Celtic Knot

The path of my life is like a celtic knot.  The unbroken thread twists and turns in unpredictable and unexpected ways.  The pattern unknowable until the thread’s very end is tucked behind the final connection.   

The first time I became aware of birth and death days touching was on October 16, 1987, the day of my father’s death.  October 16^th was the day my mother had chosen for my planned caesarean birth.  

I met Elle hours after my husband I returned from Ethiopia.  So strong was our commitment to Dare’, a community of healers, even extreme jet lag, brain fog, emotional exhaustion couldn’t keep us away.  I tried not to allow shock register in my expression when I saw the bulge on the right side of the jaw of this beautiful woman who had come to us for healing.  She was to become both a precious sister and wise teacher to me over the coming years, but in that moment I saw only a woman in need calling forth the healers in all of us. 

It was heartbreaking a few years later when Elle told us we weren’t the community she needed to hold her at end of her life.  I wished it were otherwise, but I knew she was correct.  She returned to a tiny community on the northern CA coast precious to her earlier in her life.   Her life contracted so she could pay careful attention to her healing and to the spiritual teaching of her cancer.

Our paths came together again within weeks of her move.  A trip planned much earlier allowed, my husband, Nick and I to be her first out of town guests.

I didn’t know it would be my last weekend in the two year shamanic learning circle, when, my friend, June presented me a blood wings shield she made for my birthday.  By the following month when each student was charged with creating their own medicine shield, I was gone.  It is only recently that I’ve realized my broken open, winged heart, fondly called blood wings in honor of my first son, is my primary protector.  It is through being shattered that I have found the place that is unshatterable.  Blood wings will be the central symbol on my Lorica, the soul protection shield of the Celts.  The shield my soul is called to make.

The year before my brother died I made the offhand remark that I hoped someone was planning for my retirement, since it was something I’d seemed to have overlooked.  A chill went through me as the implication of his response registered. “In a way, I am,” he said.  He died on my birthday.

Initially I only knew I couldn’t continue the work I’d been doing any longer, but gradually the realization came that we could both retire if we were willing to simplify.  It had been our full intention to remain in Seattle until trouble befell our beloved community.  Dream group shattered and Dare’ was teetering.  The circles’ healing skills were inadequate to rebuild trust and broken relationships.  Elle was angry when she heard of our failure.  Nick and I were free to live anywhere, and to our great surprise, we moved to Bellingham.

By our third visit Cody, an adorable little Morkie terrier, had come into Elle’s life.  It was a joy to watch his love for and devotion to our dear friend.  The first afternoon of our visit when Elle needed to rest, Nick and I offered to take Cody to the beach.  We spent most of that outing taking pictures of Cody, and of each of us holding him.  Elle smiled when she looked at the pictures.

The next afternoon Elle asked if Cody should outlive her, would we consider adopting him?  Because there were two of us, because we were retired, because we’d moved from the city, because we lived adjacent to a large park and because we adored Cody, she thought we had what he needed.  Only an exchange of glances was required for us to nod in unison. 

We wondered what was up the first time Cody failed to turn a circle above the ground as I carried his breakfast dish to his placemat at the end of the kitchen counter.  During the first few weeks of tests and medications trials and changes, I felt confident that he’d get better.  On August 1^st I was in deep grief and fear when I acknowledged how much his vital life force had diminished.  That afternoon we received a new diagnosis.  Cancer of the spleen metastasized to the liver.  Days to weeks.

The next day was my monthly appointment with my spiritual director, Jillian, at Turtle Haven a beautiful private retreat center.  Nick and Cody came along.  In the midst of our broken heartedness there was tension between Nick and me.   I wanted us to be present with Cody in his dying process in the same way we had with my mother and with Nick’s father.  Nick was unwilling to go through another death experience like that of our cat, Moonshadow, years before.   She had howled in pain while Nick chanted to her under the dining table through the early morning hours and I buried my head under a pillow in the bedroom. I could assure him that wouldn’t happen with Cody, but I couldn’t promise Cody wouldn’t die in pain.   I could pledge I would listen deeply for what Cody wanted, and that I’d be willing to euthanize if that’s what I heard.

We had picked Cody up in Point Arena nearly two years earlier arriving on October 12^th two days after my youngest son, Damien’s, wedding. It was on our way home, reading through his papers that I discovered Cody’s birthday was the same as my oldest son, Art’s death day.  

Elle passed peacefully on Samhain after taking the medication she’d gotten through Compassion and Choices. She opted to die before the tumor in her salivary gland chocked her. Her son, Dru and dear friend, Rebecca meditated beside her while she passed.  Elle was 59 years old.  Cody, once her beloved companion, now near death from cancer at the human equivalent age of 56 opts to allow the disease to run its course.

 Jillian witnessed, held space, asked clarifying questions and helped us hear each other into deeper understanding.  Initially, Cody hung out on the deck’s edge.  As the conversation deepened, he came into the circle and sat directly under Jillian’s chair until Nick and I reached a place of peace.

A sudden knowing came.  This sacred land was the perfect place for Cody to be buried.  Jillian suggests a site near the shrine to all beings where images of St. Francis, many animal species and a giant nest with a cracked egg reside on the edge of the river.  This knowing so like my response to my casualty assistance officer’s query, “Where do you want your son to be buried?”  The question unthinkable. My response immediate, “Is there space at Ft. Lawton?”

It was the dream of Jesus and Sheela na gig and a path through the very park that helped to call Cody into our lives that lead me to Christ the Servant, the Lutheran church where I am now an active member.  Sheela na gig is another of the soul protectors on my Lorica.  She will be in the north, the position of the challenger.

For a couple of years Jesus woed me and Cody taught me about unconditional love.  I willing went where I was called, still I was surprised to find myself in a mainline protestant church.  Wouldn’t you know the path hasn’t stopped there?  I am called to the study of a new cosmology.  I’m learning the practices of the Ceile De order, an ancient Celtic spiritual tradition where Christianity intertwines with the mystery tradition of the Druids. I am studying both the scripture of nature and written scripture, including the gospels of Mary Magdalene, Thomas & Judas.  To the table of Luther I bring seeds of the Druids and the new cosmology.  There among mystical kindreds and others more conservative and literal we all attempt to emulate Jesus and to be the community that loves and cares for our neighbors.  All of them, no exceptions.

Cody died on my lap with both Nick’s and my hands stroking him on August 7^th.  Frank, biological father only of Damien – Dad to both my sons, was born on August 7th.  Cody’s death weight almost identical to Arthur’s birth weight.  These are the only two beings I have carried or helped to carry and lay in their graves.  

“What will I do with my one wild and precious life?” (Mary Oliver) I will follow the thread, wrap it over, under and around the unexpected and unpredictable connections I discover until the pattern is complete and the end of the thread connects to the larger pattern in which I’ll see the place in the body of the Cosmic Christ where my soul resides.