Gratuities Appreciated

I love holidays, and using them as an excuse to celebrate what is at the heart of each one.  So every year for Thanksgiving I create a gratitude list of 101 things I am grateful for.  I've tried to keep overlap to a minimum so that I'm finding new things each year to be grateful for, but how can I not mention things like Muppets and Rainbows?...

1. That the right people always show up at the right time  2. Archery -- The muffled rattle of arrows on your back and the single, fluid motion to retrieve one from the quiver. The smooth, graceful curves of a bow and how they affect the balance of how it rides in your hand.  The tautness of the string and the subtle click as it snaps into the nock of an arrow, while the shaft softly clacks against the bow and slides into place.  The draw of the string back until your thumb brushes your jaw, as you look down the length of the arrow but don't so much see the target as feel it. The slightly strained pause of resististing the tension of the bow and string for but a moment longer as you inhale... Then release as all exertion is emptied into this spinning, feathered bolt, singing down the range until it comes to rest with a solid "Thkk!"  3. My family who grows dearer every day  4. That all the things I believed as a child have turned out to be true  5. 'Whose Line Is It Anyway' belly laughs  6. that first, glorious sip of chai in the morning  7. Smokey, sacred-pipe prayers that tingle in my mouth and linger in my beard and hair  8. Ever present Hope  9. Snow Leopards  10. 'Snow White' moments  11. Garden Burgers with swiss and mushrooms at... 12. ...the Roanoke Inn  13. The honor of being allowed to take part in the healing journey of others  14. The ever thinning veil between the worlds (and still being on this side of it)  15. Physical human touch  16. Kitty head-bonks  17. Naps  18. Skinny dipping  19. Deloreans  20. Faery ancestry  21. The wild greenwood  22. Tears  23. Grasshopper pie  24. That there's always another chance  25. Emmie and Mr Timmons -- my furry children  26. Silence  27. SJ Tucker  28. Peppermint patties  29. Mystery  30. The Great Mother  31. Deep soul connections  32. Rainbows  33. Gregorian chant  34. Elvis  35. Synchronicities  36. Humor  37. Stories, tales, sagas, legends, myths  38. Hawaiian pizza  39. George Herriman  40. Society for Creative Anachronism  41. Walt Whitman  42. Forty Two  43. Used book stores  44. The ecstatic throes of creativity  45. Oneness  46. The Holiday Season  47. Muppets  48. Water falls  49. Coyote howls  50. Disney  51. Intuition  52. Buck skin jackets with fringe  53. Deeply spiritual, mystical artists that remind me of things that can not be put into words  54. The ever-rising consciousness of Humanity  55. Nocturnal walks in lightly falling snow  56. Breakfast  57. Unbridled whimsy  58. The perfection of everything, even (especially) when I can't see it  59. Drums and rattles  60. Dalai Lama  61. Walks, and meditations, in sacred forests  62. Words -- Their origin, history, evolution, meaning, and relationship with other words  63. Blank books pregnant with possibilities  64. Glee  65. Kindness from strangers, and kindness to strangers  66. Kisses  67. Intimacy  68. That there are people drawn to do the things that I'm not drawn to do  69. Sacred space and ritual work  70. My path and vocation  71. Tao Te Ching  72. Movies on the big screen  73. Horchattas  74. That Love is all there is  75. Live music and live theater  76. Martha Stewart  77. Swash buckling  78. Gene Kelly  79. Wild rice  80. Imagination  81. Inspiration  82. Laughter  83. Dance  84. Moments of such utter beauty, perfection, and delight, when the clouds of fog and chaos clear, that there are no words for it and the only proper response is a smile  85. Ellen Degeneres  86. Comics  87. Art  88. Heliotrope  89. Transformative workshops  90. My goof-ball troope of spirit helpers  91. Happy endings  92. Wombats  93. Raptors  94. Blissful massages  95. The ability and joy of reading  96. Hugs that you melt into  97. Entire days of movie marathons while working on art projects  98. Serendipity  99. My patchwork Pantheon  100. Bruce Campbell  101. Enjoying things now that I couldn't even imagine as a child

...And I'm grateful to you for reading!  Thank you!

Yes Virginia

The past couple months have been pretty crazy for me -- intense, head-spinning, world toppling, death-defyingly crazy.  There were three events right on top of each other, which I will talk about separately, that really shook me up and left me feeling on the verge of the anxiety and panic attacks that I hadn't experienced for years.  When the heaviness of depression teamed up with the hyper-vigilance of anxiety and I found myself living in an uneasy fog, I knew I had to get some answers.  All I knew was that something had to change, but what it was, or what my next step needed to be, I didn't know.

