
Dog Fish Guinea Pig Funeral
March 14, 2023Doesn’t this little circle of pets say everything? We come in beauty, we pass in beauty. We are all connected, here to revere each other as sacred even as we struggle with loss.
Doesn’t this little circle of pets say everything? We come in beauty, we pass in beauty. We are all connected, here to revere each other as sacred even as we struggle with loss.
Animals were the first beings they had to negotiate their own relationship with, on their own terms.
We already knew how to lay down together, wrap our tails around each other…
I’d be teaching my kids wonderment, full time.
I suspect that is all magic really is: our relationship to true wildness. It is in the movement of water over rocks, the way fire travels, the song of soil remaking itself across eons.
I would like to carry her
down this hallway,
my sometimes tender
often edgy bird,
to lay her on the waiting bed.
To look into Cear’s eyes was to stare into your own soul. Once upon a time… there was child born into the world of dreams….
How do you reclaim wildness, when you are part of a culture hell bent on minimizing or destroying everything wild? How do you embody the presence of an animal to call forth your humanity?
I suspect somehow that our wonderment actually feeds the Earth.
“What are you on about man…why are you trying to keep out the Ocean with that thin wattle?” The youngest Cian often spoke without thinking, as was typical of young people then, just as it is now.
To finally destroy them in our culture they first had to be painted as physically real, then evil, then slain, replacing many Gods with one God. But if Dragons are larger forces of nature, they cannot be slain anymore than you could kill the rain or wind.
This is the journey available to us if we open to it, the yearning we feel for something more profound, and the answers nature offers us.
Our two year old has developed a seriously respectable roar in the last few months…
Since the big rains came, the Mushroom People have come out in numbers I’ve not seen in a decade. Everywhere I turn a new village appears, populated by fascinating folks.
I’d almost forgotten how deliciously ferocious our weather can be.
It was for that reason I was acutely aware of the power released as the roosters spirit passed.
To acknowledge that the old way is dying, to grieve it and the many losses that go with it, but realize also…
Now being loved this much is of course AWESOME, the first 5,000 times it happens.
Its finally happened, the Dragons are waking up after sleeping for millennia. Halfway around the world three Dragon lairs have appeared this summer, proportedly first swelling then blasting their way open.
By the time I caught up with True, she was carefully examining a tan, three foot long Bull Snake stretched elegantly across the front path.
The heartache I feel when my son is just away for the day at school still takes me by surprise. I want to hold his fierceness tightly, bury him in my heart until his hysterical laughter blows everything wide open.
I was wide awake at the wheel when the Elk danced into my headlights. He was big, just under 300 lbs from the sheriffs report. I moved to the right to avoid, he dance to the right, I moved back, he jumped back.
There is nothing like holding a child, feeling its breath move through you and out into the world. It is the essence of hope, and what flows from that is peace – deep peace.
It took a lot to create a world free of real magic, a world free of true wildness.
Our fosterling squeals with glee as I lower her onto Bella’s chest. She immediately latches on to the thick black fur…
All dance is shapeshifting, that was the latest 4am baby-feeding gift.
You joined the meeting about ten minutes in, slamming up against the plate glass again and again.
Agencies, institutions and laws do not heal people, that much is clear. At best they can provide opportunities for transformation, guide books, the names of mentors, directions to journey in. They are not in and of themselves, healing. That is the work of our fellow human beings, and the compassionate spirits who offer their wisdom and support.
The coyote tax liability we’ve built up is far greater than any national debt could ever be.
Over the months the spirits I work with have continued to teach me more about how to trap gophers in a way that cares for their spirits.
The shamanic journey awakens us to the spiritedness of all things, and to the special responsibility we have to creatures we kill for food.
I wanted to find a way back into the Earth, deeper into an authentic spirituality.
The sweet earthy flavor of the beets felt the same as the energy of the dreams. Flavors and feelings mingled with the soothing breaths of sleeping wife, son, dog and cat. I swear those beets gave me the dreams.
These stories harken back to a time when the boundaries between people and other creatures were woven …
The Celts were able to hear the voice of the Seals only a few centuries ago because the spirit world was not so far from their daily lives.
I have handled more frogs and toads in the last few weeks than I have seen on our land since we moved here. Most were bloatish and leathery, as big as a softballs and stuffed with pomposity.
I have met Selkie in all the worlds, excepting this one. I believe they have well traveled paths to cross over to wherever they need to go.
I dreamed about a seal pup last night, it was scrawny, groggy and a little snippy – just like I felt. It was the day after my first February swim in the Pacific.
For years I swam the Pacific in winter. The water was so cold I had to spend five minutes submerging my head until the pain gave way to numbness, just so I could do a mile.
… despite our toxic times there are still creatures that live on land but respirate like fish.
My new years resolution is to become an amphibian.
Its not hard to see a Selkie in every Seal or Sea Lion you meet alone in the Ocean. They treat you as an equal, as kin.
Omens are a way life can change who we are. They are not just messages, they are reworkings of the place where our spirits and the material world connect.
I felt like my head had been cut off, filled with hysterical laughter and put back on upside down.