Lovely ones…
Well it seems my life has taken a radical turn in the direction of transformation by way of the 2 x 4. My life has always been a life moving with intention towards transformation and consciousness, but sometimes we need a little help I guess. Today I am sooo grateful for what I am experiencing as a radically benevolent world of mystery that has delivered me to a threshold unlike any other. Yes, I have for years believed in the wisdom of “practicing dying” …of putting ourselves out on a mythic edge that generates an interface with Nature, with Mystery, with the cycles of life, with truth that has the capacity to bring us to our knees. But wow, I must say, a cancer diagnosis really does pack a wallop.
Many of you have been following my story already so I don’t need to go further into that here. But if you want to know more there is a whole lot on my Caring Bridge page.
What I DO want to say more about is….well…gratitude …gratitude and reverence for The Holy, for the Invisible World that is always influencing us…for Wild Nature (our own and that which abides around us), and for what some of us consider our guides and protectors. I want to bundle that up in what I like to call Mystery…the GREEEEAATT Mystery.
Though I have forever been in a somewhat fluent relationship with mystery, and a longing for more intimacy with it, with the advent of this big event in my life in the last 6 weeks, I am ever more in a deep, HUGE, amazing gratitude especially for that which gives dreams, specifically. The dream I was given which directed me to see a doctor, quite literally saved my life…or certainly seems to have prolonged it. Without the dream, I don’t know how long it may have taken me to find the cancer and how far it might have spread.
Now more than ever, we need to bolster our relationship with the other than human world….in our absence…our amnesia…our turning away, we are not doing our part to feed that world which gives us life, and in response, WE are missing out, I fear. In my mind, this is not an optional relationship. So many are remembering that it is actually essential and what we do to the Others, we do to ourselves. Our actions and thoughts have ripple effects into the world. “Ubuntu”: “I am because you are”…the way you treat me changes me and vice versa. That name which my dog bears, is a S. African philosophy and makes such good sense.
We are NOT alone and we need each other….the human Others AND the more than human.
I am seeing quite clearly how I’ve sometimes held myself separate, isolated, felt different and alone, and independent to a fault... and it is evident to me now, that being in physical human presence is quite often life giving….if I let it be. My sister Barb said to me this morning, “giving brings out the best in people.” I have certainly been experiencing that. And I am SO grateful to have this important and humbling experience of being on the receiving end of the love of so many.
In this season of gratitude, will you join me in giving praise and thanksgiving to the Mystery that we all are, and we are embedded in. We are surrounded by allies, whether we can feel that or not.
They’ve been waiting so long for us to remember to return.
I am SO grateful for you!