Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Oh.


Full Corn Moon

Walhydra has been trying for far too long to figure out how to reboot her witchiness.

Blue topaz
Back in November 2009, when advancing Alzheimer's forced her to move her mother, Senior Witch, from assisted living into skilled nursing, Walhydra started hiding under the covers more and more often.

Eventually she realized that she was spending most of her time among the fluffy balls of "extra cat" under the bed.  By then, she had abdicated the caregiver's role to her psychic twin Crippled Wolf.

Blue chaldedonyWalhydra resumed the SSRI experiment, which did at least restore enough equilibrium and energy for her to be a human being again. However, being human had ceased to be funny enough to tell sardonically humorous blog stories about. She left it to Crippled Wolf to keep things going.

By November a year later, she had brought both her brother and her sister for visits with Senior Witch—visits which they all suspected would be their last.

Senior Witch died in January of 2011.

Blue fluoriteHalf a year later, Crippled Wolf was still seeking to understand the experience of bereavement. "Rationally he understands what death is, yet that deeper animal part of him continues not to understand. How can a person simply stop being?"

On Christmas Eve of 2012, Walhydra was back in South Carolina, helping her Dad "escape" for a day from the skilled nursing home where he lived due to Parkinson's.

Two weeks later, in January of 2013, Dad died as well.


There is a state of consciousness, spiritual dryness, in which all things including the living seem to be mere objects without divine breathe. Spiritual dryness is not disbelief or, worse, loss of faith. It is more like the barren fields of winter—yet fields which do not know if spring will ever come.

HematiteIncreasingly over the years described above, Walhydra felt herself becoming a wintery field. Her wan strength has come from that discipline she learned during the first SSRI experiment.

Centering down, breathing, asking the God aspect of the Divine One to bring her back into his present moment.

This was not a solution, yet it was a powerful reprieve. It allowed her to proceed with "the next thing."

The down side of this approach is that it supports existing but not necessarily being. She goes through her days, sometimes even in a cheery and productive state of mind and mood. Yet something seems to be missing.

There is "getting the job done" and even "joy and companionship." What there rarely is is magic: that sense that everything is alive in a blessed and connected way.


"So what are you going to do about it?" Goddess asked Walhydra last Friday.

"Huh? Oh."

"Well? You keep whining about not seeing the world breathe. It's not that difficult—except that you're long out of practice."

Walhydra noticed a mammoth live oak nearby, one of the those beautiful grandparents with limbs has huge as normal trees.

"Well, I...."

"Oh, silly. Just decide you're going to see things that way and look!"

Walhydra glanced around. She walked over to the live oak, its massive triple trunk filling her view, and touched it gently.

"Oh," she said.
Selenite
And so it is.

Blessèd Be
Bright Crow