Celebrating sea gulls on winds of changes

We visited Milwaukee again this weekend! Every visit we say it might be our last - mostly because of our older ages.

One of my favorite Milwaukee walking shamanic journeys is to, around, and back from the Milwaukee Art Museum. I usually connect with many favorite bird spirit allies along the way.

The near freezing wind gusted against me mightily but I plodded on because road trips like this are so rare. Chammy had gone to the Milwaukee Public Museum (his favorite) instead, with our friends and neighbors, a much younger, lovely, thoughtful, generous couple we had hitched a ride with.

So my dear Chammy stayed warm while increasing his scientific knowledge while I tramped around in the weather. I have never enjoyed museum exhibits because I long to see 'artifacts' still in sacred use or naturally decaying.

The sky shifted from blue to gray and back again many times. The grasses were half brown, half green. Bright green Tulip and other Spring bulb sprouts had grown to 5-6 inches high already.

We arrived Friday night for the 7pm Shamanic Shift Center circle, then stayed at the Astor Hotel across the street. After coffee and rolls in the hotel's charming little east facing tea room we set out on our separate ways, me bundled up in 3 layers.

Saturday was partly sunny and chill and the clouds had won over the sky by the time we rejoined our friends. Chammy doesn't like Daylight Savings Time but (partly) because of it we had scenic dusky views most of the way home.

Here Spring springs without any troubles

Image by Sascha Grant via Flickr

Maybe Spring is the longest season even though it seems to spring up on us! Spring begins before the Vernal Equinox, way back on some secret day during February, as soon as the first warmer, that is warm instead of cold, teaser day dawns, delights, and dusks. As soon as that happy surprise strolling-around-in-shirtsleeves day happens I know Spring is underway, though mostly hidden underground, volcanically bubbling life around and upwards within seeds and roots.

Spring 2009 unfolded in a series of catastrophes for many around the nation and the world, showing how violent and furious life can be. A steady series of economic, financial, and social blows seemed to match an unremitting sequence of large scale or acute Nature traumas - fires, floods, blizzards, earthquakes.

Climate and other earth changes (no matter what the causes) are certainly bringing on worsening ecological distresses and accelerating the extinction of living beings. This energy of troubled elements calls out to me for creative redirection.

Image by nimboo via Flickr

Life for us in this seeming refuge called southeastern Wisconsin stayed comparatively calm and safe but I could feel the blows and shocks from afar reverberating underfoot and within soul. Visits to nearby Milwaukee show me how much even light pollutes earth's ecosystems and severely attenuates humankind's view of the night sky and its inspirational, encouraging, beckoning planets and stars, the ancient life-adventure navigation beacons that used to help us reach beyond all apparent arising limitations.

How do I re-create and resolve these disturbing patterns within myself as a shamanic death and resurrection prayer? I take ordinary-reality action through charitable relief and social change efforts as much as possible then I wait.

I sit and take in as much as I can of what is and breath and dream on it. Then I stroll and imagine on it.

For every scenario of suffering that appears I superimpose and transmit one of this haven's vibrant, beautiful images. Who knows if or how this is effective? If it changes me, it changes the universe by that much, is my conviction, and some days only my 'act as if'.

We exchanged shamanic Valentine's Day masks

Image via Wikipedia

Happy V's Day, belated! Valentine's Day is tied to themes of fertility, courtly love, poetry, and martyrdom. Martyrdom?

Two or three or maybe 14 Saint Valentines lived during the Christian haydays, whose energy-flows and life patterns now seem merged. At least the first two Saint Valentines were martyrs to keeping the faith yet no one knows very much about any of them.

Maybe it was the vibrant RED of the Eucharistic vestments and altar trappings on feast days in honor of martyrs against the priest's alb and white linens that linked the martyred Saint Valentines to the theme of lovers joining. Red and white as colors are alchemical lovers.

Red, the color of wine, roses, and desire and white the color of bread, lilies, and snow, dance together yet separately, through this originally Pagan celebration of Spring's earliest dreams and hints of bright flowers and happy birdsongs. Then they flow into our modern Valentine's Day red on white love tokens.

Anyway, this year Chammy and I commemorated and blended all the themes and energy-flows of Valentine's Day by making each other Valentine's Day shamanic masks. Can you imagine that?

Oh, more belated happy day wishes! Happy Friday the 13th, too! This year there will be two more Friday The Thirteenths (in Live Science).

Before I was old enough to know of the common superstitions about unluckiness around the number 13 or Friday, my Grandmother had instructed me that 13 was her special luckiest number and Friday was her extra-lucky day of the week. She never told me why and now, as I remember her, I suppose it may have been for secret reasons, and/or to keep me from being afraid of the number 13 or of anything numbered 13 or of Friday the 13th.

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