cygnus Supporter, or to show your love in some other way, as many of you are already doing, a pearl will grow – for you and with your help. And the more it grows, the more its radiance will help us all, in all kinds of unexpected ways.
With our love,
Ann, Geoff and all at Cygnus
Photographs © Cygnus Books 27-Mar-2006
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