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.

Blog Birthday

Welcome Readers

Today, June 2, 2012 is the official birthday of ‘Everything’s Connected – No Exceptions.’  While I’ve been posting for over a month now and have invited some of my writing sisters to have a peek, today my writing becomes ‘public’ – available to larger audiences.

A ‘GreatGranddaughter’ led me to blogging.  This piece, posted on April 28, 2012 let me know she wanted an audience.  I argued with her.  I couldn’t imagine where she could be seen.  She is a bit of an inside story, too lean to make sense to many.  Still there was power in the words and in the way something so seemingly insignificant resonates with the deeply personal and the societal and universal.  I don’t know if I am the great granddaughter being informed or if I’m writing to my great granddaughter.

Blood Lines

The experience I described in ‘When One of us is Wounded, We all Bleed’, when I dreamed my husband punched his brother and then woke with blood on my hand, got my attention.  Writing from the dream helped me to discover some of the ways I have blood on my hands.  Still I felt the dream was asking more of me.

Because my wounding occurred in a church sanctuary and because I was raised Roman Catholic, my experience of blood appearing on my hand without apparent cause made me think of the stigmata. Stigmata are bodily wounds, sores or sensation occurring in the location of the crucifixion wounds of Jesus. It felt presumptuous  of me to relate my experience to the stigmata suffered by devout and selfless holy ones, still the similarity was eerie and I felt compelled to follow that thread.

Great Granddaughter

author's note:  This piece arose from a dream which was comprised solely of the words: Great Granddaughter

My granddaughter is of African descent.  Both her parents are loving Caucasian female educators.  They have invited my beloved and me to be part of her village.

May my great granddaughter be born loving and being in awe of her vagina.  May she never hear it referred to as her down there or be taught to eliminate its fragrance or be called unclean when she bleeds.

I did not enter this life through my mother’s vagina.  My mother was relieved to be offered the more sanitary surgical method.  She never peered into her own vagina.

When One of Us is Wounded We All Bleed

 author's note: The following occurred during a Women's Dream Quest at the First Congregational Church in March of this year.

In the sanctuary I dream of my husband punching his brother.  It is something he has wanted to do for a long time.  I wonder how he feels after he’s done it.  Does it give him the satisfaction he anticipated?  Does he experience remorse, guilt, sorrow?  Does violence ever result in true satisfaction or does it merely allow a breakthrough to what lies beneath it?

After writing the dream, I go into the men’s room and find blood on the sink.  Frank red blood against white porcelain.  I’m shocked and mildly disturbed. It is a small amount of blood; thinly covering less than one square inch.  I look at my own hands and am surprised to see broken skin and blood on the knuckle of my ring finger on my left hand.  The blood on the sink did not come from my hand.  The wound on my hand is too small to have produced even that much blood.  Did the wound appear while I slept?  I’m shaken to realize how thin the veil between the worlds is.  I dream of a fist connecting with a jaw and my knuckle bleeds.

Spiritual Eldering

Aging is mandatory.  Becoming an elder is a calling.  It is a way of making the last phase of your life the most fascinating one you have ever lived, and a blessing to all your relations.

One way to launch yourself on this journey is to examine your own beliefs about aging.  Of particular interest is noticing how many of those belief excite you and how many depress you. Adjust your image of old to something that is attractive to you, and begin heading toward that image.  You have passed through the first threshold.

After my 60th birthday, I began referring to myself as old.  The energy with which my listeners denied this was amazing.  Universally the response was, "You're not old."  It became obvious to me that old was mostly undesirable to my listeners.  I wondered if that was true for me, as well.
I began to make a list of things that contradicted that belief.  My experience with old age to date includes:

• More free time
• Less concern about what others think
• More life experience to draw on
• Social security (still looking forward to Medicare)
• Greater ease with stillness and silence
• Becoming more childlike, less inhibited
• Trusting intuition more
• Less energy wasted dodging unwanted sexual advances

Bleed Through

During a Women’s Dream Quest, I received a dream of my husband punching his brother in the face.  I woke with blood on the knuckle of the ring finger of my left hand.  I went to the men’s room for my morning toilet, and found blood on the sink.

I now have a new name for the experience of encountering the same image in dreams and waking life.  I call it bleed through.