Wheel of Fortune

The Magician

I have finished listening to the audio book of Louise Erdrich's The Painted Drum----it is a book about loss, despair, and eventually healing and forgiveness. It was a perfect tale for me at this time.

It is also the story of a sacred Lakota drum, and it's ability to heal and transform. In indigenous religions drumming has always been a means of healing, transformation, and shamanic journeying.

In Joanna Cobert Powell's the Gaian Tarot her image for the Magician is that of a drummer. Tonight I plan to meditate and pray to a CD of sacred drumming. I have a beautiful Mickey Hart hand drum, painted with a yin-yang symbol...but I have always been too shy to go to a drum circle and play. Our local Unity Church has recently formed a drum circle that meets on Wednesdays, so perhaps I will go, and just keep time with them.....

It is another potent form of prayer....

Thanksgiving Day....my ex-husband (who is gay), will have dinner for everyone this year, my son, his soon-to-be ex-wife, the grandkids, my husband and me, and whoever else ambles along. I will need to practice the art of forgiveness, but will do so to be with the grands.

Earlier in the day, we will have a smaller celebration with my husband's mother, who is 83 and I believe beginning to show signs of early dementia, and my husband's sister. They could certainly come to the celebration at my ex-husband's, but it is all a bit too much for David's mom.

We aren't a Norman Rockwell family, not quite sure what kind of tribe we are....but this is real, and this is my life.

Blessings!

Beside the Point

The sky has never won a prize.
The clouds have no careers.
The rainbow doesn't say my work,
thank goodness.

The rock in the creek's not so productive.
The mud on the bank's not too pragmatic.
There's nothing useful in the noise
the wind makes in the leaves.

Buck up now, my fellow superfluity,
and let's both be of that worthless ilk,
self-indulgent as shooting stars,
self-absorbed as sunsets.

Who cares if we're inconsequential?
At least we can revel, two good-for-nothings,
in our irrelevance; at least come and make
no difference with me.

by Stephen Cushman