The Story Midwife

Dolphin-bound

A.K.A.  My sneaky husband...

Thank you, thank you for all the wonderful birthday wishes! It was a wonderful birthday and birthday week. One of the coolest parts was a secret my boys were keeping from me. I could see Sammy was about to burst, but as I love a good surprise, I kept stroking him in his "doing a good job keeping this secret, Sammy."

Here's one thing I love about my husband: he knows me. Another thing: he loves me beyond words, methaphor, and image. I am pretty sure I have no idea how deep his love goes. While we live in the day-to-day unfoldings of life together I encounter the well of his love for me and our love together. But it's a moment or event like my birthday surprise where I catch my breath and think, "Damn! This man really digs me.  And he gets me."  It's a lovely combination.

So what is this surprise?

I'm going swimming with dolphins!  And my best friend Heather Michele will be joining me!  WAHOO!

The Minnesota Zoo has a get-to-know the dolphins program which includes special seats for the dolphin show, followed by a special one-on-one time with a particular dolphin. From what I understand, the dolphin swim is more like a dolphin dip: very brief and highly controlled in a small part of the pool. And while it's my dream to someday frolic in the wild with dolphins this is a glorious foretaste of the feast to come. Made all the more fun that Heather and I will do it together. The date's not yet on the calendar, but it will likely be a Saturday in the next couple of months.  I'll be sure to take pictures and post them here.

In the Native American traditions, animals are messengers and bringers of good medicine. As I talked about in my last post, there is much arising in my emotional life right now. With the surprising way Dolphin has shown up here has me wondering what what gifts she might bring. Here's a traditional native story re-told by Jamie Sams and David Carson, co-autors of the animal Medicine Cards:

     Dolphin was traveling the oceans one day as Grandmother Moon was weaving the patterns of the tides. Grandmother Moon asked Dolphin to learn her rhythms so that he could open his female side to her silvery light. Dolphin began to swim to the rhythm of her tide, weaving, and learning to breathe in a new way. As Dolphin continued to use this new rhythm, he entered the Dreamtime. This reality was a new and different place from the seas he had known.
     Dolphin came to discover underwater cities in the Dreamtime, and was given the gift of the primordial tongue. Dolphin learned that all communication was pattern and rhythm, and that the new aspect of communication was sound; he carries this original pattern to this day.
     Dolphin returned to the ocean of the Great Mother, and was very sad until Whale came by and told Dolphin that he could return to be a messenger to the Dreamtime dwellers anytime he felt the rhythm and used the breath. Dolphin was given a new job. He became the carrier of messages of our progress. The Dreamtime dwellers were curious about the children of Earth, and wanted us to grow to be at one with Great Spirit. Dolphin was to be the link.

Ted Andrews' Animal Speak book talks of the power of breath, sound, sexuality, and spiritual practice that Dolphin invites us to. Being a sound-breath-body-Dreamtime lover, all of this makes sense. A few years ago I attended a week long retreat in Shamanic Breathwork. Whew, what an experience. I'm still integrating things that arose in that time. I'm not sure I'm up for a retreat like that right now, but perhaps the elements of breath and sound and body and dreamwork are asking for a different sort of attention. Thanks for that post-it note, Dolphin.

It's a Spirations Spiritual Direction Training Program weekend coming up, and I must return to my preparations. We have been exploring Ache and Dark Nights of the Soul this quarter. It's been rich and luscious, and I am eager to be with my women to hear their stories and know their hearts.

How might breath and sound be calling to you?
   

Nest TWO!

Prologue: I'm going to experiment here, okay?  Instead of attempting to gather some thoughts into a coherent something-or-another before writing, I am using this writing space as a way to understand more of what is happening inside me. Consider yourself my lovely therapists. If the whole post feels a bit disjointed, don't say you weren't forewarned!
________________________________________

Good God.
I swear -- I SWEAR -- I have no idea what is going on.

Nest number two found me today.  After we came in the house from the bus stop, Richard came to me and said, "There's a nest in the front yard."  Gasp!  For those who are keeping track, this is two nests in 10 days.

So of course I leapt from my chair and went to inspect.  Then ran back in to grab the camera. 

This is not a half-nest. It is whole. And filled with leaves. It's amazing, amazing, amazing.  So delicately and powerfully woven is this nest, crafted together with grass and branches and horse hair and sheep wool fuzzies and tule fabric. Tears fill my eyes as I write.  What is this nesting thing about???

Indulge me, will you, as I read a bit about nests in one of my symbol books:

This book, Denise Linn's Secret Language of Signs, says this:

Nest:

• A nest is a sign of incubating ideas or projects.
• When you are nesting, you are creating a warm, cozy, safe space within your home. This is an excellent sign for congenial family life and domestic affairs.
• A nest can be a sign that it is time to pull inward for rejuventation. Go into your inner nest and incubate there for a while. There are times in life when you need to be still and inward and times when you need to be outward and expansive. if you see a nest, this could mean that it is time or you to withdraw into yourself for a period of renewal.