So I turned to a good friend with whom I regularly exchange readings to shed some light on what was going on and what I needed to do.  Despite the combination of Tarot cards and my friend's mad astrology skills, clarity was in short supply, and though I left with more hope than I arrived with, the unknown task before me seemed daunting at its best and insurmountable at its worst.  I had doubts as to whether I would even survive this.

Still, the challenge was less undefined than before and we were able to determine that it sprouted from some deep soul trauma (all the cards coming up being Major Arcana) that resulted from some crisis of faith.  It had something to do with physical reality and being present in my body -- Balancing both the physical and spiritual realms.  I'm really good at avoiding being in my body, but as the oracles where telling us, I didn't totally trust the spirit side either.  A crisis of faith -- a crisis of reality.  It so resonated with my feelings of being caught in both worlds but not totally belonging to either one.  The phrase that came up over and over again was 'Hearth and Home.'  I don't know where my home is and thus do not feel safe anywhere -- hence the hyper-vigilance and the resulting exhausted depression.

I read a story somewhere about a guy who got on a bus and he was carrying this obviously very heavy backpack.  He took a place standing in the aisle as the bus continued on its route, the pack still slung over his shoulder.  Finally, a few stops later, a woman looks up at him and says, "You know, the bus is strong enough to carry both you and your backpack." And the man realized he didn't have to keep carrying the pack but could put it on the floor.

That's kind of the way I've been feeling -- like it's not been safe for me to put my full weight down anywhere.  I don't dare until I have someplace that's home.

Okay.  Baby step, baby step.  My body is my home here, and I'd already begun to be more consciously present and grounded.  I can do that. Step One, done.  Step Two -- Stay optimistic. In just the past week or so I'd rediscovered what a difference it makes to have my third eye open.  When I get caught in the hamster wheel of thoughts and its resulting tunnel vision, just opening my third eye chakra totally expands the context and perspective of whatever I'm going through.  It's like a "Second star to the right and straight on til morning" type feeling.

So I had those things going for me, and just had to bide my time -- "get comfortable with being uncomfortable," as my reading had told me -- until the answers came of their own accord.  Fortunately I didn't have to wait long.

I was going about my own business this morning at work, mulling over everything from the reading the night before, and thinking about the whole crisis-of-faith thing.  "Maybe I was martyred in a past life? Maybe I had put my undying faith and loyalty into someone or something only to find out they or it was false?" Suddenly, without warning, a memory flashed through my mind.  "Oh my gods! SANTA!!!"

I don't remember exactly how old I was but it was my pre-teens when I found out Santa wasn't real.  It may sound silly but this rocked me to my very foundations. I had had an unwavering, unquestioning, 100% pure belief in Santa's existence, and that reality -- the one where magick was real in the world -- was pulled out from under me.  In a split second I no longer lived in a world I recognized.  I didn't know what I could trust.  Not only did the magickal world get taken away, but it made the physical world less real, and less reliable.  I was lost.  I no longer had a home.

That all might sound a bit melodramatic, but think of it from the mind of a prepubescent, day-dreamer of a boy.  And silly or not, the full impact of this realization sent this fully grown man reeling to the bathroom and had him sitting on the floor sobbing his eyes out.  Tears of grieving a world torn away from me... My innocence ripped away from me.  This was huge!

So I sat there on the floor, my breath still catching in small gasps, when something shifted.  I felt as though some invisible barrier or wall had softly given way and allowed me to sink deeper into place than I ever remember, like tumblers in a combination lock aligning. There was a calmness and a rightness, and I felt like I'd just had a Soul Retrieval -- like some errant part of my soul had finally found it's way home.

I had closed my teary eyes, and suddenly the darkness behind my eyelids turned the color red.  Then I heard the laughter -- "HO-HO-HO!" And there before me stood Father Christmas himself, like he'd just stepped out of a children's book.  

I may have shed a few more tears at this point, from the joy and just the pure relief bubbling up from my heart.  And I'm pretty sure I was grinning as I sighed, "You are real."

He threw his head back and shook with a belly laugh. "Hohohohoho! Of course I am!" Then he paused, and with a sly twinkle in one eye, and a wink with the other, he leaned closer to me. "Are you?"