It Begins With a Call (Part 22): Intensive's End

We've just returned from Hawaii (more to say on that later), and I see how that journey actually began six months ago with my time at the Healers' Intensive in Topanga.  Here are my reflections from then:

The quiet and the wind today are balms to my soul.  Sitting looking out over the canyon, another poem came:

This Earth Was Given

This earth was given.

Not to us.

It was not given to us,

It was just given,

Life arising out of itself,

Blazing forth,

Blossoming forth,

Birthed into being

For its own sake.

We are such fools

To think we own it,

Control it,

Master it,

As if it were here

For us and us alone.

No, it is here

Because it is here.

It is glorious because

It can be,

Generous because

That is its nature,

Beautiful because there is

No other way for it to be.

This earth was given,

As we were given.

And the only way

to be together

Is for us

To bow down.

We are reaching the end of our time together, and today are to spend some time integrating what we have learned about our mandate.  There are so many pieces, so many thoughts, insights, instructions and possibilities that it’s all a jumble.  What we clearly have, all of us, is devastating grief.

The teacher says she hears me speaking with more authority.  I consider her impressions of me from previous times here, and find them interesting.  She has seen me as hesitant, quiet, holding back.  Not how I see myself, except for the quiet piece.  I like to speak with an economy of words.  I grow impatient, as the teacher does not seem to, with those who speak endlessly.  I don’t like my judgmentalism, but there it is.  

I say, “Maybe I’m stepping more into the elder role.”  I think I have been hesitant because I’ve gotten the feedback that I have too strong a voice.  I’m one of those in Eve Ensler’s poem “who go too far and feel too much.”  Certainly, my mother tried to tone me down, calm me down, socialize me into acceptability.  I thought I’d gotten out from under that program, but perhaps it has snagged me again.  Maybe it’s time I stop worrying about how I come off and just say and do what I need to say and do.  I’d like to do it with a full and open heart, though.  Full of the fire of life and Spirit.

So, what are the threads? Elder. Grandmother. Grief.  Hawaii. Turtles. Whales. Plastic. (See Part 21).  Metabolizing or transforming energy.  Revitalizing the sacredness of the earth in my city, bleached dead like the coral in the sea.  Speak to the trees.  Plant a tree.  Carry fire.

I am one who wears the mantle of Elder.  I am one who carries and receives the blessings of fire.  I am one who is of the earth and who waters it with my tears.  I am one who is honored by and listens to the voice of Whale, who will not place Turtle between myself and danger.  I am one who will question my beliefs.  I am one who is blessed and who can bless (to quote Yeats) and I am one who will gratefully receive that blessing and inhabit the calling brought forth from it.  I am one who will use my voice and my words to be with Earth, Tree, Whale, Turtle, grandchildren, people in my path and on my path.

Whale asked me to say this poem of mine:

We need each other now.

We need each other now.

In truth, we always have.

But as things disintegrate,

as chaos and disorder reign,

we become like bones,

scattered and

stripped clean of all

that is inessential.

Let’s reassemble ourselves,

the way Isis did with Osiris,

or La Loba with her wolf bones.

Let’s find a new configuration,

this part mine, that part yours –

Perhaps something original

will emerge, or

something ancient.

Let’s light a candle now, friends,

so together we might see

how to begin.

So, if I walk out of here and out of this sacred canyon as Elder, what does that look like?  Carrying grief and the knowledge of demise that is unbearable.  Carrying fire and the tears that water the parched earth.  Carrying the charge of metabolizing the poisonous fires and vapors and of resacralizing the land.  Not putting Turtle between me and danger.  Trying to eliminate plastic as much as is feasible. 

And healing?  There is no healing in hospice, other than the healing of Spirit.  It is not about my healing, that is clear.

I began the week with a card reading.  It was profound.  The card for the past was Hygeia, healing.  The card for the present was Persephone.  She is always my present.  The future was one I call Bone Crone, looking towards very old age and mortality.  So, I decided to end the week with another reading.  The past card was Fatigue and Illness, the present was the Green Man, the living vital presence of the green world.  The future was Holding Hecate’s Torch.  In it, I stand with my partner as we look out to take the next step.  Hermes is above us, Hecate below, and I carry one of Hecate’s torches.  To me, that speaks of validation of my elderhood.  My blog is Hanging Out with Hecate.  I will hang with her still, She who witnesses, who is the companion.  I hold the flame.