Okay. Sounds a bit like getting ready for winter.  I like that.

None of my other symbol books (some of which I like better for their historical context and/or women's spirituality connections) have "nest" listed.  Hmmm. Doesn't this seem like an archetypal symbol???

Some background information:

• The half-nest was in the backyard; the whole nest was found in the front yard.
• The half-nest was an immediate reminder of death and the women I know who are dying.
• The whole-nest comes to me on a morning when I am thinking about the dance in my life between these things: food, exercise, money/debt, lack, abundance, spiritual practice, teaching/learning, (meditation, prayer, writing, art-making, songwriting, etc.). They all seem to inform one another in ways I cannot untangle right now.

Well, golly. As long as we're experimenting, can we try something else?  If you've been hanging around here awhile you know that dreams are important to me, and dreamwork is one of my spiritual practices. When sharing dreams with one another, it is standard practice to share one's insights by prefacing the comments as such: "If it were my dream...". This isn't a soft way to whip the dreamer into shape with the sharer's most dazzling sagacity. It truly is a practice of seeing through the lens of one's own life, and sharing what would be true for that individual if she had had the dream herself.

So I ask you: Knowing what you know about this nest story (limited though it may be), what would it mean if you had found it?  If this was your "dream" what images, thoughts, stories, insights, blessings and questions would arise for you?

Now, are you ready for this picture?  As with the half-nest I placed it around and inside my home snapping pictures. Rather than sharing them all, I will share just one. I played around with this image in Photoshop - I have no idea how I did this as I am so new to this software and usually just flubb things up instead of making them prettier. This time, however, something in the spirit of the nest came forth.

I am absolutely smitten.

 

(Click on the photo to see full-size.)

She seems to want a name, though I don't yet know what it is.

Scattered around it are buckeyes, a pecan from my neighbor Ev's tree, and yes, that IS a little two-pronged, lime-green Lego. (What good eyes you have!) I am a mama, afterall.  The nest is exactly as I found it, leaves and all. I took the liberty of adding the buckeyes, pecan, and Lego that were in a red, octagon-shaped bowl on our bookshelf.

Whatcha think?

P.S.  I must shower now and scamper out the door. As soon as I found this nest this morning I called my spiritual director to see if she had an opening today perchance. She does!

P.P.S. I joined RevGalBlogPals!  My site should be listed among the other amazing sites soon. Who among you is part of this community?

Dream Work

The topic at hand is Dream Work.

Let's begin the day with Rumi, shall we?

Some Kiss We Want
Rumi

There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its

face against mine. Breath into
me. Close the language-door and

open the love-window. The moon
won't use the door, only the window.
__________________________________

Goodness, it's a steamy collection of words!  Whew.

I find so much here. Layers upon layers that tug at my heart for exploration: a mystical connection to the divine, rapture within one's self, rapture with another, dancing with the rhythms of the earth, passionate sexuality, dreams, spirituality.  And I could go on.

You may know this: I am the founding director of Spirations Institute for Interspiritual Formation, a two-year spiritual direction training program exclusively for women.  This quarter I am leading my current class of participants in an exploration of Symbol, Dreams, and the Inner Life.  It's been a juicy quarter and many of the women are breaking into deeper and more un-nameable pieces of their souls.  These are not women who are new to spiritual exploration, mind you. Most of them have made a lifetime career out of delving into the depths of Spirit's many pools. Yet looking at their dreams (and therefore their lives) in the context of the Spirations has been fresh; soul-trembling; exhilarating; filled with AHAs and release. I would say that many of them are re-discovering the ways (to borrow from Rumi) the moon comes through the window.

We are using a tape series by Jeremy Taylor, uber dream guru and Unitarian Universalist minister.  I, too, have been re-engaging Taylor's words in the midst of the quarter. Yesterday as I drove to pick up my bulk, organic food order off the semi in a nearby town, I listened in on a session. Taylor goes around the room and asks several participants to speak aloud titles to their dreams. It's remarkable the ways others' dream titles begins to knock at my heart. I feel the moon coming in my own window.

