A New Poem: Spirit's Slipstream

 On my way to healing....

A single chime rings.

Silver ribbons dance in the breeze.

 

One tree waves.

“Come along,” it says.

 

But where? And how?

The clouds glide slowly

 

west to east, with relentless grace.

“Flow in seamless increments,” they say,

 

“the way we do.

“Even the rooted ones sway with us.”

 

The trees, the clouds, the hovering hummingbirds

find Spirit’s slipstream.

 

“But what does this have to do with healing?” I ask.

“Everything,” they say.

 

“Everything.”

“Join us.

 

“Plunge into the slipstream.

Let go.”

Navigating Mystery

 I'm back to a topic that I did a whole series of (prose) posts on a while back, this time with a single poem. It is an inquiry I am in a lot - how to reframe living with uncertainty to navigating mystery, the words and concept coming from Martin Shaw.  

Now, I wrote this poem, some weeks ago, before I fell and broke some bones, and, oh, the irony!  The day I fell I was evidently not looking at my feet, just as I advise myself in the poem, and look what happened!

Hmm... Maybe some middle way is called for.  I remember Angeles Arrien saying so many times, "Walk the mystical path with practical feet."   My feet and I need to get a grip!  But I still think the poem has something to say, to me, at least.  

I am now spending much of my time healing, but also considering what healing really is about.

So, here's the poem.  And the Mystery of the sunset sky.

“Navigate Mystery,”

the storyteller says.

Look at it this way -

You can cower in fear

with all of life’s uncertainties,

or you can open to

the adventure.

Every story has suffering.

Every wanderer loses the way.

You live in the center

of your own imagination,

privilege your own story,

accentuate your own

pains and sorrows.

Traveling the trails

of the unknown

you have this choice:

either focus on your feet,

afraid of stumbling and falling,

or look up to the trees, the sky,

the birds winging their way

to a place of belonging.

Pain does not define you,

but if all you see is suffering,

all you will do is suffer.

Instead, watch the story unfold,

step by step, mile by mile

into whatever future

awaits.

Medical Appointment Rant

I really wasn't going to post this, but I'm fed up, specifically with the western medical system.  When I go to acupuncture (thank you Jill Stevens) I always feel supported in a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing environment.  I am also fortunate to have a compassionate and caring primary care doc.  But there are times....  Know what I mean?

Entering those white impersonal rooms,

antiseptic, paper sheet over the “bed”

where you will uncomfortably sit and

where you are therefore defined

as “the patient,”

do you shrink, fade back, become as

colorless as the walls?

Are these rooms meant

to make you feel small? 

They are clearly not intended

for your comfort or reassurance.

They are designed to inform you

that you are to be treated,

dictated to, or put in your place.

If your practitioner is compassionate

and willing to see you as a person

(a rarity, it seems, these days),

you may receive assistance or even relief.

You may walk out reassured or hopeful.

Or, you could get attacked with

an unwished for diagnosis.

Your emotional reaction is

seldom their concern.

They are mechanics.

You are broken.

They will fix you.

In any case, you seldom leave feeling

like a partner, a collaborator

in your body’s wellness.

Today, I saw a nurse-practitioner.

She was efficient, thorough, pleasant.

She knew things.

She prescribed things.

And I left with tears welling up.

I left feeling like a problem,

like a ticking time bomb.

One number is the highest

she has ever seen.

Does it help me to know that?  

My blood pressure, 

never a problem,

was high, too.

And let’s not even talk about

my blood sugar.

On top of it all, none of

these invisible “problems”

was the reason for

my visit.

This is not a poem.

I know that.

It looks like a poem, but really

it is a rant.

I hate the medical establishment.

I am beholden to it.

Has it helped me?

Yes.

Has it harmed me?

Yes.

There must be a better way

than having to spend

the rest of my day recovering

some peace of mind and the knowing

that I am not a statistic.

There must be a better way

of healing.

My SoulCollage® card for Hygeia,

goddess of healing

It Begins With a Call (Part 23): Writing My Way Into Healing

A week or so after returning from Topanga we went out on a Sunday morning to go to the farmers' market and found the car covered with ash from the fires in Lake County. The next day I worked to clear a heavily weedy area of our yard and began to cough.  This was the start of a new episode of new physical problems.  Back in the saddle again.

In the meantime, fires raged all over the state.  Fire, fire and more fire.  I understand that holding fire was something given to me in the last writers’ workshop with the teacher.  But it only now occurs to me that I don’t want to hold it in my lungs and airways.  

While reading a book the teacher recommended, a line leaped out and then rewrote itself for me – I write my way into healing.  This feels significant. Without writing I would never have come to this thought!

