strands of destiny Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

All These Ones

Holy cow! With all these ones surrounding us tonight and a powerful new moon to boot, how could it not be a time for fresh starts, planting seeds of creative intention, and contemplating the new stories we’re ready to begin weaving in our lives?

In case you’re puzzling over exactly what ‘ones’ I’m talking about, it’s the “Day 1001” above and the “(T-110)” at the end of this post. Ones galore. New beginnings. And since many of you have been faithful compatriots over the long slog that’s brought us to yesterday’s milestone – now with only 110 left to go! – I dare say each one of you is undoubtedly standing at the cusp of something new in your life, too.

Perhaps it’s a major life decision, such as selling your home, pursuing a new field of study or expertise, opening your own business, or adopting a baby. Or maybe it’s something on a much smaller scale – or perhaps only seems so in this moment – but may end up changing the major trajectory of your life.

Flow and Bubbles – Photo: L. Weikel

So Much Going On All Around Us

With all the static and confusion, the rancor and fear that’s swirling around us, I challenge us all to find one new little twist we can add to the story of our lives right this moment. Even if the new thought or activity only changes five minutes of the story we tell ourselves, what will happen if we think it and then act on it?

Where will those new and different five minutes of our lives lead us? That new thought or choice might seem to shift the strands of our destiny a single degree from where they were otherwise headed. But over time? Wow. It could lead to a transformation of our reality.

I’m sharing ‘all these ones’ with each of you. If you weren’t reading my words, then they wouldn’t matter in the least.

And so I invite you to embrace this opportunity to add a little spice to our stories. And ok. If you’d rather sweet instead of spice, I say, “Go for it!” Either way, or even another way entirely, recall the tantalizing anticipation that comes with starting a new book or movie and imagine feeling that way about your tomorrow.

(T-110)

Reaching for the Sky – Photo: L. Weikel

Odd Impulse

I’ve noticed myself having an odd impulse lately and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. It’s probably nothing. But the urge is definitely there, palpable and a little bit strange.

It happened again just this morning.

I was doing the dishes, contemplating life and all its complicated intricacies. Thinking about how long the strictest aspects of this surreal situation will probably need to remain in place. Wondering what parts of our lives will never be the same again.

All of a sudden I caught myself thinking, “I need to call Mommy and see how she’s doing. I wonder what she thinks of all this.” In that moment, I could literally feel and imagine myself speaking to my mother on the phone, each of us marveling at the dramatic shifts in our reality.

An Impossibility

When I realized exactly what I was imagining, I sort of jolted back to this moment in time, my hands once again in the hot, soapy dishwater – not holding the receiver of a telephone. I recalled a similar fleeting sense of being oh-so-close to having a conversation with her having passed over me only a day or so earlier, as well.

The trouble with those fleeting thoughts lay in the fact that my mother passed away in 1991.

Perspective

I’m reminded that she was two years old when the Spanish Flu of 1918 hit our country. Surely she must have heard stories about that horrible event, even though she herself was too young to recall its effects.

And yet I don’t recall hearing even one story about that time in our country’s history.

I wonder: did my grandparents discuss the situation with my aunt and uncle, who were both much older than my mother? Did any of them wear masks when they went outside? Did they make a point to ‘stay at home?’

I wonder if that epidemic influenced my aunt, who was thirteen years old at the time of the 1918 flu, to ultimately major in microbiology and serve in Massachusetts’s public health system.

And how is this global disruption of our lives and the way we interact with each other influencing the strands of destiny of each and every one of us? How weird is it to think that the babies being born right now will never know life without this pandemic as the beginning of a new normal that we have yet to imagine?

Sometimes we just want to talk to our mothers, I guess. And now is one of those times for me.