Stories from a Desert Spider

kuzu came into my life today.  she is a navajo reservation puppy.  she was named by her foster parents.  ‘dispeller of chaos and illusions.’

this same puppy (we apparently look alike) except she’s hairier, came on the day that i facilitated my first mythic story workshop w/ a group of people.

i’ve been afraid to expose my passion to the world.  silly goofy me!  probably not the first person tho, nor the last.  so i’ve been holding stories in my belly, right?  well.  i’ve been filled w/ illusion and confusion and chaos and suffering  and up and down and all around.  stories are crafty like that.

and i remembered

create. tell. share. re make.  ritual.  embody.  story.  art.

it went well.  i can’t say i ‘taught’ them but i can say i facilitated a fun workshop and we went deep into explorations of the persephone/demeter descent/initiation myth w/ writing, ritual story theater and art.  and they shared their stories of descent and loss.  and there were tears

and a lot of laughter.  hecate was truly in the room.

afterwards, i felt my dad’s spirit come to me.  i haven’t felt him in a long, long time.  he made my eyes butterfly flutter.  and the wind came strong while i held that feeling.  and he whispered, way to go kiddo.  doing what you love.  i’m proud of you.’  and the wind became stronger, light filled my head warmth in my heart and then it was gone.  and the wind was silent.

and then kuzu puppy came into my life.

i’m not sure what happens next.  and i like it.

what do we do w/ the stories? what is our responsibility to them? a friend works on a farm in alabama. an old farmer recently told him a story about a ‘nigga’. apparently,an african american man years and years ago took a pocket knife off of this guys dead relative. they ran the guy down. found the pocket knife in his pocket. they were going to hang him to a tree. instead, they took the knife and cut his head off w/ it. they threw the body into an old tree stump. they stuck the head on a fence post. it sat there for two years until it turned bone white. he said, ‘we ain’t never had problems w/ niggas after that.’

what do you do w/ a story like that?

the stories need to be freed. how do we do it responsibly? how do we resurrect our stories from place and give them a proper burial? how do we liberate the voices that were silenced in layered soil?

“what could make a person strong is understanding completely where you come from,” says former Rio Arriba county commision president Alfredo Montoya. “Understanding who you are. What your village has to offer. Your history. your traditions and customs. How spiritually there’s places to go. And that is why the land and water issues, fighting for the acequias and the land grant movement, are so important for recovering from substance abuse.”

–from the book ‘chiva: a village takes on the global heroin trade’ by chellis glendinning

mary of guadalupe finds me. mary of sorrows cries from retablo planks. and then mary jane of green carried by a stranger reintroduced herself to me.

i haven’t been with plant medicine like her for seven years. i had an almost death experience w/ ecstasy which scared the day out of me. spent 5 years navigating night shadows. maze. living hell. living ruins. revelations. think apocalypse from the inside out.

i almost said no to the stranger. but then i thought, why not try an experiment. make it a ritual. carve out time for it. do it w/ intention, unlike how you knew it 7 plus years ago. we journeyed. she and i.

mary brought me directly to the center.

and then she said, ‘here you go. face it.’

and then she said not to judge it. hell on earth is that.

how can you judge the ruins when there is so much sky?

she gave me the gift of this sky. and the gift of the eagle feathers. she knows i know how to fly responsibly. she knows i know how to work my way to the center and back to the edges and back to center again.

this plant that i’ve been judging shared my karmic history with me. and then she gave me a wave of self-acceptance. and then she gave me the gift of my mythic story. and again the personal one. and then she gave me wings. and dropped me again into my own self-designed hell. into my fear and out of ‘my’ everything and into it. the place where dreaming things grow wings.

a simple vision. i know we have sky and sky gives us sight.

and sometimes i need to journey up to the sky places

and down to the depth places and then directly into the center to face my ruins. without judgement becomes a different sort of revelation. the kind that shifts from apocalypse to