Boldly Going.

            We had an aim in mind today.  We set off (way tardy) with our mission and our lists and our shopping bags.  (Sadly we forgot our recipes,  but we adjusted.)  We met some very cool folks while we were out and we were mildly successful with what we needed to bring home.  When I saw what our daily draw had to say I wasn’t too surprised. 

             I won’t be going completely by the book this time.  It came up with at tweak, but did not truly feel reversed.  I’ve included the poem though, because that jumped out at me.

“Badger  ~  Aggressiveness  ~  29

Until you reach your goal,

Know the inner power,

That lives in your soul.

Badger is vicious, and attacks with powerful aggression. Badger is quick to anger and quicker to pounce.  The power of Badger’s medicine is aggressiveness and the willingness to fight for what it wants.

Badger is the medicine of many powerful medicine women, for Badger is also the keeper of the medicine roots.  Badger sees the roots of Mother Earth’s healing herbs hanging in its burrow home.  These roots are a key to aggressive healing.

Roots can ground negative energy into the Earth by allowing illness to pass through a body into the ground as a neutral energy.  Badger medicine people are quick to act in a crises, and they do not panic.

If Badger is a part of your medicine, you are quick to express your feelings, and you do not care what the consequences are.  Badger people oftentimes insist on carrying the ball for a touchdown.  This attitude, however, does not endear them to their teammates.

Badger medicine may also point to the aggressive healer who will have the courage to use unconventional means to exact a cure.  Like the mother who sits for days nursing a child with a high fever, Badger is willing to persist.

Badger people can be vicious gossips, or may exhibit a ‘chip on the shoulder’ syndrome if they are  out of balance.  You can be sure that people with Badger medicine will be aggressive enough to make it to the tops of their chosen fields, because they do not give up.  They are also the finest healers, because they will use any and all methods to ensure healing, and will not give up on the critically ill.

If Badger pushed its way into your cards today, it may be telling you that you have been too meek in trying to reach some goal.  Badger asks you how long you are willing to sit and wait for the world to deliver your silver spoon.

In this medicine, the key is to become aggressive enough to do something about your present state of affairs.  Badger is teaching you to get angry in a creative way and say ‘I won’t take it anymore.’  You must follow-up by keeping your eye on the goal.  Honor the healing process as you express those inner feelings.

Be aggressive, but don’t cut others to ribbons on the way.  Use your anger to stop your lolling around, so that your doldrums of apathy are a thing of the past.  Badger is a powerful medicine when properly used for self-improvement.

Remember that Badger may be signalling a time when you can use your healing abilities to push ahead in life.  Heal yourself by aggressively removing the barriers that don’t ‘grow corn.’  Cut away the dead wood and use Badger’s aggression to seek new levels of expression.  Use Badger’s medicine roots to keep grounded and centered in the process.”

             This feels complete to me.  So I’m not going to type out any more from the book, except this passage:

“Badger in Contrary position can issue in a time of reflection on what you feel helpless about… in reverse, Badger teaches you the pitfalls of shyness and insecurity…. or to use herbs and roots to heal your body.”

           Now, on to what we saw in our travels.  You’ll be able to see, quite clearly, that it was pouring down rain the entire day.  So, happy Spring!

            There was this, and there was a Colorado.  Not very Foreign.  But, there WAS a cool spot we walked past, as we did some alley wandering, which I knew I had to share. 

             Every time we come across something like this, I am proud to live here.  (This happens way more than I even report.)

             As we went up one side and down the other of Main Street in Springfield, I felt the need for sustenance.  Immediately upon seeing a sign for frozen yogurt.  If you will recall, I now DO eat the stuff.  Just not at that last place we went to.   From now on I’m going to go to  Sweety’s.  The owner greeted us at the door (sure we were the only ones there, but he would have done it if we’d shoved our way past a hundred people, it’s what he does, and how he runs his business). 

                If you are local, go there.  If you are not, at least visit their website.   (They have a party room!  With a big screen, where he’ll play Willy Wonka* for you!)

*The original, not the Johnny Depp version. 

