kindred spirits Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

You Can’t See Me… – Photo: L. Weikel

Sedentary Sunday

The arrival of summer temperatures this weekend (it feels too early to me to be hitting 90 degrees, but what do I know?) persuaded me to indulge in a delightfully sedentary Sunday reading and studying on my porch.

Every time I consciously spend several hours away from electronics, I start thinking about how different life was in the not-too-distant past. I know I’ve read a million articles about how addicted we all are to our devices and yet I still check the headlines somewhat compulsively. (I actually chalk that up more to the trauma of the past four years than simple devotion to my laptop or cellphone.) Nevertheless, I’m starting to entertain thoughts of a shift this summer.

We’ll see.

My Real Message

The message I actually wanted to convey this evening has to do with an encounter I had on my walk this evening. Spartacus and I were ambling along the side of the road, taking in the way the sky was being painted by the setting sun.

A car approached us and I did as I try to do as often as possible, which is getting both the pup and myself entirely off the roadway. Most people smile and wave. Some obviously figure, “What the heck,” and floor it. Many are respectful and seem to appreciate that I’m trying to minimize risk for all of us. Yet I’m always a little bit concerned when someone slows down.

Yes, it could be someone I know. But even most of the people I know or recognize from working the polls or simply from living here all these decades don’t stop. They wave and smile.

So I was just a scootch concerned when the compact, navy blue SUV slowed to a stop and the passenger side window whizzed down to reveal the 50-something driver. Her short hair was dark brown and wavy, and it framed her friendly, smiling face. I wondered, “Ugh, darn it. Should I know her?”

To be honest, she did act as though she knew me – and I’m pretty confident we’ve never met. But! What she said next just made my day.

Never Hold Back

“I just had to tell you,” she said immediately upon lowering her window. “I saw my first fawn of the season today!”

Delight was written all over her face and quite powerfully washed over me as she filled me in on the details. She described where she works (a special needs care facility that’s close by and situated in a setting surrounded by nature) and detailed how she’d been greeted by a Mama Doe and her quite fresh newborn standing in the driveway only minutes earlier. She marveled at how the fawn was actually nursing right in front of her – smack in the middle of the driveway – and how neither Mama nor Baby were at all afraid of including her in their moment.

The driver joked that perhaps Mama Doe was making a peace offering because she was pretty sure Mama may have been the same deer that jumped in front of her car on her way into work today. Perhaps presenting her fawn was Mama’s apology and excuse for nearly killing the driver earlier.

Joy Is Catching

The very best part of this entire encounter (beyond imagining the utter adorableness of the newborn fawn) was the spontaneity with which this driver chose to share the unmistakable joy it brought her – and best of all – how she chose to share it with me!

I don’t know which made me grin more: the idea of the Mama presenting her nursing fawn to this woman (and the delight with which this gift was received) or that this woman somehow recognized a kindred spirit in me enough to share her news. I was simply walking along this country road at dusk and my evening was turned into an experience of sharing Nature’s magic and love.

Sharing her joy was a spontaneous act of courage. Next time any of us are tempted to do the same, I hope we don’t hesitate or hold back. We just might change the trajectory of someone’s day (or even more).

(T-187)

Sushi, Brownies, and Friendship

Some nights I go off on tangents about raptors, clouds, and messages. But sometimes the only reasonable course is to just take a time out and focus on sushi, brownies, and friendship.

I want to continue the conversation I began last night about Seeing patterns and connecting dots and how all of that comes together differently for each of us. But tonight is not the night for me to pursue that line of thought.

No, tonight was a night of sushi, brownies and friendship, and the upshot of that fact is the truth that I don’t feel like going so deep or so wide into my thoughts or feelings. Instead, I’m simply reveling in the sweet truth of what it felt like to sit around a fire safely ensconced in a fire pit, in the midst of a windless, completely still evening, with people I’ve known for all but maybe twelve months of their life to those I only met minutes before pulling up a chair to the fire.

Ah, the freedom of being outside and more than six feet away from all of these people (there actually were only four of us around the fire), yet still able to look at their faces – their full, maskless faces – and react to their expressions and laughter and full-toothed grins. It was the best birthday gift ever. (But I’ll admit, the sushi and brownies were exquisite as well).

Knowing What’s Important

Sitting together outside tonight we shared a number of precious moments: the barely waxing newest of moons in Taurus, flashing but a tiny fingernail shape in the western sky, while captivatingly revealing the rest of her shadowy self if you looked closely enough. What a sight; especially when glimpsed through the trees that are just starting to bud out and contemplate bursting into full, leafy glory over the next few days.

Another moment? The satisfaction of coaxing the fire to rise to the occasion, licking its flames across the delicious bark of the wood we fed it. Ah, the warmth and flickering of flames that danced across our countenances as we told stories of years gone by to give the newcomer a taste of who we are and how we share certain bits of history.

Everything has a story if you give it enough time. Even people we’ve known all our lives have stories they can share that surprise or beguile us.

Sometimes, the further we travel from home, the more we realize that the people closest to us might just be the most exotic. Or at the very least, the most eclectic.

Amazing Seeds Being Planted

It feels to me as though this week is a particularly powerful week in which to plant the seeds of what we wish to manifest not only in the next thirty days or so, but also in the next six months and event he next year. The new moon (on Sunday evening) was in Aries but the seeds we’ve been planting since then – yesterday, today, and tomorrow – have been, and are being, planted while the moon is in earthy, nurturing Taurus.

To me, that feels luxuriously nurturing and like the perfect environment to cradle those incipient dreams.

I’m going to call tonight as one of those evenings we all yearn for but only rarely experience. Filled with sushi, brownies, and friends, it was momentary perfection. For a few hours this evening, four people sat around a crackling fire, listened to distant peepers, exclaimed over Canadian geese honking their way directly overhead, and knew we were all exactly where we were supposed to be in that moment.

Decades may separate us, but in the moment, we were all simply reveling in the company of kindred spirits. I couldn’t be more grateful for the experience.

(T-228)