The Burning Bowl

Winter Solstice 2012.
The day after the day the world might end seemed like an auspicious day for our Burning Bowl Ceremony. Fire is a catalyst for change. Fire transforms. Smoke carries our vision, our signal, our prayers, to the heavens.

I have been leading this ceremony for twenty years. On this night we have come together in a circle around a beautiful alter. Everyone has brought something for the alter and we settle in to see what the evening will bring. We spend time in stillness, reviewing our life in the present, and asking ourselves questions. What is working in my life? What is not? This is a time to review and bring awareness to those things that we wish to be done with, cycles to break, limiting beliefs that no longer serve us, ideas and thought forms that we are ready to let go of.  We write them down, and, one by one, will offer them to the fire.

One of the things on my list is "Letting go of any vow of poverty that I may have ever made."

Several years ago one of my teachers gave an interesting talk questioning why so many of us committed to healing ourselves and others suffered from such a lack of abundance. She told a story about how many of us had stood together as Essenes 2000 years ago. We had taken a "vow of personal poverty" to be able to live in the community. What we had belonged to everyone.  It was a very powerful lifetime for many of us, inundated with personal commitment and serving as channels of peace. Okay then !?!

Well, here we are. Are we carrying a cellular memory of "poverty equals worthiness?"
Even if I did vow it then, does it serve me now?  The only answer for me is “NO!”

I declared last night that I was giving up any vow of poverty that I may have made in any life time, consciously or unconsciously. I give up, now and forever, the limiting belief that there is not enough. I am now open to receive all the abundance that is coming my way and exploring new ways to move forward. 

The fire plays with the words on my paper, smoke circles around my fingers, it takes its time but I am committed to reducing it to ash. I hang on, holding my breath. It will be all right.

In a healing circle that I have been a part of for the last few months, one of the women, a very successful potter, shared with us an affirmation that has been part of her business practice. We asked her to repeat it as we all wrote it down.  If it resonates with you, consider it a Winter Solstice gift:

“There are plenty of clients who can afford my services. I have all the clients that I need for continuous prosperity.” 

Go forth into the abundance that is waiting for you ……..  In-Joy !!!

Thanksgiving Memory

Food, food, and more food.
Family, family, and more family.

A Memory.  Going to my brother’s house for Thanking dinner and admiring the beautiful fall arrangement of tiny pumpkins, pine cones and green boughs that ran down the center of their long dining room table … only to find out that my brother had put it all together.  It was stunning and creative and a joy to look at.  It is still fun to remember it. I had never known that creative part of my brother.  He was 12 or 13 when I left for college and I never paid attention to how creative he was.

The revelation continued when I leaned that he had done a lot of the cooking. He made their home made egg noodles every year; noodles are a Price family tradition.      I think we discussed his favorite method of cooking the large turkey necessary to feed our horde.   And he loves to cook, I never knew that.  Maybe he grew into it after I left !?!

Long ago memory. I can see him, when our babies were little, at the bar-b-que grill, grinning and grilling. But then lots of men learn the ins-and-outs of outdoor grilling and many never go any further.

Gary is amazingly talented.  For the holidays, he also makes creative sculptures out of giant hay bales that reel in local newspapers in the Kansas City area. Everyone wants to see what he has put together this year.  It is just 'for fun' for him and his buddies.   I “oohed and awed”  as I looked through a picture album of his different hay bale creations.

Holidays are brighter with my brother in them.
And my mother, and my sister, Marcia and my brother Ed.
We are blessed and I give thanks.
In-Joy

DECADE DEVA'S

(( assignment:   tell us something about yourself in third person ))

She found that facing her 60^th birthday was more of a challenge than she had anticipated:

                at 20 – she didn’t know it yet but in a few short months she would drop out of university and follow her heart to Colorado,

                at 30 – she had just given birth to her son, one of the greatest gifts she would ever receive,

                at 40 – she had married Bob three days before and on her birthday she lay naked on a private beach in Big Sur, drinking champagne – her one and only nude beach experience,

                50 – had found her in a Kansas City hospital’s ICU praying for her father who had been recessitated seven times after dying on Highway 71 near Harrisonville, Missouri,

                now 60 – what would it bring?  What’s it all about <Alfie>?  What will change?  She had been playing with a new hair-do and had found a most-perfect bobby pin to hold her long hair up off her neck.  For several years she had considered getting a really, really short haircut when she was older;  was it time?