I've decided to share some of my own recent dream titles here. What happens when you read them? What titles are you drawn to?  Let's see:

• Skipping Novel Class (And Other High School Adventures)
• Good Mother (ME) and Bad Mother (MY MOTHER) in Bed Together: I Am Both
• Attempting to Unlock the Rich Girl's Safe: 3 Strikes and We're Out
• Kissing the Rich Girl
• Sobbing, Chasing After the Orphan Girl in the Alley
• Fire in My Parents' Garage
• Touching the Blood in my Vagina
• I'm CSI: Finding LL's Killer
• Ordination Morning at the ELCA
• I'm a Murderer in the Church Parking Lot
• Y Has Cancer and No One Tells Me
• Orgasm Morning
• Shoes, Shoes, and More Shoes
• Abby (the dog) Jumps Out the Retreat Center Window & Children Are Milling About the Graveyard
• Scrambling Over Piles of Debris to Find My Spiritual Director
• Around the Oval Table With My Family of Origin: Revealing My (True) Self
• Using the Toilet in the Library, Surrounded by Mentors and Co-Workers

As dreams have a way of making the dreamer incredibly transparent (ahem), you may now know way more about me now than you had ever wished to. Well.

I wonder what your dream titles are.  Will you share?

Keep in mind that dream titles' main job is to help you recall the entire dream with just a few words.  So "Running Screaming from the Castle" is a much better memory hook than "I'm Angry At My Parents." You might have many dreams that point to anger with your family, but noting the Castle will pinpoint just which dream it is. 

So. The table is open. We await your words...

The Placenta and the Snake

On the day following my last post, Sammy's fifth birthday, Sammy and our neighbor Ev, Sammy's 74-year-old best friend, found a dead snake near our home. A birthday snake! I LOVED this! Sammy did too and decided to take the snake for "sharing time" at his preschool the next day. They never know what he'll bring in the door for sharing time. A stellar week of sharing items from Sammy might look like this:

• Day one: Horse-hair nest
• Day two: Tiny cocktail umbrella with the narration that "it's just so cute!"
• Day three: "Lightening Drum" that Sammy and Daddy made out of 2x6 boards and clear packing tape
• Day four: His "walking stick" -- a mini-blind turner wand that fell off the mini-blinds
• Day five: Dead snake in a zip-lock bag

He's very multi-dimensional -- what can I say?

Over our backyard dinner of roasted hot dogs and s'mores, Richard and I chatted with Sammy about how cool it was that he found a dead snake on his birthday. That some Native Americans believe Snake comes at a time with lots of change. Shedding skin, new skin, and thoughts of kindergarden filled our conversation for a bit before heading in for bath time and bedtime.

I knew I wanted to bury my placenta that night after I tucked Sammy into bed. I'd pulled it out of the freezer that morning and had dug the hole in the afternoon. At points in the day I felt like I was preparing to bury a girl-child -- a daughter I had once delivered but that had not survived. Then the feeling would turn and it seemed as though I would be burying my womb. Very disorienting and surreal.

Once Sammy was all tucked in I returned to Placenta Cove in the ancient lilacs to find the next-door landlord mowing the grass. He'd have had a perfect view of me and my placenta. Um, no thanks. The town of Strawberry Point is already talking...

Xeborah called. Goddessy friend of shamanism and symbol, and a spiritual director herself, we agreed that Sammy's snake was a very cool gift to him, and that this placenta was very girl-like. I came to see that burying this organ from my body did represent burying the potential to bring a girl-child into the world through my womb. While lately I've been longing to again birth, nurse, and mother a child of my own flesh I'm about 96% sure I don't really want to have another baby. Guess that 4% of longing was talking pretty loudly.

After Xeborah and I hung up I meandered outside with a few simple items. I didn't put much thought into the ritual. Much of my job is centered on ritual -- making it and performing it and guiding others to it -- and I have such a passion for ritual; I thought I might make a bigger deal out of it. But instead of planning each detail I simply responded in the moment to what called to me.

On the way to the placenta site I picked a large, pink peony and a shasta daisy from their respective flower patches. Once by the hole, I lit a candle that a little girl made for me at a family retreat Richard and I led in the spring. With an Indian brass bell that is my maternal grandmother's I rang away all that was not needed and called in all that was. I brought the peony to my face, smelling its fragrance and saying goodbye. It went first into the hole, then the placenta and blood plopped in after it. I expected to encounter the stench of old flesh and was prepared to be repulsed. Instead there was just the metallic odor of blood. Not offensive to me at all. Sort of comforting and earthy, actually, like the mother of all moon cycles.

It was so dark in my cove. I worked quickly and easily, not responding to great emotion, but rather moving as a woman doing what she is called to do. I placed the dirt over the placenta, packing it down with my feet, giving thanks while taking deep breaths and ringing the bell. When the soil was hard and I was certain my husband would agree that no neighborhood coyotes could come to snatch it up, I kneeled down to pat the dirt with my hands. My fingers found a few sticks which I instinctively moved to outline the circular hole. At last, I placed the daisy in the small mound of earth. I bowed in reverence, rang the bell one last time, gathered up my belongings and headed inside.

It was simple.  It was beautiful.  It was marking an era.

The next day Sammy asked me to bury his snake next to the placenta.

I did.

You ponder the symbology.