Coming Full Circle

It seems important to record this memory in print today as I come full circle, before beginning the next chapter of my life.

On the evening of Aug 19th, I was admitted into the hospital, and the next 24 hours were a sleepless blur. On the next night, I woke up before sunrise and felt compelled to write—to say something, to begin to record this experience. I had no journal, so I pressed the call button and asked the nurse for some paper and a pencil.

I just recently discovered this again—here’s what I wrote:

“Wed. am … I’ve reached a place of helplessness that I’ve never felt before. I slept well for hours and woke up stuck in a body, a life that I have no idea how to face. When all one can think about is escape—going—doing—then how do I stay here and find the Love that waits—that attends me?

I’m here—now—in a body that has to learn how to move all over again. To receive—get help where needed and to find strength for the day.

Never has ‘one step at a time’ meant so much. Literally + emotionally. Spiritually + physically—it’s all the same.”

Friends, it feels important to record this today as the season moves into a new one. Nothing has really changed, and everything has changed!

Thank God. I can walk and move and live fully again

AND

never has ‘one step at a time’ meant so much.

Literally + emotionally. Spiritually + physically—it’s all the same.

I’m committed to keeping recording the journey of soul. Sign up at the bottom of the page to receive each of these new records as I write them.

One step at a time!

JOIN ME!

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It’s so curious that I just unearthed a newspaper story from 1914, telling the story of my MD grandfather who at 41 years of age was riding his horse and buggy in downtown Brantford, ON. His horse was spooked by a streetcar, and he fell into the path of this newly motorized contrivance. The clipping says, ‘he escaped death and serious injury.’ Just like me. So strange! Creature vs. Automobile is somehow reenacted in my family? Nature and technological innovation collide on a busy street corner and invite us into a cosmic re-alignment.

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It’s been three months since Cristina and I first met—face-to-face through her shattered windshield.

Last week, we sent out this invitation to a few of our close soul friends:

A dozen soul friends met together around this healing bowl in Cristina’s eurythmy room (a kind of ‘visible’ speech in rhythm) in her Waldorf school.

It felt too sacred a time to take many photos, so I’ll try to pass on the essence through word pictures.

As I light our central candle, I note the double wicks—we are like two fires that have been fused together! Joanna, a musician who knows us both, is playing “There is a Balm in Gilead.”

The full harvest moon is rising, something deeply emotional, deeply spiritual is being honored, completed in our lives as I begin this healing ceremony with an invocation:

We all come seeking healing and the light of love in and through this crash into cosmic consciousness. Come Holy Spirit and bless this space and this time in the name of Love.

I begin with some words of longing and our purpose for being here.

Gratitude that I can walk again and asking for prayers for healing of my brain, which at times is still fuzzy from the concussion.

Prayers for Cristina, who has unintentionally caused injury and trauma. We all have been witnesses of a tragedy and near-collision with death. I want you to know that I honor her as a soul-friend, a truly kind and gentle spirit, chosen by Mystery. We are in this healing process together and grateful that you as our friends and family and communities join us.

This healing ceremony is also intentionally a ritual for the healing of collective community. For the traumatic injuries we suffer from generation to generation. Especially, we want to offer this ceremony for all those unintentional wounds and patterns from our ancestors that live silently in and through us in our blood, bones, and psyches.

Do you know that I prayed very intentionally at the start of this year for cosmic realignment? Despite decades of faith and perseverance in psychospiritual and physical Earth journeying, I am quite aware of how out of alignment I am/We are in various ways. How unprepared, even ignorant I am/We are, to live both as spirit and as human body. We are all linked. Interconnected. Sent-ones. From and in a cosmic array and unfolding of Mystery.

Cristina—how did it come to be—that we would meet by crashing together, a shattered windshield, broken bones, and the heart-sick suffering of unintentional trauma? I’m filled with gratitude for our courage—both of us. We’ve continued to connect, both of us aware that this was no accident, but a vitally important crash into a cosmic reality. AND goodness me, how was it that you for 40 years have been an active participant in a spiritual community that teaches about that human-cosmic dance of life and death!

Cristina then danced to the words of this poem she had found here in my blog. Amazing life-energy—so freely and graciously given and received. We are here together now, praying for multiplication, for the fruit of growth. That our wounds of separation from each other and the Earth would find healing. That our story would be seed, spread into the world, especially healing the unintentional trauma we all incur in just being human.

After this, we enacted a healing ritual spontaneously around the wooden bowl that has been at the center of hundreds of my Circles of Trust over the years. This time I decorated it with dried flowers that have been given to me these past months. With water and anointing oil, the two of us offered each other cleansing, forgiveness, gratitude, and the healing balm of gentle words and tears. Heaven and earth rejoiced as we entered this blessing.

We completed the hour with the eurythmy community offering a healing ‘bath’ of movement, music, and color, with Joanna playing the Prelude in C-Major, by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The dancers moved around me, and then Uli, and then others, in waves of sacred geometry. Breathtaking awe as the Spirit moved in all directions, in and through and around us with the promise of leading us all back out into the world, which so urgently needs cosmic re-tuning in every way.

Each of us headed home swirling in joy after spilling out a few words to each other of the wonder of this experience. We spoke of our personal commitment to continue this soul journey of initiation as individuals in community.

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I wonder what comes next? In some ways, I sense we have come full circle, and yet, another begins.

My calendar is almost empty of commitments. I’m waiting for direction.

Join with me, dear friends, as this season of deep change continues. I’ll continue to write about it here.

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An invitation:

All week, I have been singing this song from Lyndsey Scott in my heart. All week, we knew we were being led in the Way, to follow the path that had started in our lives.

We don’t have to know the Way, the Way knows the Way.

We don’t have to plan the Way.

Trust the way, feel your Way.

The Way knows, the Way knows

The Way knows the Way.

Listen to this song.

Think about the core of why we as humans might be being called in fresh ways to embody our spiritual lives.

In ritual, we bring into the material realm what is often hidden in Spirit but is alive and waiting for an entryway. In enacting a ceremonial form that is dedicated to the whole and honoring the clear guidance of ancestral wisdom, we do this on behalf of all that is yet to come, wisdom, healing, and presence still emerging.

A ritual can be as simple as standing up and praying out loud in expression with your hands and body or building an altar of stones to honor the passages of life.

Your encouragement today is to pay attention to how the Way is speaking now through you and to respond in a reciprocal action of loving attention. In Beauty.

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