Spirit Animals

The Mystery within...

My August 5, 2013 blog titled “My Spider” told of how I came to know, and be grateful for my totem spider that appeared to me while on a “Women Gathering” retreat.  I wasn’t at all sure I wanted this spider spirit until I began to understand what it was asking me to suspend:  judgment of others and myself; anxiety for things undone; and the need to be perfect or right.  And after I learned that my spider is the keeper of the primordial alphabet, and teaches one how to write with power and creativity, I was in love with it.

Two more spirit animals have now recently showed up very unexpectedly in my life in the forms of a golden Palomino and a black horse.  They appeared on the first thawing day of this winter’s frigid grip while I walked in a wood not far from my house with my yellow Lab, Oliver.  Oliver stopped and stood transfixed with something among the bare trees deep in the snow-covered woods.  I followed his gaze and there stood a yellow horse!  My disbelief doubled when a black horse soon joined it.  We all just stood watching one another until finally the horses snorted, and then Oliver gave one bark, at which the pair turned and ran north into a grove of pines. 

This little 17-acre wood, bounded by private residences, a bike trail, and the Milwaukee River is home to squirrels, birds, chipmunks and deer.  Not horses.  I figured they probably escaped from their paddock somewhere and were enjoying a little spring fling.  I thought somebody should know where they were so when I got to the bike trail I asked a couple walking there if they had a cell phone so I could alert authorities of the horses whereabouts.  Later that night I called the Ozaukee County Sheriff’s dispatch to see if anyone reported a missing black and Palomino horse.  The dispatcher said no and they sent two deputies there and found nothing. 

I looked on-line for the spiritual attributes of horses and found Horse Journeys.  I learned horses are symbols of freedom and will awaken and discover my own freedom and power.  They teach fear kills creativity and can lead me to trust my own inner wealth of knowledge making me aware all things are possible.  Horses can reconnect me with the natural world, encourage me to be in the moment, and inspire a heightened sense of awareness.  Some of the goodness horses possess leads to a balanced social order because of their heightened sensory awareness, self-responsibility, and support of the greater good for the whole community.  These spirit guides can help me claim my authentic heart so what I say, do, think and feel comes from love.  I also found a golden horse signifies the coming of a spiritual manifestation and action; and a black horse is symbolic of death and rebirth.  I am thrilled to accept these new spirit animals in my life and welcome their mentoring.

What if we all became aware of our spirit animals with messages for our life?  

Truth

The Mystery within...

I haven’t gotten outside much this winter and the truth is I am really longing for the emotional strength and spiritual comfort past winter walks brought me.  I long for deep feathery snow that kicked up lightly or a sandpaper crunch beneath my feet, or being gently blessed by fine falling crystals from a high cedar bough.  I think its time for me to reread “God Never Hurries” for my main purpose in writing it was to always remember my heightened awareness from the everyday messages that came with each season, and everything in it.

In the section of my memoir titled Truth, the first two paragraphs read:

Light snow was falling on an early January morning when I drove my car to a neighborhood service station and left it there for an oil change.  The snow stopped as I started to walk home.  Several hours later when I went back to pick up my car, I was surprised to see my footprints still alone in the fresh snow.  No one else had walked my path.  I backtracked on my lone footprints thinking of the path I had trod the previous year and my painstaking search for truth in daily reflection and writing.

Several blocks later, I saw a woman approaching.  She walked in my original prints but didn’t know me.  We smiled as we passed each other and said hello.  I wondered:  if she reflected and wrote each day about her reality, what would her truths be?  When I reached the corner, I crossed to the other side of the street so I could continue in my tracks.  There a man’s footprints had tracked on mine.  I wondered what his truths were and could he understand my reality? 

I am currently going for physical therapy for my sore knee so I can hopefully return to a life lived closer to God’s creation were weather, skies, sun, clouds, rain, ice, wind, birds, fog, water, waves, stones, leaves, and animals and fish and so much more spoke to me in every season and let me know that I am loved.  While at physical therapy today an overhead television screen showed bedridden soldiers with horrific incapacitating injuries.  I hope they know that they are loved.

