violence Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

The Dig

Karl and I decided to check out Netflix tonight. It’s been a while since we watched a movie (not counting the experience of watching In and Of Itself, which felt much different than simply watching a movie). Popping up immediately was The Dig, a movie based on actual events that played out in the late 1930s.

I was unfamiliar with the archeological trove discovered in 1937 at Sutton Hoo, an estate in Suffolk, England, and I enjoyed imagining the excitement of unearthing such an extraordinary discovery.

The funny thing is, just after we finished watching the movie this evening and, Karl went to bed. I began perusing my email just to get myself in the frame of mind to write my post, when an email from Smithsonian Magazine caught my eye. Didn’t it contain an article on this very subject?! I’d not checked my email in several hours (a discipline I’ve been trying to cultivate), so I hadn’t seen it before watching the movie.

I’m including the link to the article, above, but you might want to watch the movie before reading it.

A Welcome Change

I have to admit, watching The Dig this evening was a welcome reprieve to the mayhem that seems to permeate our culture right now. I’m complicit, for sure. After the 1/6 Insurrection, or right around that time, Karl and I started watching The Sopranos. We’d never watched the series back when it was airing for the first time, in 1999-2006.

While the series was addictive, Karl and I were crystal clear why we’d not watched back when it first aired. There was no way we would’ve wanted our kids to watch that. As it was, we cringed (and I turned my head) at some of the violence. Blecccch.

Then after watching that series, we started watching the series on Hulu (it’s a Showtime series, though) Your Honor, featuring Bryan Cranston as a New Orleans judge who…well, I won’t disclose any of the plot. It’s compelling viewing as well; but damn – it’s violent.

And then there’s the Insurrection itself and the rhetoric we’re being exposed to day in and day out, and which is becoming normalized in our political discourse.

It’s disconcerting.

There’s a Book

After reading the Smithsonian article on the greater details of The Dig, I think I’m going to read the book of the same name*, upon which the movie was based. It sounds like an interesting aspect of the owner of the estate, Edith Pretty, was left out of the movie: her ‘spiritualism.’ Hmm.

Mrs. Pretty’s interest in the afterlife is only alluded to slightly in the movie, in a wonderful scene with her son toward the end of the movie. That scene reminded me of a particular type of journey I’ve taken with shamanic friends in Ireland. I’ll leave it at that. That scene is also connected to the photo, above, I’m using to illustrate this post.

*affiliate link

(T-294)

Thunderhead and Sunlight – Photo: L. Weikel

What In the World

What in the world is brewing in our country? If we’re honest, I think we all have a good idea – and it is ugly. Ugly and craven and, if we’re not careful, a recipe for injecting a poison into our country that could kill who we are and what we stand for.

I received an earnest reaction to my post last night, my post that encouraged us all to embrace stillness. That reaction was simultaneously one of embracing the power of stillness as well as urging the continued resistance to tyranny. And truth be told, I couldn’t agree more.

While there is wisdom in retreating to the stillness until a dissipation of the current fog of distraction and disinformation occurs, it would behoove us to take one crucial action before our retreat.

One Crucial Action

There is nothing as seminal to the identity of Americans as the concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The deployment of what is essentially a secret army of unidentified armed forces against American citizens under the guise of keeping the peace, which is actually inciting the exact opposite effect, is the antithesis of our country’s ideals and values.

The behavior we’re seeing in Portland at this very moment, brutalization, tear gassing, rendition (complete with hooding suspects without advising them of their rights or where they are being taken), and the threat of a ‘surge’ of these secret police and their illegal and unconstitutional tactics being inflicted upon Chicago, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and elsewhere (all cities run by Democrats, naturally) within the coming days, should bring terror to the hearts of all of us.

We are at a crossroads.

So before you retreat into stillness, call or write to your senators. Tell them in no uncertain terms that they must not condone or enable the outrageous behavior being conducted by the DHS at the behest of our rogue president and his enabling Attorney General.

Persistence – The Ocean Oracle by Susan Marte

Persistence

Which could explain the card that just happened to be underneath (meaning on the bottom of the deck) when I chose Fog/Stillness yesterday. The foundational card, the card at the bottom of the deck, was Sandpiper/Persistence.

Make a call. Send an email. Express your outrage.

Then retreat into the STILLNESS.

I feel the sky this afternoon reflects the volatility of our world right now. Huge thunderheads that threaten potential destruction pierced by rays of light and clarity.

We are capable of being persistent in our resistance yet true to our soul’s need to withdraw into a cloak of stillness that rejuvenates our spirit. We are capable of living this paradox. And now is the time when we must.