Earth Day

April 23, 2010

The smell of sweetgrass on this mountain is addictive. Nearly every time I come home from somewhere else and get out of the car, the smell nearly knocks me down, it is so intoxicating. I live in this heavenly fragrance, but notice it more after I’ve been gone. It is for me now the smell of home and mother.

I have recently been with a dear friend who just gave birth. The sight of the milk running from her breast as she changes the baby from one side to the other is what comes to mind as I think of Earth Day. We are all born of this one womb and fed from the same flowing breast. To war with each other makes no more sense than siblings warring, though that story is as old as time. I wish for us to recognize our interdependence, to love and take care of the body of the mother who feeds us and to find a way to sincerely love who we are related to – which is every one and everything. It should be so simple and so obvious, but somehow isn’t.

I love my Mother, the physical one who gave me birth and has loved me fiercely every day of my life. And I love my Mother, the ground that holds and feeds me and all of my relatives. We are a diverse bunch, but no matter how we try to deny it we are one family born of the same flesh. My prayer today is that we can work it out, and love together the source that binds us and gives us life.

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Returning Hero

April 21, 2010

Coco Pelli

Here is a picture of Coco (middle name Pelli) taken today, April 21, 2010, the day after his return from Walkabout – new wisdom and maturity already beginning to gleam forth, don’t you think? His 13th birthday is in two days, that’s 91 years old in dog years. His two days and two nights lost in the woods might figure to about 3 months in dog time. It sure felt like 3 months to his Mama.

I grieved his death then got him back. This is certainly a rite of spring and of what we celebrate at Easter – resurrection. Kokopelli in the Hopi world is considered a god of fertility among other things, his flute playing calling forth the leaves and plants from their underground graves.

I do believe that Nature orchestrated this experience right before Coco’s birthday, and right before mine, for a reason. We both know something now that we didn’t before, though I can’t tell you what any more clearly than Coco can. It is a celebration of birth and new life, of death and renewal of life, of love for each other and of life itself, and of hope through the dark nights in life. Just as I am typing now those little eyes in the picture of him are penetrating me with information from some mysterious world. So many tricks up God’s sleeves. What will be next?

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Walkabout

April 20, 2010

Well my little man Coco went on a Walkabout, an important aboriginal initiation into adulthood. He’s an adult now, all 12.5 pounds of him. He left my side while I was conducting a retreat in the steep, gorgeous mountains of Etowah, NC, and somehow didn’t find his way back for two days. In his 13 years of life I’ve never been worried about him for more than 5 minutes because he stays close. But this time he struck out and wandered for nights and days.

On Coco’s side of the story we will never know all that happened. But I do know he survived hunger, walking up a steep mountain for miles, uncertainty, fear, loneliness, bears, coyotes, cold, pain and god-knows what else until he landed on the porch of a young family who called to say they had found him. On my side of the experience were a worried group of women who organized like great-hearted hunters to find this dog. We combed the woods for hours, put out posters on roads and in town. I slept outdoors both nights on the spot from which he had vanished hoping he would find the scent back to me.

He’s back in my Max Patch home now. He’s in pain. He’s passed out. Kokopelli has initiated us both to a level neither of us can yet understand or appreciate. Be careful who you name your dog for. Coco-Pelli my dog, and Kokopelli the god have taken me down to the bone. I am going to curl up into a fetal position and sleep for 24 hours.

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Coco Pelli

April 19, 2010

My dog has not come back. Sleeping in the woods. combing the woods with friends, phone calls, posters everywhere. My most beloved and loyal friend has been gone for more than 24 hours. That’s all I can say about that right now.

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Kokopelli

April 19, 2010

Kokopelli is a Native American name given to the trickster god which I have been writing about on the last two posts. My dog’s name is Coco, his middle name is Pelli. Now Kokopelli has done his biggest trick. He disappeared Coco Pelli. I am doing a retreat for some friends in Hendersonville, NC, and as we sat outside with afternoon snacks and wine, Coco was there one minute and gone the next. Not a sound. We searched until dark. I slept outside on the spot from which he disappeared in case he might find his way back. He is a Mama’s boy who never normally wanders more than a few yards, or sometimes even just a few inches from where I am. I just spent my first night without him in 13 years and don’t know where he is, if he’s freezing, hurt, scared, lost or dead. Please pray. What does Kokopelli want with me I wonder?

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Trickster Still Tricking Me

April 18, 2010

I wrote about the Trickster archetype in yesterday’s post, as I had gotten a strong jolt reminding me of how and why it strikes. Little did I know how it was just getting started. I got up in the middle of the night to write that piece. I’m committed to writing every day and suddently realized I had forgotten. so I stumbled to my computer half conscious. What should I write? Only then did it occur to me to name it as the trickster that had REALLY messed with my head just as I was sending out my new website. So I wrote about it. I woke up this morning and opened my computer to find what I had written. A wholly unedited rambling piece, repeating myself every other sentence, really sleep walking kind of talking. I quickly edited it and hoped that I hadn’t totally confused whoever might had tried to read it already.

That was trickstery again already. Shortly thereafter it started to get weirder. After a few conversations with friends and on the internet I began to realize that the letter I thought I had sent to everyone on my mailing list finally introducing, after a year of work, my new site never arrived anywhere. Just as I was close to pushing “send” I had gotten a call from nowhere that had messed with my head profoundly and took a few hours to sort out. But afterward I sent the letter, the site said it had been sent, and I thought “Ok, I got messed with, but I got ‘er done.”  But it never happened. 