What if each and everyone one of us, everywhere, knew that we are loved?  Would there be need for injury anywhere?  

Different Worlds

The Mystery Within

I found myself getting stressed this past week over obtaining some quotes on needed home repairs, and also realizing I can’t keep putting off the dreaded car shopping to replace my almost 12 year old vehicle.  And I was feeling pressured for time because of a luncheon date I made with a friend a couple of weeks earlier.  It then occurred to me this friend has no home of her own, or car, or much of anything else.  The timing of our meeting was revelatory.  Then on a trip to the library to pick up Consumer Reports car buying issues I encounter three severely handicapped individuals truly enjoying their outing there.  Awareness of these individuals’ different worlds touched me and put my stress in perspective.  And I felt the world to be briefly absent of stress when my three and a half month old Yellow Lab Oliver and I took our walk in the woods not far from my home.  There a rust-colored deer crossed my path and then stood watching me for a few seconds not twenty feet away.

What if we all could be aware of empathy, compassion and gratitude to relieve our stress? 

Recycling Pain

God is...

This past week I have been pondering on how this mysterious God of ours, who somehow lives within each one of us, can grow us through suffering.  It brought me to see God as the Ultimate Recycler taking heartbreak, shame, guilt, rejection, abuse, fear, anger, abandonment, or whatever, you can fill in the blank, and use it for our transformation.  This, however, is not an automatic, quick, one-sided process.  It does require our full participation, awareness, patience, trust, and work.  

It seems the very first step in the recycling process is learning to sit with the discomfort, letting pain be pain and mystery be mystery, and trust good will come from it.  And while sitting with my pain, I have found breathing and praying eventually reveals the next step needed toward growth. 

I would have never volunteered to be widowed at age 33, with three young children, but it did bring me to know a capable woman who could provide for her children, could learn to balance a check book, maintain a house, yard and car, and lead me to develop talents I didn’t know I was capable of performing in the world of work.  I would have never opted to lose my youngest son at age 21 to mental illness but it did make me more aware, compassionate, and less judgmental of others.  I would have never chosen abuse and Alzheimer’s disease in my parents but it taught me to see God in all things, to know I was worthy of good self-care, to look for my complicity in any trouble, find my voice, and lead me to know true forgiveness and reconciliation.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “…it is the law of all progress that is made by passing through some stages of instability and that may take a very long time.”  What if we could all trust the Divine recycling process?

Disasters We Create

God is...

When I was struggling with agonizing questions and problems surrounding my aging parents care needs I had a heightened awareness to everything around me.  I suspect that was because I felt my life was at stake.  Within that awareness, comfort and answers came to me through everyday experiences.  I found much relief in the natural world, but I also found it in a variety of other ways such as a look, a word or phrase, and often from a National Public Radio program.  One such NPR program was a sociologist’s analysis of the Challenger Disaster.  I summarized the high points of that program for me in my memoir as follows:

Events leading to the tragedy showed how historical decisions created a layered inflexible bureaucracy that compromised the integrity of the original mission.  Everyone got all tangled up in the rules.  Production concerns created debate between engineers and top managers, and engineers were not involved in policy and production decisions.  Intuition and common sense were disallowed (just look out the window and see the ice); they thought pressure would force O rings in place.  Push mute button on a conference call between managers and engineers for an aside managerial conference.  The pilot was not part of the launch decision.  And point the finger of blame away from yourself. 

That analysis was a great metaphor for the problems I had with my father over my mother’s care and also for the difficulty I was experiencing with my church.  What if we used the Challenger analysis as a template showing us what not to do?  Would respectful dialogue been seen as essential in all endeavors?  Would women have half the voice and participation in what affects their lives?  Could common sense rule and simplify life?  Would we be able to look at ourselves and see where our complicity lay?