               Yesterday the boys went to visit our friend (and former neighbor) Jeff.  He recommended a new BBQ place (H & H [from Vegas, Dan says] on Hwy 99, for those of you interested in the home town details, in the old Taco Time building), which they went to.  But on the way there, they saw this.

Bison. In a field.

              Technically, this was in a cow pasture.  Out near where Karen and The Fam live, only a few miles from us.  Yeah, we’re gonna need more info about this property.  And those buffalos.

                Last important item is my Programme Reporting in.  Going very well.  I don’t know what week I’m on because I’m no longer keeping track.  I’m just sticking with the suggested eating and not worrying at all about special occasions or treats that happen rarely.  We shopped today and brought home pretty much nothing processed.  It’s getting easier and easier.

Today’s Deck:

Medicine Cards ~ The Discovery Of Power Through The Ways Of Animals by Jamie Sams and David Carson, illustrations by Angel C Werneke

LateNight Update:  my son has started a new blog.  This one, he tells me, will actually have more than one two posts.  I’ll be adding it to the Important Family category tonight.

 

Air – Inspired By Dreams, and We Meet Our Guy.

    The years are flying by, as they do, and I am applying my esoteric gifts as well as the employment skills I have picked up along the way, to make this life work out the best I possibly can.  Helping in the classrooms, sitting on parent/teacher boards, and writing for pagan-centered family magazines.  One afternoon I was delivering a commission cross stitch piece and had picked up a check (all of about thirty-two bucks), as I was crossing the street I noticed a new tattoo shop.  Hey, when had that gone in?  It was warm outside so I went in to enjoy their conditioned air, oh yeah, and to see about tattoos.  I’d been having dreams about family members, and their relationships to particular birds (obviously messages here).  I also had this vague idea about inking a leather strap around my leg (the blank one), perhaps so I could hang things from it (probably feathers).

    The instant connection I had with the owner of the shop (and his Native American heritage, much like my own) was profound.  I told him my thoughts and he began to draw.  It was as though he’d reached into my brain and plucked out the exact picture, putting it down on paper even before I was finished describing the various scattered bits.  Over the many months leading up to the Vernal Equinox (as this was the element of Air, and its corresponding date is the First Day of Spring) I saved my pennies and he put the finishing touches on the drawing. 

       We started with a peacock, that would represent me: flashy and loud.

(Only look at the feather and the band at this point. Please and Thank You.)

     The details he included in the band were deeper than I could have imagined.  Braided leather, tied knots with colorful beads, shells that the in-land tribes received in trade from the coastal peoples, and one large round piece of amber with a hole to poke quills through.  Over the course of a year we added, and added, until I had everyone marked. 

    There are water birds, a woodpecker, night and day predators, as well as a small group of loon feathers.

   When we had circled back around to spring again we put one last finishing touch.  The friend who had drawn my Wave used to doodle, on any surface available.  He’d left me a small scarp of paper when he moved away, it was a stylized sketch of a fairy.  We hung this as if it were a charm made out of rose quartz (that being the stone most associated with love) directly above the curl in the peacock feather.

       Three out of five sacred elements: check.

Tomorrow: flat earth round.

      (Did you guess that this tattoo guy I connected with was the one from previous photographs, a few weeks back?  Yep.  Wulff Cole, tattoo artist extraordinaire.)

Perfect equality.

Pagan High Holy Day!  Vernal Equinox, First day of Spring.  (Just a by-the-by here, I have a thing about the little holiday graphics that Google puts up, I know they are tacky and corny, and sometimes just stupid, but I like them.  Google is my friend, and I enjoy the craptastic-ness of it all.)  For years, (seriously, ask my kids, years and years) I have been saying, as we near this global happening, “when I was in junior high, it snowed one year on Spring Break, so watch out, it could happen again.”  Well I shared that story with Elliott today; Hanny and I even alluded to it in our texts, I mentioned it again later at home.  Guess what?  My father called, today, the First Day of Spring, one day before Spring Break begins, and it was snowing at his house!  Then Beloved Spouse re-appeared (after I had sent him off to work, an hour earlier) and said it was snowing downtown, some slushy flakes were even falling in the yard.  Yes, it COULD happen!  It just did.  All of that aside, we are now going the ‘other’ way, and Winter is now, officially, completely over.  Weather not withstanding.