scattered pieces, scattered seeds

I've recently returned from a mini-trip and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I've scattered the contents of my Self along with my suitcase along the trail bringing me back home.

Actually, I DID grab someone else's suitcase from the airport shuttle van and only realized as I reached down to hoist it into the trunk of my car. "That's funny, I didn't think I had a luggage tag on my bag."  Fortunately the passenger who had my bag was rolling it towards me as I maniacally made my way hunchbacked and chasing down the van through the parking lot.

I was extra paranoid about my suitcase arriving with me as I was bringing back a meat mallet (a.k.a. still wet buck skin rattle) along with other scraps of flesh in plastic baggies to later sew into a hand rattle for my girl.

rattles drying ... mine is on the top, right hand side ...

Yup, this is my life!

cutting skin IS hard work!  Never mind that I am a vegetarian ... although powerful lesson in honoring the lessons of life & death passed on to us through these 4-footed teachers

I have embarked upon a year-long intensive study with 11 other like-minded sisters under the tutelage of this Wild Woman

Our weekend beginning with deep practice and gratitude for the animal guides who have stepped forward to support us in this work.  Our guide for our opening day being the equally wild and wise Witchy Nis.  

It feels as if so many seeds have been tossed onto fertile soil and now I am frantic as many many little seedlings are breaking through and asking for my attention and care.

Because then, there is THIS:

"Mythological images are the images by which the consciousness is put in touch with the unconscious. That's what they are. When you don't have your mythological images, or when your consciousness rejects them for some reason or other, you are out of touch with your own deepest part. I think that's the purpose of a mythology that we can live by. We have to find the one that we are in fact living by and know what it is so that we can direct our craft with competence."

Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss (shared by Elizabeth Duvivier in her current course The Magic of Myth)

What is MY myth?  What is the guiding story by which I create/experience/interpret my life?  My SELF? It seems to me if I can figure that piece out, everything else will fall into place.

Such a tangle of thoughts especially for one whose mind is still trying to catch up with her body!  I am home but not returned yet from the journey I've begun.  


Someone was very interested in my new rattle (it is dry now and requires additional work, stitches tightened, grain added, additional ceremony and adornment)

Scattered seeds, shaking seeds, planting, tending ... Spring is arriving in her many forms. I think Persephone has some lessons in store for me ...