If I hadn’t gotten up in the middle of the night last night and written about the trickster this might just seem like a glitch, no big deal. But the trickster is like a presence now, wanting attention, demanding respect and thoughtful consideration. The new moon and the stars out there in the brilliant night sky are working together with it, all seeming to say, “Whatever you think you know, whoever you think you are, whatever seems real to you, fuggetaboutit. You’ve been tricked.”

Okay.

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Archetype of Trickster

April 17, 2010

I wrote a long paper on The Archetype of the Trickster years ago that I must unearth and rediscover. In many tribal traditions and in Court traditions all over Europe, one of the most carefully assigned of sacred duties is that of the jester, trickster or clown, whose duty it was to inject humor and utter confusion into the otherwise very serious and reverential attitudes toward the weighty rituals and responsibilities of tribal or court life. The idea is that if everyone involved will also see the light side of the situation, the obvious margin for errors, then everyone would be less likely to take themselves too seriously. 

The joker could openly, unflatteringly imitate and call the king or shaman an ass, demonstrate what might be absurd and ridiculous, and it was everyone’s job to look at these potentials with wisdom and humor. If someone else, not assigned to that job, did the same thing it could be considered an act of treason. This was not at all about creating anarchy, it was about creating a conscious way for the kings and advisors to see their fallibility,  flaws and absurdness even as they were succeeding in their leadership.

A couple of days ago I was working hard on the final details of address lists, edits, etc. so that I could send my new website out to my e-mail list on the New Moon day that had become my personal deadline. A good day to finally stop the months of messing with it, say just  get’er done and finish.

As I was hard at work  fixing the hundreds of little lists and glitches, focusing on every detail,  out of nowhere the universe sent me a most remarkable situation to deal with, something  way beyond my experience and background. I was really thrown in this situation, turned inside out and upside. In case I might have had one moment to take myself too seriously, this strange incident took care of it. I was still able to get the message off to my mailing list, but by the time it was sent I felt an idiot. That is exactly what the trickster archetype wants. Sheesh I didn’t get even five minutes, or even one minute, of feeling just ok about myself. But good on you, Kokopelli, you get the job done and I honor you.

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A Taxing Tax Day

April 15, 2010

Those checks we have to write for taxes are painful, but today I am also thinking that the “pound of flesh” that we have to pay for being human and attempting to become conscious is much harder and more harsh. In order to learn any of the higher values of life we have to experience the opposite, and truth be told, we must be guilty of the opposite, leaving us with the debt of pounds of flesh to pay. In order to learn to trust and be trusted, to love and be loved, to care and be cared for we have to get them all wrong as many times as we get them right – both in how we give them and what receive or don’t receive of them, before we understand what the values are about. We only learn these things by rubbing up against each other in life, and then having the pounds of flesh to pay when we get it wrong. It’s like paying taxes. No man is an island. We operate together and learn together and figure it out together. There are taxes to pay much bigger than the financial ones for sharing this earth together. That reality part of the deal – “death and taxes.”  It all works out in the end. Send the check, pay the pound of flesh and be grateful we’re working it out together as we go.

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Magic

April 14, 2010

Today life proved to me that there is magic in it. Magic is really the essence of everything we can’t possibly understand about life but still is true, and in its own way is logical and obvious. And magic generally seems to imply what we think of as good. It is beyond reason and rational explanation. It is another realm of reality that is yet mystery.

There is a space between cells, between heartbeats, between beats of time and frames of reference where magic happens. If we don’t listen to and focus upon the space between we miss it. Magic is all around us, and is more real than what we think of as real. I’m listening today. It is quite compelling.

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Smiling

April 13, 2010

Today was one of those rare and wonderful days when a smile just kept beaming from inside for no particular reason. I could feel it like a weather pattern, something without a conscious thought to go with it that was just happening. Recently I decided to make one of those “vision boards” that people talk about – a collage of pictures that represent things you want to create in your life. The premise is, if you can see it you can make it happen. Scanning magazines for pictures it has been difficult for me to find anything that inspires or resembles my thoughts and desires. But I did find something the other day – a picture of a model wearing otherwise too modern and abstract clothes and make-up for my taste, but her mouth naturally turned up at the edges. I thought her mouth was just beautiful. My mouth sort of turns down at the edges naturally. I am a worrier. I cut out that picture of her face to put on my vision board and wondered if doing something of this nature could actually help me change the shape of a facial feature. I don’t know anything about that; but it struck me today that the inner smile might possibly already be a response.

I was privileged on this day to be in service to what I most deeply care about, so that helps too. I taught about dreams to a class of third-year students learning acupunture. Their open faces, minds and spirits seemed so gorgeous to me, and their aspirations to learn this healing art very admirable too. Right after the class was one of  my weekly dream groups. During the dreamwork some really big springtime new-birth type breakthroughs burst through the ground of psyche. It was an event.

Was my all-day smile prescient of these things? Does smiling inside help manifest such things? Or is it all together part of a common fabric just presenting itself in such ways? There is mystery here. And I have a little wondering about how much of it could begin with cutting out the picture of that lovely mouth for my vision board. I’m interested to see what happens next with this project.

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