It Begins with a Call: A Vision of Athena and Hygeia (Part 12)

Athena is still around. 

I close my eyes and picture the sacred spring at Panther Meadow on Mt. Shasta, a place that is sacred to me. From there, I see myself ascend to the top of a mountain where I find a fire outside a cave.  I sit down alongside the fire and wait, knowing that I need permission to enter the cave.  Athena arrives and takes me inside and Hygeia is there.  She is beautiful but does not look like Klimt’s version of her, although She tells me She likes the way he portrayed Her.  Here She is dressed simply and has a long, dark braid hanging down Her back.  She feeds me a syrup made from elder flowers and berries, thyme, and snake venom.

My Hygeia SoulCollage® card

Athena lays me down and kisses my forehead.  The kiss sends a jolt of energy running through me.  She speaks about my being (or needing to be) a warrior.  Not one who fights literal battles, but one whose work is protecting and defending the children and myself.  She tells me that I am to be a healer, but not a physical healer.  My work is not hands-on healing of the body.  She instructs me to say three times, “I accept Athena Hygeneia,” which I do (I have not seen the name Hygeneia anywhere).

Athena tells me to go to the teacher’s next healers’ intensive, not to either start or finish a process, but to “ripen” one.  She tells me this will be made clear if I pay attention, and that intellectual information will be given to me in my dreams.  She says that snakes are important; they are meant to scare.  My work is about healing fear.

Well, fear is one thing I’m certainly familiar with.  I remember the appearance of a large snake the last time I was at the teacher’s.

I have never felt either attracted to or fascinated by snakes.  Maybe this will change.  Both Athena and Hygeia handle snakes.

Hygeia wields her snake

            with confidence and skill.

She is beautiful and proud,

            and I wonder

what She might be

            to me.  I wonder,

what are Her stories?

The snake amulet came to me

            with a reading about shedding fear.

Hygeia knows about this,

            the way the Cretan snake goddesses -

Ixchel, Kali, and the Rainbow Serpent -

            all embody and brandish snake power

without fear.

            They let me know

I have much to learn.

I remember the teacher once saying that Spirit will not necessarily come to you in the way you want or expect.  Maybe all my whining and complaining about not feeling connected to Spirit is because I haven’t recognized how Spirit communication and, really, communion happen.  I get guidance when consulting my SoulCollage® cards, especially the one I call Wisdom Keeper.  She became my guide at age 65, for the years from ages 65 to 70.  She answers my questions when I write in the mornings, and never fails me.  But sometimes I discount her advice because it comes through the voice in my own head; the words come pouring out of my pen onto paper.  I think, “Well, it’s just my own voice.” But what if it is the way Spirit communicates to me, and I have just been discounting it?

Wisdom Keeper

I also wondered whether this focus on Athena and Hygeia was insulting to Persephone, to whom I feel allegiance, so I asked Her.  She said, “Oh, dear heart, expand your repertoire.  And your council.”

I like this idea, of having a council of goddesses and wisdom figures to be my guides.

Reflections on the Intensive

All week I've been wanting to write about the Healers' Intensive with Deena Metzger, partly for my friends who may be interested, but also so that I can begin to integrate everything that transpired.  But the intensive was so intense, in so many ways, that it's taken me a while to settle down from the headaches that began there and continued when I got home.  The material alone was challenging and deep, but there was also a summer solstice ritual outdoors in 112 degree heat, dense and smoke-filled air from the Santa Barbara fires, and another fire in Topanga itself, threatening an evacuation that fortunately did not happen.  Intense. Yes.   Finally, I'm feeling ready to write.

So, this morning I drew a SoulCollage® card to help me begin.  It was the card I call My Healthy Heart.  Perfect.  Where else to begin than with the heart?

