All My Relations

In a room of lit sage, we chanted and drummed before our shamanic journies: "All my relations, all my relations, all my relations…" around the circle, on and on. It was an offering at the beginning of the practice, an offering of connection with all our relations, not just people that we've grown up with, grandparents, great-grandparents, but also animals and birds and insects and all others. Friends. Acquaintances. Everyone. We are all connected, right?

Is this sounding a little sappy? After a long hot spell in the PNW, cool marine air comes in and when it does, I get sappy. I feel like I've been through something hard, a marathon of sorts, and having survived it all, turn gushy with feelings of happiness that I'm alive. "I'm alive, I'm alive… " Is that a movie quote? I don't remember.

My tarot card this morning said, "You are beginning to see your relationship to all things," (The Medicine Woman Tarot Deck) This is an interesting thought, because if I'm related to all things, than why is my garden so puny? Is it a reflection of me? As I become stronger, will my garden also thrive? (I forgot to divine for the ley lines. Remind me, okay?) According to New Age thinking, we create our world. This is a hard one for me to swallow completely, in other words, I choke it down. Why? Because I don't want to be so fiercely accountable for all the pain in my life. Yet, as I sit back listening to the trains pass on the bay, I think about all those years I wished to live in a small community where I could walk everywhere. In my wish, I didn't have sound effects playing in the background—train whistles at three in the morning, shouting bar-goers stumbling across the parking lot, cars burning rubber at 1 am—I did, however, have the hoofing it around town feeling good, and to the garden and back, no less.

Yesterday the grandbaby and I didn't go to the garden. We did go to the water, and it was fabulous, glinting with sunlight. Hot. A real summer day, hot enough to grow sweaty and feel spent. The day before I was at the garden and when I looked around for my trowel and couldn't find it. As I hoed with a tool from the garden shed, another gardener said, "I have your trowel, by the way. Nothing gets stolen around here, just moved around." I replied, "Oh, I thought maybe I carried it home. "

"All my relations, all my relations…"

The card says I am not alone…Holy moly, what a relief.

Ciao!