Bob Woodward Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Another World

Yesterday I wrote about how getting a wider view of a situation can sometimes yield a bit more of a distressing perspective than expected. I think part of the reason the revelations made in Bob Woodward’s soon-to-be-released book, Rage*, were so jarring to me was the fact that I’d just spent several hours in another world.

Many of you may be thinking I’m referring to journeying, as in I’d taken a shamanic journey, and therefore my consciousness was literally in another world that afternoon. While that could easily hold true on any given day, that wasn’t the case yesterday.

No, prior to the walk on which I took the photos of the clouds in yesterday’s post, I’d driven not ten miles away from my home and entered a paradise. Upon my arrival, I stepped out of my car and yelped in joy over the calliope of life and color bombarding my senses.

Dahlia – photo: L. Weikel

Only Fair

It seems only fair that I share with you the source of the open-hearted joy I felt earlier yesterday – before I returned home. Sadly, it was hard for me to recapture last night the essence of what I felt when I stepped into this wonderland earlier in the day. I allowed my perception of national events to suck almost all of the magic out of my day.

M’s Garden – Photo: L. Weikel

But luckily, I remembered. And I’m reclaiming that joyful life essence now – and want to share it with you.

Some of the dahlias remind me of the glass artistry of Chihuly that Karl and I saw when we were in Seattle a few years ago.

Chihuly Garden and Glass (Seattle) – Photo: L. Weikel

There’s so much beauty in the world, whether it’s Mother Nature bursting forth in multicolored dahlias to blown glass artistry that bursts the imagination. In the midst of the dark and ominous clouds that are approaching we must not forget how things look different in this direction, too.

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Photo: L. Weikel

Things Look Different

I took the two photos I’m including in tonight’s post within less than a minute of each other. The only change was the use of the zoom on my iPhone. While I do this a lot with a vast majority of the subjects I photograph – zoom in and out to see how much detail I can capture or what the big picture might tell about context – tonight’s two photos really caught my eye. Things look different.

Perhaps it’s just my mind struggling to make sense of the latest revelations billowing across the airwaves. Hearing our president admit, knowing he was being taped, that he was warned back in January of the colossal impact and likely devastation the Coronavirus was going to bring to our country. Hearing him relate to Bob Woodward in an eerily breathy and awestricken voice just how deadly and easily transmissible the virus is. And then recalling him telling us day after day the exact opposite of what he knew to be true.

It’s a lot.

And tonight’s clouds just felt like a darn good metaphor for what’s being revealed.

On the one hand, close up one can almost feel a bit of optimism. There’s some blue sky within the cross-hatch of the clouds, a bit of clarity. But if you look at the clouds a little more carefully, it’s as if they’re at cross purposes. Some seem clearly heading one way in the sky and another patch, almost within the realm of the first patch, seem intent on heading in the opposite direction.

Cross Purposes

One might imagine the view of the sky, if taken from a wider, more expansive perspective, might reveal even more hope; a bit more blue sky. More options.

Usually, when we ‘stop and take a step back’ we find some sense of reassurance or perspective.

I didn’t feel that tonight, especially when I got home and looked more carefully at the two photos. Nor did I feel it when I paid attention for the first time tonight to the latest ‘breaking news’ in what has become a fire hose of ugly revelations. But the thing is, the revelations are not a total surprise. If you were paying attention, the clouds at cross purposes were there all along.

We wanted to focus on the slivers of blue sky, the stark and dramatic outlines of the trees along the horizon.

If we’d adjusted our sights, taken a step back, we just might have caught wind of the blanket of darkness escaping our perception.

Then again, on second thought, perhaps it all looks rather bleak.