The core of the intensive, as with all of the work I've done with Deena, centered around western mind and the chaos and violence it has created.  No surprise that it pretty quickly led to feelings of grief.  What other response, really, can there be?  We spent most of a whole day speaking in Council about how and where we're heartbroken.

I came to Topanga with a dream.  It was the opening dream for the week's work, and is at the core of everything for me (and I think for the community).  In the dream, I am with a friend discussing the healing properties of some substance, when I am given an image, a symbol, and some words along with it.  The image is of a hub with spokes going out from it, rather like a wheel, but not round on its edge.  The words go something like: Fix the hub and healing will radiate out to all parts of the structure.  I've never had a dream like this before.  I began to understand that, with my own physical healing, I've been trying to fix the parts but missing the core.  It then became very clear to me that my illness has been, at the core, spiritual, with physical manifestations.  (I know this may sound like, duh, but you know how sometimes you finally get the obvious.  My acupuncturist has pretty much been trying to tell me something like this for ages).

And what is the illness?  I surmised and Deena more or less agreed that it is about being disconnected from Spirit.  Disconnection was a big word for many of us in the group - from the earth, the wisdom of the natural world, the animals, the ancestors, Spirit.

Deena's work is to have us question.  Everything.  All our assumptions, all our so-called bottom lines.  We are so infected with the western acculturated mindset that we often don't even realize it.  You know - the old fish in water analogy.

How do we connect or re-connect with a more indigenous mind and heart?  According to Deena, we don't and can't really understand what it means to regard the earth as our mother, though we bandy the term about.  If we did, we would live differently.  And though we have much to learn from indigenous cultures and people, we can't be them or co-opt their particular ways.  Can we learn from them without stealing from them?  Haven't we stolen and destroyed enough?

All anyone can do is live with the heartbreak and forge one's own pathless path.  For me, a big part is staying in connection with Spirit (however you name it or think of it).  The earth is besieged.  We often live our privileged lives as though it isn't.  So, what do we do, then, to stay conscious and not collapse in despair? What we worked on all week was to understand what we are each called to.  To listen, to find out what Spirit wants of us.  It isn't easy, especially if we think we can do it without the support of community.  There is certainly no support in the broader culture for it.  But those of us who think in these ways have to be in Council together.  We need to hold each other in this work.

My particular heartbreak?  It's for these beloveds and the world they are growing up in.

The Questions We Carry

I am preparing to go to Topanga Canyon for my second Healers' Intensive with Deena Metzger.  She has asked each of us to prepare a 3-minute introduction about the questions we are carrying and about why we were called to be there.  I'm glad she asked; I've found it helpful to think about it, to consider why it is that I feel so moved to go again.  This is what I've come up with so far.

It's interesting to me that I've felt so strongly to come to the Intensive both of the last two years.  I knew I wanted to work with Deena more, but I think of myself much more as a writer than a healer (Deena also offers a Writers' Intensive).  But it's been very clear to me that I felt called to this one.

Last year we spent the week honing a question.  Mine is:  What would an indigenous grandmother do?  I have lived with this question for a year, and it's still my question.  The indigenous part is because I still have plenty of work to do on divesting myself of acculturated mind and on living an authentic life, in relationship to Spirit.  The grandmother part is because I spend a lot of time with my three young granddaughters and am distressed and scared about the world they are growing up in, and also because of issues and concerns (and questions) about aging and mortality.  How much do I (or should I) accept the limitations I feel are associated with an aging body?  How can I be a true elder, of service to my family and community?  How much effort is enough, and what are the efforts I ought to make?

I am curious about what insights I may get this week about being a healer.  A year and a half ago a psychic said to me, "You're a teacher and a healer."  I get the teacher part, but the healer label stunned me.  I am grateful to her for it because I don't think I'd have either heard or followed the call to go to last year's intensive if she hadn't opened that door for me.

In my SoulCollage® work, the card I pulled for 2016 is one of the few single-image cards I have made.  I was drawn to the image only to discover after I made the card that the artist called her Proserpina.  Such synchronicity - that I would make another Persephone card and not even realize it!

She is holding a box of mystery.  So here is another big question for me:  What is its significance for me?