3:04 p.m. - 2002-12-18
Powamu
I had a dream last night. I seemed to be living near the Atlantic Ocean somewhere in New England. My home was on a country lane on the inner side, leading to town. Next door was a church surrounded by trees; spire reaching heavenward. Box hedges surrounded the property. On the other side, another home, this one backing onto a cliff facing northeast. Big bowl of cloudless blue sky above. Down below, a bay; rugged walls of rock and bush enclosing it, deep, calm, and cerulean; the mouth some distance away, wide and beckoning out to the wilder water. Peaceful and purposeful the lives of those who lived there. Respect and courtesy governed relationships, but in nowise was free thought or speech hindered. All of a sudden the house on the other side of the church was gone with only a dugout of the cellar left. Graded at an angle, the property was no longer tillable. It reminded me of the Blarney stone in Ireland and it was as if I had a flashback to a time when I had lived or visited there. Down in the bay were divers - Cousteau style - with little robot devices moving some sort of large, long flexible tubing that was white in colour. The water was still flawlessly clean and beautiful. I couldn't understand the need or the purpose. Exploring for something lost?
My Metis friend L called. We had a long talk. As I've noted before, we met when we were both searching for a teacher of certain faith practices that seemed to be our next step on the path of our spiritual studies. It has always been a very even trade of knowledge and understanding between us. We seemed to need to revisit those first few years when we were comparing practices and prophecies, as well as learning to cope with the personal challenges that were part of our growth. It seems to both of us that we have just completed a cycle - about 12 years in the making - and gone through a testing time. At the beginning of this cycle it seemed to us that much that was described in the prophecies related to the same events and was not that far distant in terms of years. Those talks are even more relevant now and we can tease out more of the common threads. Free will is always a factor of course. As I've mentioned before, the movie industry seems to intuit much before it happens. The Lord of the Rings cycle and the Harry Potter series speak somewhat of the need for every individual to understand that each thought and each choice weighs in the balance of the outcome for the whole. Saying "I was only doing my job" or "I'm only one person - what I choose doesn't matter" or worse "well everyone else is doing or choosing it" just isn't acceptable. Choose thou, I guess.
Sometimes we let go our rational processes and move to a non-rational approach - sort of as is described in some of the Carlos Castenada work although not entirely. Sans drugs for me thank you very much. We were assessing our tests. Her son was killed in August - a violent end to a young life. She doesn't know or tell all the details and it is her story, so I won't write about it, except to say it has put her into a self destruct mode in some ways. What balances her is her daughters; it is Christmas and they are still young. She doesn't want to deal with this season, but the children need something good to hold on to. All I can do for her is listen and talk. It is a fine line because I am not willing to do anything that would enable her self-abuse/destruction, but the living and dying are tightly intertwined. I ache for her children. With grace they may come out of this as very strong women and leaders, but at what cost?
Often when things are very tough we deal with the issues by using laughter. In Japan, it is customary to laugh if one survives a traumatic event, rather than crying and grieving as is the practice here. Perhaps there is a good lesson there. After all one can't change the past, one can only learn from it - if one is open to the present and the future. Attitude and intention are everything in interpreting subjective experience and that determines how you respond. How you respond - or don't - sets one's feet, one by one, on the next part of your journey. One step at a time, one day at a time. Until the foundation of your experience is prepared and put into order, the house cannot be built, unless of course, you want it tumbling down around your ears. Houses of sand. It doesn't mean we take pain lightly - we just put it in its place and laugh at ourselves.
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