What she was ready for was a relationship. She was really, really ready and had been putting in requests with the angels of amore. This was her first decade birthday without a man by her side.    Twenty = Colorado Jessie.    Thirty = Steve, 1^st husband.    Forty  = Bob,  husband #2.    Fifty = Victor, ah, sweet Victor,   and now Sixty  = zilch, da nada, no testosterone in her life, her bed empty.  Would having a man in her life have made the whole idea more palatable?  Quite frankly, probably it would have, especially a “new” romance.  Ah well ……

She drove to Liquor Mart to buy two bottles of champagne for her birthday garden party. It goes so well with pineapple upside down cake = sweet pleasures.  Thank the goddess, some things will never change. 

Decade Deva’s live on !!

Fried Oatmeal

I ate fried oatmeal for breakfast this morning.  I didn’t aim to but that is what happens when my  mind thought about turning off the stove and my body didn’t follow through.  (And it is partly because I have a gosh darn electric range/oven instead of a good old gas range.  Flames hold my attention, warm red circles covered by a pot, do not.  However I have written about this before and don’t want to belabor the point or bore you or myself … moving on …)

Fried oatmeal is a symbol of having so many things to do that I can hardly relax enough to do only one thing at a time. Some things get overlooked, forgotten, or tucked far away “for future consideration”  and my all-time favorite category:  “to-be-thought-about-later-when-I-have-more-time”.  HA!

I feel better when I have (1) one load of laundry in the washing machine, (2) one load of clean clothes in the dryer, (3) meatloaf, potatoes and apples baking in the oven … while  (4) I set at my computer and pound out another appraisal report.  Now that is how to “get ‘er done”!!

Better …. or more productive?

The paradox is how much more efficient I am when I am busy. Or is that an illusion?  I think I am.

Therefore I am ?

How to be a Better Human 101 ... cont... again ....

In the past I have jokingly described my spiritual journey as “How to be a Better Human 101”, placing myself in the freshman class with wide-eyed enthusiasm and an unchecked willingness to experience it all. My goal with every semester is to discern the teachings and assimilate universal wisdom.

For the past two years I have decided to up the ante; sometimes advancing with baby steps, sometimes falling on my bum, but encouraged by the brilliant rays of understanding that sometimes break through the clouds.  My teachers are the horses and those two-legged beings that speak through them, to them and with them.  Completing Melisa Pearce’s program, EGCM, Equine Gestalt Coaching Method was a dream come true; it has been nothing short of amazing.  

My self-study curriculum remains challenging, as on-going lessons should, with several mid-course corrections required, and I ride the roller coaster of accomplishment, failure, self-doubt and joy with utter amazement.  This past week-end’s training with Anna Twinney (Reach Out to Horses) was HUGE.  Surrounded once again by humans and horses I stepped into the arena. 

"I want to open you up.” Anna’s words are still ringing in my ears.  I have a very uncomfortable vision of an old fashioned manual can opener lying beside a tin of sardines, split open via a ragged wound, sharp and possibly dangerous. Worth diving into if you happen to like sardines, but proceed with caution, it is to be handled with care.

This Monday morning I take stock.

Physically, I am beat up, things hurt when I move, a temporary un-comfort-able-ness.

Spiritually, I am standing at yet another precipice, wondering how to get across.

Mentally, I know that we have stood in front of different obstacles before and have eventually figured them out. I take comfort in the absolute knowledge that I have tremendous teachers, marvelous mentors and friendly faces to guide me, stand beside me, and encourage me.

The horses stand out in their pasture, absolutely aware while appearing to dream contentedly in their own little world. But as every thing in the universe is connected, we too are connected. They accept their day, knowing that this journey is my own, but still mindful of my progress.

It will be what it will be. I am not sure where we are going but excited for the journey to unfold.

Full Moon. June 3, 2012

I sit in gratitude in the stillness of my back yard,

turning to glimpse the full moon cloaked by the heavy atmosphere

through the trimmed branches of  the enormous elm tree that my son has been

trimming and shaping for months;  cutting away all the dead and useless branches.

The tree remains over forty feet tall, one of the largest in our neighborhood.

The healthy limbs have now leafed out and look vibrant and happy.

On this full moon I wish the same for myself.

