Embracing Moose

Initially I was going to ‘apologize in advance’ for yet another blog post referencing the Medicine Cards^©  by Jamie Sams and David Carson. But you know what? No apologies.

If you are still with me after six days of my posts (without me even giving you the option to receive them personally delivered to your email inbox – a feature coming soon to an inbox near you – perhaps as soon as tomorrow or the next day!), then you probably have surmised that these wonderful windows into understanding ourselves via Mother Nature’s creatures are a big part of my life.

With one thousand one hundred four blog posts on my horizon (at the very least), I can assure you that at least a half bazillion of them will center on, or in some way reference, the Medicine Cards^© and how they impact my understanding of something in my life in one way or another. And I will write about it. And therefore you, if you’re as devoted to reading my blog as I will be to writing it, will read about it.

Feels like a full circle to me. Or at least some weird type of metaphysical co-dependency – but I’d rather think of it as a “circle of appreciation,” and perhaps even “wisdom sharing.” I would insert an eye roll here if I were texting.

Today’s post marks the completion of a full seven days of 1111 Devotion posts on Ruffled Feathers. In the grand scheme of things, this is a miniscule accomplishment. Not even 1%. Exactly 0.63%, to be honest. Hardly something to crow about. (Don’t go there.) And that is my human, perfectionist, egotistical, relentlessly critical perspective on my process. The one that says, “You can start to feel like you’re ‘all that’ when you get to, maybe, oh I don’t know, Day Five Hundred Fifty Six. But NOT ONE DAY BEFORE.”

But Spirit is different. Spirit is not an asshat to me. (I almost wrote the other word, but it just felt wrong – because Spirit’s not an asshole. Woops.)

On the contrary. Right out of the gate Spirit knew I would need reassurance that I had indeed “heard right” (i.e., listened) to the message that the best way to honor my son’s life was to engage in a substantial act of Devotion. 1111 sub-acts, to be precise.

Because let me tell you, since creating Ruffled Feathers in March of 2010, up through the day before writing my Devotion post, I had published a grand total of 31 entries, or an average of 3.5 per year. So committing to this Act of Power, as I’ve also called it, has almost every evening this past week caused my stomach to sort-of bottom out.

Yes, Spirit knew I would need a lot of coaxing to refrain from talking myself out of the fact that I’d actually received and correctly interpreted an inspiration (Spirit-nudge? Marching orders?) to write 1111 blog posts. I’m a lawyer. It would not take a lot for me to muster a pretty compelling argument that I’d somehow misheard that directive from Spirit.

But the fact remains that last Sunday (11/11) was the day I received the inspiration (and the confirmation from several sources, which I wrote about this past week) to do this thing.

Monday night I published my initial Devotion post, publicly committing to this Act of Power.

Tuesday morning, I picked:    Moose². Yes, that correctly reads “Moose squared.” And what it means is that I chose Moose right side up, and the card on the bottom was a “blank.”

Remember, Karl and I choose cards virtually every single day at the start of our morning. Our ‘picking process’ is as follows:

Karl chooses first, shuffling, softly breathing his request for guidance on his day into the cards, shuffling some more, keeping his feet firmly planted on the ground to root him to Mother Earth…and then he picks what he picks. I read out loud the full main text of the top card, if it is upright, but if his top card is reversed, or ‘contrary,’ I read both the upright (main) and reversed passages in the accompanying text. I do not read out loud the information for the ‘underneath’ card. We just look at it, note it, and discuss how it might hone in on or otherwise clarify the application of the message of the top card.

Eventually it’s my turn, and I engage in essentially the same process.

So, to be clear, I’m never just picking up the deck and not shuffling, or doing anything else that might be odd or nefariously manipulating the deck, or my ‘pick,’ for the purpose of later writing about some amazing ‘coincidence.’ In fact, I shuffle and shuffle relentlessly, deliberately turning cards this way and that, just to ensure that they’re properly ‘mixed.’

Also, the Medicine Cards^© deck comes with five or so ‘blank’ cards, which the authors or publishers suggest can be used for people who want to draw their own animals or insects or whatever. That’s not our thing. But we keep them in the deck for a two-fold purpose:

First, if we shuffle and shuffle and choose a “blank,” we take it to mean that we’re not grounded. Oftentimes we may be talking about extraneous things, joking around, being irreverent, or otherwise not being fully present to the task at hand, and we’ll get smacked by pulling a blank. So when we pull a blank, we know we need to settle ourselves and really get grounded and as clear as we can muster.

The other way we interpret the blanks is if they show up on the bottom of the deck after choosing our top or main card. If there is no other specific card showing up on the bottom to give the top card ‘context,’ then we consider that top pick ‘squared,’ and figure Spirit is telling us that the top card is either really important and we need to pay attention, or it’s influence is going to show up in our life very powerfully that day. Or both.

And so ends our ‘Medicine Cards^© Tutorial/the Weikel-Way,’ which was not what I initially intended to focus upon in this post. But I’ve rambled on far too long, and if my posts take up too much time for you to read, you may never come back!

Who am I kidding? Yes, I should keep my posts to a reasonable length. But this one went long, and I have 1104 left to write after this one, so I might as well save my Moose discussion for tomorrow. Thank you for reading; it really means a lot to me.