Over a month’s time, the symptoms changed and somewhat worsened.  At first it was an annoyance.  Now it became just plain difficult.  And scary.  My mother died of lung cancer, and it was not an easy death.  That isn’t where I want to go, and, of course, I realize I have no control.

This morning I turned to my SoulCollage® cards for guidance.  I pulled the one I call Emerging. 

The woman speaks first:  I am one who has been in the underworld.  I am now where the light is breaking through, almost out, and I am pausing here.  There is a large animal skull that is a gift I will carry out with me.  I have a staff that has helped to support me on my journey.  I look behind me, as Orpheus did, but I am not cursed to lose something.  What I see is the distance I have traveled.  I recognize where I have been.  I will honor the skull and my staff.  I have gained strength here.  The skull is ordinary and yet precious.  It, too, has a story.

The skull says:  I am one who has lived and died, but I have been preserved in this atmosphere.  Outside, I will eventually crumble into dust, but that will be okay, too.  I am not bound by emotions, instincts and the drives of living beings.  I am quiescent and at peace.  If I serve to remind you of something, I see that as a noble purpose I never sought.  It is pleasing.

The light says:  Come unto me!  You have served the dark.  Let me fall upon your pale flesh and bring you vitality and health.  You are going to enter a time of renewal.  All hail, all blessings!

The staff says:  I am one who has worked.  Let us rest now.  It is time for rest.  Not forever, but things must act and rest, act and rest.  If you can move from acting to resting, the dreams will return.

May it be so.  My dream life has been active but out of the reach of my memory.  I would like to shift that.

So, I will consider what it means to rest now.

I will also consider what it means to hold or carry fire, but not have it damage my body. 

It Begins With a Call (Part 19): Healing, Ourselves and the World

Everything changes.  Indeed.  We went to meet our new (potential) primary care doctor.  She came recommended by our wonderful previous doc who was quitting medicine for the time being.  

There’s something disquieting about sitting in those small, white rooms with their “beds” covered with stiff white paper and metal attachments, and with nothing beautiful to look at.  I thought this doc was okay – a bit hard to tell on a first meeting.  She was basically business-like until I asked her about acupuncture, in which I’d heard she had training.  That got her animated.  But I can’t say I felt totally comfortable, either there or with her.  It’s that western medicine thing again. I’ve been desperately trying to get my blood sugar numbers down into the normal range by eating a low carb – no sugar diet.  She told me that the way to get it down to normal is to exercise for thirty minutes five days a week.  That’s something I’d never heard before and is more than I’ve been doing.  Sigh.  I can up my swimming from 25 minutes to 30 and add in two more days of something.

I left the clinic with an odd mix of feelings – that the new doc was probably fine, but that I felt not quite comfortable with her.  Western medicine facilities are impersonal.  What I’m really looking for is personal.

I’m tired of all the specialists who seem to see you as just one organ or system, divorced from the others.  The doctors, even the compassionate and well-intentioned ones, are ruled by the bean counters and insurance companies.  Our western clinics are not designed to make you feel welcome or cared for.  Just play the game by their rules and you’ll be just fine.  Right.  I would soon come to hear at the intensive, confirming my feelings and thoughts:  “A practitioner needs to hear your story and not just give a predetermined prescription.”

The upshot?  We went back to another doctor we liked who had moved to another medical group.  She’s still very much an allopathic doc, but a caring and open person who is willing to consider alternative modalities.

What is healing? 

According to Deena Metzger, what is happening in our bodies and what is happening to the earth are very much the same.  She says:

             It is no accident that so many illnesses that we are suffering at this time

             in history are analogous to social and global ills, and so in treating the

             individual we are being trained and called to bring healing to the society

             at large. (“Can the World Mend in this Body?” in Dark Matter #6, May, 2018).

The article goes on to say:

Healing is not necessarily restoring the original condition. It is not returning to paradise. Healing is helping to align the individual with the trajectory of the soul. Healing is the field of beauty through which the details of the larger purpose of an individual’s current life in relationship to his//her own history, ancestors, spirits, the present, the future, and global healing are revealed and enacted. 

This certainly makes sense in light of what I have been exploring and writing about.

My SoulCollage® card for Deena Metzger

The earth is full of brokenness.  I am full of brokenness.  What does that mean?  Can we heal our private and personal selves apart from healing the earth?  I certainly have no answers, only questions.  But maybe the fact that I have felt ill and longed for healing implies something greater than me and my body’s troubles.  Maybe something more or greater is required, not just for the individual, but for the collective.

I defer to Deena, who knows more about this than I do.  She says she had to learn that “… healing the world would be the most direct way of healing myself.”  

I’m not sure how to even begin to heal the world, even a little bit.

One more bit of Deena wisdom:  “I developed a mantra: Heal the life and the life will heal you.”