To trim away all the useless thoughts and limiting beliefs that make me dull and heavy.

Release and let go. 

I sit and watch the moon weave through this ancient tree.

I give thanks.

BENDING NEEDLES.

I didn’t notice my mouth was dry until I tried to swallow.  “I need to drink a glass of water as soon I get this done,” I thought to myself as I opened the large blue tote and rummaged through it quickly.  I found a huge 20 mm syringe and I was looking for the green color-coded needle.  I looked over several glass bottles with rubber topped closures and found the one named Flunazine.  I set my phone to the speaker setting so that Nikki could walk me though the set-up. We had gone through the whole routine last fall, but in the months that followed the knowledge had left my noggin.

I set everything gently on the table in front of me and examined each component as she told me again how they were going to fit together.  We had decided that I was going to give the medicine orally because if given IM (intramuscularly) it could, on a rare occasion, cause a deep infection.  Nikki wasn’t going to be home for three or four more days and I was not at all prepared to handle that scenario. 

“Do you feel at all comfortable trying to hit a vein? “ she asked me.

“Absolutely not” I chortled, “I would rather try and give her an enema. “  Might as well bring a bit of humor to the situation.

 “If you want to call Dr. Tim I am fine with that” she said again.

“No, No, I think that I can do this. I am right here, she needs it quickly. I want to give it a try.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt.

My patient was Ruthie, an 1800 pound white mule. She is to Nikki what Lakota is to me. I had to get this right.  “Listen, I am going to go now and put this all together. I’ll call you back when I ‘m done.”  All of the shots I had ever given before were pre-made, all you had to do was point and shoot so to speak.

I fit the needle onto the syringe and then inserted it into the rubber gasket on top of the bottle. Holding the bottle upside down with one hand I tried to pull out the plunger.  Geez, why does this have to be so difficult? I felt really clumsy and it was taking a lot more strength than I thought was necessary. But I kept at it gently so I wouldn’t make a mess of anything.  Humm, is the top of the plunger  10mm, or is it marked by the bottom of the grey piece. I decided more was better than less, we are talking about a big girl out there and she might spit some out. 

Okay, that was almost fun; now I have to take the needle out so that I can shoot this into her mouth. The needle looked scary - it was huge, built for a rhinoceros or something.  Does it pull out or twist out? I tried it with my fingers and nothing moved. I took it upstairs and pulled out two pair of pliers. I had a sterile needle here which I really wasn’t going to use but still I wrapped it in a paper towel before I grabbed it with the pliers. Nothing moved. Well, actually it did, the needle was now bent at approximately a 65 degree angle, which I promptly capped and discarded.

Humm, I surveyed the whole set-up again and decided that even if the needle had came out of the hard plastic it was embedded in, the aperture would be too small to squirt the liquid in as fast as I was planning to.

As I walked out to the pasture I prayed to Ruthie’s angels as well as mine. “Please be with us and let this go smoothly.”  I took a deep breath as Ruthie came into view.  She was still laying down which is what caught my eye in the first place. I didn’t want to spook her so I did not walk straight at her, but aimed for a few feet behind her tail. It would be much easier for me if I could give her the medicine while she lying down – did I mention that she was a big girl? Oh yeah.

She raised her head and looked at me, and thought for a second about standing up, but then she didn’t.   I reached out and rubbed her neck and told her I was going to give her some medicine as gently as I could. I kneeled beside her giant neck and moved slowly and deliberately, careful not to tip the syringe because I didn’t want her to get a taste of what was coming before I was ready. Her lips were clinched but I worked the tube in as far as I thought necessary and then I hit that plunger hard, probably faster than I needed to - but got the job done.  I stroked her neck and thanked her for being still.  She pulled back her front lip and curled her head in the air. 

“Hey,” I told her, “I had to take red root tincture myself yesterday, three times, and that stuff tastes wicked too. You can handle this.” 

I stood up and moved away from her. I suddenly realized I had forgotten to put on the halter that I carried out. Oh well, we hadn’t needed it after all. I reached for my phone to call Nikki and let her know that it had gone well. Whew. We discussed what I should do for the next twenty minutes and I could hear her relief.  We had both been worried that Ruthie would put up a fuss and it could have gone badly, but it didn’t. I suddenly realized that I still needed water. I walked back to the house feeling a lot better than when I walked out to the pasture.  Everything is going to be fine, I just know it!