Breath in. Breath out: A SoulCollage® Story

Most days I do readings with my SoulCollage® cards.  Sometimes it's just a single card as an orientation or focus for the day.  Other times I'll have a particular question that I draw cards to answer.  It's rare for me to feel unsatisfied with what I get, and often it's jaw-droppingly accurate.  But there's another way I use my cards, and that is as writing prompts.

Today I pulled these 3 cards in order to tell a story:

This is what emerged:

Things were beginning to get clear.  By sitting quietly and allowing the old skin to shed, she got in touch with the waters and the sands drifting in the wind.  She hunkered down further, feeling the rocks beneath her anchoring her to the earth, sensing the covering of protection around her and the open way to new life.  Breath in.  Breath out.  Clarity.

The world around was going to hell in a handbasket.  (She wondered where that expression came from.)  The air was growing toxic.  Even the waters gave no purchase to the flocking birds.  Saints of the old religion still watched, but they were darkening and fading away.  Soon they would be no more than the grains of drifting sands.  The bird calls were growing deafening as they searched for a safe place.  Breath in.  Breath out.

Climbing her way out of her thoughts, she had to ascend through the father line, for wasn't it the fathers who had brought all of this on?  Even the good fathers, the blessing fathers, who in one sense could not be termed culpable, even they bore some responsibility.  They praised women.  They may even have revered them, loved them, honored them.  But they did not truly listen to the women or regard their values as primary.  They assumed that women could not really know.  

But bearing children provides another perspective.  Mothering women cannot view children as worthy sacrifices.  That story goes way back, at least as far as Abraham and Isaac.  An old story the fathers tell of devotion to their God.  Women (other than those persuaded or forced to adhere to the ways of the fathers) never accepted that story.  Their Goddess - Asherah, Isis, Astarte, Demeter - however they named Her - had different stories.  Yes, the Great Mother could be fierce and even frightening, but Her ways always were in support of life.

So, sitting quietly and allowing the old skin to shed, she breathed and prayed for a new way, a new life, a resurrection for two-legged ones.  But even more so for the earth itself.  Even if humans had, so far, ruined everything they touched, maybe it was not too late.  There were still rocks, water, birds, and the sands drifting in the wind.

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I am holding one last SoulCollage® session before Fall, next Sunday, June 25th here in Oakland.  Our theme this month is "Radical Joy."  There's still space; let me know if you're interested.